North central Pennsylvania is beautiful and temperate this time of year.  The day reveals a land of maze-like mountain ranges, each ridge roughly the same elevation.  Geologists describe this kind of rugged terrain as a desiccated plateau.  Here there are ridges beyond ridges lush with forest, waterways, bogs, valleys with farms, corn fields and cattle pens; and the sky blue with castles and archipelagos of cumulus.  At night the sky glitters sharply with stars while arches the diaphanous ribbon of the Milky Way.  The weather this time of year is almost always temperate and mostly sunny, except for occasional storm sweeping through, flashing here and there with electric yellow bolts,…