TheBanyanTree: Tuscarora Mountain Chicken

[Mike Pingleton]

BanyanaRama-Bound.

I'm zoomin' east on I-70, somewhere near the middle of Ohio.  I've got a 
showdown with a HoeDown, up the road aways in Pennsylvania.  72 mph in a
little Saturn coupe borrowed from my daughter, with a front seat a mite 
too skinny for my behind.  I'll survive.

Where is all the white bits of paper coming from?  Little strips, scudding
about in the traffic-driven wind.  The trucks I can see up ahead are all
reefers, metal boxes closed tightly.  Not from them.

An hour later, passing through Zanesville and the beginnings of the hilly
country there, and still the paper bits swirl in the airstream.  Trying to
imagine an open dump truck full of shredded paper...more Enron documents?

I get the answer when I creep up on a semi pulling a powder-blue trailer,
an open frame job, loaded from front to back with racks and racks of
white chickens.  A poultry truck.  A one-way ride to heaven for a feathery
host of fowl.  The little white strips are everywhere now, chickens leaking
feathers under the buffeting wind.  Some are facing outward, but none are 
sticking their heads out into the airstream, the highway hurricane too much
for scrawny chicken necks.

Wheeling, West Virginia is where I stop for gas and a snack.  This lil'
car gets great gas mileage.  Stretch, stretch, bend at the waist, move the
blood pooling in my keister and my legs.  Time to get back on the road, cut
through the skinny part of West Virginia and into Pennsylvania.  Up and down
the ever-steepening hills covered with trees.  What a beautiful place.

The feathers are back.  I'm behind the chickens again, back on the track of
the chicken truck.  Just how far do these chickens have to go?  Passing 
through three states already, a wind-blown juggernaut headed for pots unknown.
There's the turnoff to Pittsburgh - maybe they're headed there.  Nope, there's
another feather.

My first time through these parts, and I'm amazed at the approaching tunnel.
TUSCARORA MOUNTAIN, it says above the entrance where the highway slips 
underground into a tile-lined tube.  My headlights pick up more feathers, 
lots of feathers, the tunnel containing them.  I zoom out the other side
of Tuscarora Mountain, in a burst of feathers, I imagine, like a fox exiting 
a henhouse.

Two turns later, standing by the roadside and looking dazed, confused, and
generally worse for wear, a lone white chicken.  Somehow, some way, at least
one fortunate fowl is spared from ending up in the supermarket.  As I watched
her recede in my rear-view mirror, I wondered what her fate was now.  How 
long does a white chicken last here in bear country, in fox country, in coyote
land?  Run, chook, run!  Your fate is changed, your life in your hands! er,
wings!  Run!

That night I camped under Blue Mountain, just west of Carlisle, PA.  Tomorrow
I would complete my journey, turning north up the Susquehanna Valley.  Tonight
the cicadas and katydids are in full chorus, the night hot and muggy with
little breeze.  The smoke from my small fire hangs in the heavy air under
the dark bulk of Blue Mountain.  Somewhere out there beyond my firelight are
bears and bobcats, coyotes and cougars.

And one white chicken.