Calm Before the Storm

This week, all the hiking time I got was one measly hour on Sunday afternoon: ten minutes to my destination, forty minutes in the woods, and ten minutes return time. Almost not worth the effort? Even if it was just an hour, I had to take it. If I miss my weekly rendez-vous with the forest, I spend the next seven days operating on a depleted spirit.

Besides, yesterday was the calm before The Storm. Today, of course, is "The Storm." It's The First Day of Buck, when men take the day off work, kids get the day off from school, and the sometimes peaceful Allegheny National Forest becomes the Marne River Valley, circa 1914...except with no trenches for shelter. I don't mean to pick on hunters, but I marvel at their deeply held belief that the only reason to go to the woods is to kill its inhabitants. I recently met some hunters in the Tionesta Natural Area, and one of them told me---as if confessing a dark secret---"This place is real nice. We come here once juss to be here." Funny, that's the only reason I ever go to the woods: Just to be there.

I know a nurse in the ER in Seneca who says that they play "Hunters' Bingo" on The First Day of Buck. The first nurse to report the Big Four ("heart attack in the woods," "gun powder in the right eye," "fall from a tree stand," and "stray bullet") wins. It's cynical and mean-spirited. But it's no wonder some of these guys have heart attacks in the woods. Most of the hunters I know spend the whole year in a recliner, shouting at ball games on the TV and getting brainwashed by Fox News. They drag their flagging manhoods off their seats long enough for three things: 1) to grab a beer, or eight; 2) to go to the pot; 3) for their yearly foray into the forest, armed like Hessian mercenaries, firing at every hapless bird and every twig that rattles in the gust.

Anyhow, due to time restraints, yesterday I did a quick loop on the old forest roads that run through the McKinley Valley. In case you don't know McKinley, it's an abandoned town site that I documented for a popular ghost town website. (I can't seem to establish a link to that web page for you, but if you're really interested, you could find it by googling "mckinley ghost town.") Definitely worth a visit...when there's nobody shooting at you. The photos on the aforementioned site were taken with a cell phone, so they're not great. But here's a shot of the old main street. Notice the "staircase to nowhere" in the foreground. I recently talked to an 88 year old lady who moved out of McKinley in 1953. She said there were still six occupied houses there at that time.

Three Worlds

Long ago, while decorating my dorm room in college, I came under the influence of M.C. Escher's drawing "Three Worlds." The famous picture depicts the three 'worlds' you see while looking at a fish in a pond in the late fall. There's the underwater world of the fish, the surface world of the leaves floating atop the water, and the outer world of the barren trees reflected on the smooth surface of water.

I loved the picture because it reminded me of one of my earliest childhood memories, a place where my grandmother used to take me to watch the fish. There was a terraced garden behind the old Andrews Mansion in New Bethlehem, Clarion County. By the 1970s, the grounds of the estate were more than the family could maintain, so they loaned the back garden to the borough to use as a park. It was one of those formal, decorative lawns with symmetrical shrubbery and stone walkways running at geometric angles. Kind of like a mini-Versailles, but without the bizarre statuary. (Back in the golden age of small town aristocracy, good Presbyterians like the Andrews had reservations about "graven images.") There was a pergola, though we didn't know that word back then; to us, it was just a "summer house." Best of all, there was a little rectangular pond with lily pads and huge goldfish.

The three worlds you see in Escher's picture are the ones you'll find in every situation if you look closely enough. There's the inner world, the underwater world, where you are the lone fish. Others can see some of your world, but they can never really share that inner world with you; it's yours alone. There's the surface world of the floating leaves. This is where most of us are content to skate around for our allotted 75 or 85 years of life. Then, there's the outer world reflected on the surface, which is unattainble to the fish, but which looms like a constant presence. This "outer world" is whatever "reality" we perceive from the limited vantage point of our little ponds: the way we think people are reacting to us, the way we think the universe works, whatever we believe to be true, based on the evidence we observe. The problem with this 'world' is that our perspective of the larger world is always skewed by the water that we live in.

