For the Common Wealth

It's interesting to see that my two states, the Commonwealths of Virginia and Pennsylvania, are key to this year's presidential election. I notice that Ed Rendell has asked Bill Clinton to crisscross western Pennsylvania to try to shore up votes for Obama. And we have seen our share of politicos down our way, too. Northern Virginia, where we are, is typically more liberal and votes democratic in national elections. But go south and west and you're into the bible belt, where conservatism reigns and republicans more often than not hold sway. That's not unlike Pennsylvania, where the coal region, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Erie are more progressive than the rural landscapes.

I remember vividly several years ago I was travelling along Pennsylvania Route 74 in the Cumberland Valley between South Mountain in the Blue Ridge chain and Blue Mountain – the beginnings of the ridge and valley section of Pennsylvania (that extends south into Virginia and the Carolinas). If any is, that area is the epitome of rural, conservative, traditional, red state America. And I was struck all of a sudden with the realization that the farms and small villages and the back roads and pastures and woodlands and people in that valley practically ooze the unspoken message of conservation – the message that these people connect with and hold the land dearly to their hearts, and that they want so much to be able to pass those lands and waters and natural areas on to their children and children’s children. That landscape and those people silently scream out the message of connections . . . connections with the land and water, connections in this time and place with each other, and connections through time with past and future generations.

Perhaps they are holding on too hard-so hard they can't open their arms to the strange and new. And maybe they are grasping at the past out of a fear of a future that is largely unknown. But, at the same time, all too often we miss their message that speaks so loudly of conservation and of connections, as we are busy writing and typing and speaking and instant messaging - trying to explain ourselves – not listening at all. It’s time, I would offer, that we all listen attentively to our rural neighbors whose lives convey a message of care for the common wealth.

Sunset Over Blue Mountain