The sleepy village of Lawn was once named Roseland and it was the closest thing to paradise on this green earth. Yes, as a college student I used to call it "Yawn", but it was a blessing to grow up there because good food just leaped out of the fertile soil and as long as you worked for it, you'd never go hungry.
The past few weeks brought the pipeline workers and their machines that they parked at the fire company where my father and brother were "first responders" though we never used that phrase back then. They were just volunteers who would've been embarrassed to be called "heroes."
The pipeline trench is on the edge of the village. It cuts through the Lebanon Valley Rail Trail and the Conewago Creek. It just missed the curve of the creek on the Hess farm where we kids camped.
It crosses the highway near the rise in the road where young Billy Hess was struck by a car and killed one terrible evening. My father was first responder.
"It'll grow back," a hiker on the rail trail told his children when one of them asked what what was happening -- the chain link fence along the trail, the earth torn but not for planting good food. Pipelines crisscross the United States; this is just one more. But when they leak, they spill poison into our water. Many people in Roseland ...er, Lawn, depend on well water, as do many people across the country.
The earth will endure, one of my geology professors used to say. But will we?
The past few weeks brought the pipeline workers and their machines that they parked at the fire company where my father and brother were "first responders" though we never used that phrase back then. They were just volunteers who would've been embarrassed to be called "heroes."
The pipeline trench is on the edge of the village. It cuts through the Lebanon Valley Rail Trail and the Conewago Creek. It just missed the curve of the creek on the Hess farm where we kids camped.
It crosses the highway near the rise in the road where young Billy Hess was struck by a car and killed one terrible evening. My father was first responder.
"It'll grow back," a hiker on the rail trail told his children when one of them asked what what was happening -- the chain link fence along the trail, the earth torn but not for planting good food. Pipelines crisscross the United States; this is just one more. But when they leak, they spill poison into our water. Many people in Roseland ...er, Lawn, depend on well water, as do many people across the country.
The earth will endure, one of my geology professors used to say. But will we?
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