And the real problem with this photo, taken in the wild country of the Tionesta Natural Area, is that it represents only Two Worlds. The surface world of the floating leaves is gone; the leaves have sunk into the interior world, leaving the surface smooth as a window. I like it. I think that's why I go to the woods anyway, so that the surface world can be stripped away.

Brookston Overlook

As Slade from Ohio pointed out in October, the Twin Lakes Trail gets dicier and dicier the closer you get to its western terminus. Where the old path snakes its way across the mountain just east of Brookston, it's mostly overgrown with rose cane and blackberry. Even in November, you have to beat back the jaggers. Long, thick pants are a must. Of course, if you're trying to hike the ANF in your khaki shorts in the month of November, then pardon me for suggesting that you take up mall-walking.

Unlike the more easterly segments of the Twin Lakes Trail, which tend to run through nice streams valleys and pass under dense canopy, these neglected western stretches have some elevation and a few decent vistas.

The Brookston Overlook doesn't offer the most striking scenery in the Allegheny, but it is pretty. It's quiet here, hauntingly quiet. The hamlet of Brookston is completely invisible from the hilltop, and all the open space invites backcountry camping. Since overlooks are relatively rare in the southern half of the forest, I'm surprised this one isn't a little better known. There's easy access from FR443 if the gate's open.

The Wearin' o' the Orange

Oh, the joys of bushwacking, just shoving Jeff Mitchell's well-thumbed book into the glove compartment, taking out the old forest map, and dreaming big! Actually, I get so little time in the woods these days that I've been carefully planning today's outing since last week. I even had a dream about it last night: a bushwacking trip into the trackless Tionesta Natural Area...(not to be confused with the Tionesta Scenic Area). Sometimes you just gotta get away from the trails.

On the map of the ANF, just west of Kane there are two darkened areas. The more northerly of the two is the Tionesta "Scenic" Area, which I complained about this past Sunday, with its unbelievable blowdowns. Just adjacent to it is a more southerly patch of forest of about equal size. This is the Tionesta "Natural" Area. It's also old growth. It's off limits to all motorized vehicles; the mineral rights actually belong to the Forest Service, so there aren't many oil roads or derricks, and there are no trails through it. Two-thousand acres of bushwackers paradise!

Well, sort of. The approach from the hamlet of Brookston (Forest County) is a lonely one, so I was drawn to it. Forest Road 443 east from Brookston leads eventually to a closed gate at a pipeline swath. This pipeline, like all pipelines running through our forest, is a heinous, awful, reprehensible thing. But it serves as a perfect highway for hikers. It's grassy and passes through some beautiful segments of the ANF. You could actually hike the whole detestable pipeline from its starting place at Roystone (the natural gas facility between Sheffield and Ludlow) all the way down to the Little Drummer Trail, on the southermost marches of the ANF. In any case, it's really the only thoroughfare through the Tionesta Natural Area, giving hikers access to great bushwacking. From FR443, I followed the pipeline swath north.

In less than a quarter mile, the swath crosses into the Natural Area, one of the most isolated spots in the ANF. The trees here are big, mostly hemlock and beech. There are steep valleys, affording long vistas. The swath crosses two beautiful brooks, the East Fork Run and the West Fork Run. The first of them is deeper, with immense fallen trunks serving as the only bridge. This is what I love about bushwacking: in the absence of trails, you just pick a stream that you like and follow it. You can't get lost following a stream, and you can end up in some pretty remote country.

On this trip, I did meet up with some hunters from New Castle. They looked like characters on "The Sopranos." I could swear one of them shoved a handgun in his pocket when he saw me. They said they weren't hunting, "just looking." I thought to myself, "Yeah, I know New Castle. You guys are looking for someplace to hide a body."

Can't wait to discover more of this truly wild part of the forest. Hey, this is the first time in weeks that I've hiked on any day of the week other than Sunday! Had to wear that flourescent orange cap my mother-in-law got me. And I usually only wear orange on St. Patrick's Day....

An Official Apology

I'm not usually a rain-hater. In fact, if I don't have anyplace to go, I love the rain...until this year. There was just so dang much of it getting misdelivered here from all those places out west that were experiencing drought.

