Tintern Abbey and Lock 60

When I was reading Tintern Abbey I was struck by the similarities that I feel when I visit Lock 60 in Pennsylvania (you should Google Lock 60). As a boy I used to walk, or ride a bike there, fish or collect mini fresh water shells. Lock 60 is located on the Schuylkill Canal, just off the Schuylkill River and it is surrounded by woods, steep cliffs, rolling, and a dam. The roaring water can be heard throughout the area.

Wordsworth is very nostalgic in this poem and I can relate to how he feels seeing one of his favorite places. However, this time he is seeing it through an grownups eye instead of that of a child. He reflects on how things have changed and he feels at peace there.

Wordsworth wrote:

I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all. -- I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.

From these lines we can see how just by thinking about his boyhood years at Tintern Abbey affects Wordsworth. He feels bittersweet just thinking about it. But we can also see how much pleasure it brings him.

For me Lock 60 is my Tintern Abbey.

Last year when I went to Pennsylvania the first place I visited was Lock 60 and it was the last place I went to just before I left to catch my flight. I can spend hours there visiting my old hangouts, fishing, just walking around the trails or finding a comfortable place to sit back and relax. I love Lock 60 and I feel at a loss and at peace when I am there.

When I first read Tintern Abbey a few years ago I didn't make the connection to Lock 60. I just thought about it as I reread the poem over the weekend. I do remember thinking to myself a few years ago that it must be nice and awful to have a place like Tintern Abbey to haunt and please you. Well, I do have such a place and it is indeed both terrible and fantastic.

I look forward to later this year when I once again go to Lock 60. I can't wait to go and I do not want to leave. For Lock 60 is with me now so in a way it has never left me. Lock 60 - My own personal Tintern Abbey.