Living-Good Life in Happy Valley

Mushrooms are part of Bill Russell’s earliest memories. Now long retired, he vividly recalls being a young boy, sitting in a high chair in his western Pennsylvania home, nibbling the mushrooms his mother had brought in from the yard and placed on a tray in front of him.

Soon Russell was out in the yard himself, hunting those same mushrooms.

At the Hines home near Bellefonte, overnight guests retire to a piece of railroad history.

It’s a salvaged red caboose, built in 1942 and renovated into quarters befitting a lifelong train buff.

Bob Hines, 78, bought the onetime property of the Lehigh Valley Railroad 13 years ago, along with four other cabooses relegated to a Brookville railyard.

You’re just about halfway down a steep flight of stairs when it hits you: a sudden rush of cool on a hot summer day. With each step, the chill gets stronger and by the time you reach your destination, you’re glad you brought along a sweater.

As the British might say, Wendi Keeler does a bloody good job.

Keeler, 50, organizes Penn State blood drives for the American Red Cross Greater Alleghenies Blood Services Region. Last school year, Penn State gave 8,260 pints, making the university the nation’s third-most generous campus.

On a farm tucked away in Penns Valley’s eastern end, Brian Futhey practices alchemy.

He holds a pipette in one hand, a small glass beaker in the other. Today’s experiment is proceeding as planned. He’ll need to test the acidity of his raw milk, freshly obtained from his Jersey cows, before he turns 10 gallons of it into a soft, Camembert-style cheese called “Leigh-Belle.”

It might be a hot summer day, but the air is a pleasant few degrees cooler in the gorges of Ricketts Glen State Park. Here dappled sunlight filters through leaves of giant hemlocks and oaks, offering a visual counterpoint to the gurgle and splash of flowing water.

Few conversation pieces can top a ceiling mural with nine half-naked women.

Representing the Muses of Greek mythology, they float above the immense dining room of an ornate 135-year-old Huntingdon mansion fit for a robber baron — or two retired schoolteachers.

Anne Ard may not be a doctor, but she’s in the healing business. As executive director, the Ferguson Township resident leads the Centre County Women’s Resource Center, whose shelter, hotline and other programs help abused women and their children repair their lives.

Heidi Biever is standing with her back to a room full of wiggling, giggling elementary school students. Dressed in black yoga pants, a striped cap perched jauntily atop her blond braids, she surveys the group in the wall-length mirror before her, then strikes a pose.