It’s that time of year again. The daily high temperature is somewhere in between forty and fifty degrees. I’m speeding down route 309 at 60 miles per hour, only narrowly avoiding some 300 potholes and occasionally hitting one head on (which at this point I’ve become so desensitized to that the jarring thump and bounce of my wheels against the pavement hardly phases me, really). It’s times like these, when I’m forced to stare endlessly at the monochrome highway cement and barren tangle of trees beyond, that I ask myself: why is Pennsylvania so damn gray?
This inquiry has existed in my mind for quite some time. Even as a kid learning the different US states, Pennsylvania always conjured images of bland leafless gray-brown trees—I’ve continued to this day to consider it as the state’s signature color.
I can hardly be blamed for thinking this. What’s the most common tree in Pennsylvania, you may ask? The red maple. And what color bark does the red maple have? That’s right, Brownish-gray. What animal is the state known for? Deer. Everywhere. (If you haven’t yet heard that signature thump against your car or seen one haphazardly lying across the road I envy you, but that’s another discussion). Have you seen the color of deer fur? No? Well, it’s grayish brown again. As icing on top of the cake we have another PA public figure, perhaps most prominent and equally irritating (especially if you—god forbid—want to feed birds in your backyard or have lawn furniture that doesn’t get destroyed). The squirrel. Not just any squirrel. The Eastern Gray Squirrel. And what color are they? I’ll give you one guess.
Don’t even get me started about the rocks in Pennsylvania.
No matter what I do, there is seemingly no escape from this desaturated gray-brown existence. Yes, we may get a brief respite during the warmer months when the trees are green for a whopping few months out of the year, before turning brilliant orange for a maximum of one week and then returning to their dormant brown state, but in between that the brown-gray is all consuming.
All that said, I took a recent extended trip to Texas to house sit over spring break, and I discovered that after a while another color entered the midst: tan. The highways, the dirt, the houses. When I finally returned to Pennsylvania, I was almost, and I do mean almost, slightly comforted by the desaturated gray-brown landscape outside the plane window.
So, as I hit yet another pothole while gazing out my front windshield, it occurs to me that perhaps PA isn’t the only state plagued by their own dreary color scheme. Maybe the sky is sometimes blue here and many of the trees are still green if you remember to look hard enough. It’s probably just the March end-of-winter-begging-for-spring mindset that gets to me this time of year. I’m still going to complain about it though, even when the buds on the trees give me just a shred of hope.
Gray-brown Pennsylvania. Ridiculous.
