Cross Continent and Back, Full Circle: You can go home again

There have been lots of Buffalo on this trip: in Yellowstone, on the Teddy Roosevelt grassland, and the Sally Buffalo campground. Wikipedia refutes that Buffalo was named by the French: ""Buffalo" is a corruption of the French phrase beau fleuve, "beautiful river," a phrase said to have been exclaimed by French explorers upon seeing the Niagara River." However, I prefer this version to the alternative that it was named for Buffalo Creek....named because tainted horse meat was passed off as buffalo meat. (Denial is an honored tradition in our family.)
I love coming back to Western NY. The area (including Lackawana) resonates deeply on both sides of my family. Some cousins still live here. Despite my fondness for both place and people, I tend to only return at the time of my parents' internments.

This year and indeed the past 2 years seem to have been a chance for me to have what Renee calls moments of redemption and reconciliation. They come in ways small and large. Seeing Buffalo, reconnecting with cousins and tending the graves, which my sister Chris has done for several years, brought to a new level of reconciliation with my past.
For me a sense of place is visceral. The first time I visited Scotland, where my mom's parents came from, I felt at home in my bones. Buffalo and Lackawana affect me in the same way.

We drove in from the south. This meant that Lackawana was first on the agenda. Lackwana plays strongly in the history of western NY. Stoney Point was the site of some of the first steel mills in NY and literally colored the horizon. As the iron ore was refined, yellow red dust covered the fronts of homes that lined the streets across from the plants.

The night sky glowed as they poured the molten steel into molds and then the slag (the contaminants) into Lake Erie, making it one of the most filthy lakes of the great lakes. Now it is only sunset that lights the sky.