Ah, but sweet November 2009 stepped up and offered us bright, beautiful, golden days of reprieve. November came like Nature's apology with 50 degree temps and that yellow tinted autumn sun. I know that "uncharacteristic" weather can be a little freaky and off-putting, but not this time. Since June, July and August were so damp and gray, we water-logged denizens of the Big Level will happily take a good, long Indian Summer even in November. No complaints. So, here's my official apology to the Eleventh Month for calling her "November the Gray" in a previous post.

And as long as I'm "clearing the air," and being all Polyanna, and retracting all of my negative statements: here's a shot I took at the Tionesta Scenic Area. There are some big honkin' trees out there, some of them 400 years old. In this photo, you see a standard-sized notebook atop a standard-sized walking stick, leaning up against a very non-standard-sized hemlock. The thing is enormous. How did this 2,000 acre patch of trees escape the axe? Definitely worth seeing! (And if you're looking at my walking stick and wondering why the tip is sharpened into a pike... Well, it's not because I'm paranoid. It has to do with an ill-fated camping trip this past August where we had to prop a tarp over our tent because of all the blasted rain.)

Lessee, what other libelous statements have I made in this blog? Oh, yeah, the Mutant Pear Tree! Hmm. Nope, I'm going to let that statement stand...

Curtain Call

It's not a wild sylvan scene, but it is the glorious autumn's curtain call, as the last straggling performer lingers late on stage. All the other actors have long since cast off their costumes, but the genetically altered pear tree is still decked in full regalia, attracting all the attention it can never receive when the larger, brighter native trees are in color.

You go, Mutant Pear Tree! Poor, emasculated, overly-refined, decorative treeling. You're an evolutionary dead end, and you'll never reproduce of your own power because your empoisoned fruit never gets any bigger than a pencil eraser. Sad, stunted little species whose whole lot in history is to grace boxy postage-stamp lawns like this one behind "The Manse." What overly domesticated, professional man fails to feel your pain? We love our troublesome children and spouses; we identify with our life's work, yes, but which of us on a bright fall day doesn't feel the primal urge to rip off the damned necktie...or collar? Which of us is deaf to the wild call of rocks, and streams, and wind, and dirt? But we have to ignore it, or relegate it to tiny blocks of preplanned "free time." We resign ourselves instead...to tameness, stability, responsibility, respectability. We give our life's energies instead to deadlines, and productivity, and institutional advancement.

Ah, the wildness we long for would kill us anyway. And right quickly! So, you go, Mutant Pear Tree! You'd never survive in the forest, but you sure are nice to look at in mid-November.

"...And Rolls through All Things"

...And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,

And what perceive; well pleased to recognise

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

~William Wordsworth, 1798

El Dorado of the Allegheny

The Tionesta National Scenic Area is the El Dorado of the Allegheny. You can set off in search of the place like a brave Spanish conquistador, but you'll probably never find it, and you might never be heard from again. Those happy few who do actually do find the place scratch their heads and think to themselves, "Huh, it took longer to plan this trip than the hike itself."

Not to disparage any part of the forest. I love the whole flippin' thing. But when you hear that there are 2,000 acres of 400 year old hemlock and beech forest, and that it's protected as a national natural landmark, well, you just assume that it's one of the highlights of the ANF. Maybe the Tionesta Scenic Area is nice in the summer. But on a gray November Sunday--a day that evokes the old Morrissey song--this place doesn't quite seem worthy of the considerable navigational skills that it takes you to get here.

It's tree carnage, due to the infamous tornado of 1985: twisted limbs, fallen trunks, rotting hulls of ancient trees. Some areas are scrubby from all the dense saplings that have sprung up on the once-dark forest floor. There are some very nice old hemlocks. Some of them are as grandiose as the trees you see in Cook's Forest. Twenty-four years after the tornado, many of these hemlocks still hold splintered and ragged tops high against the sky. It's almost as if Nature herself couldn't bear the thought of two ancient forests in such close proximity to each other, and so she decided to decimate one of them.

Now don't get me wrong. Jeff Mitchell--peace be upon him!--is the forest guru. My copy of his book, Hiking the Allegheny National Forest (autographed by the author himself), is as dog-eared as my copy of To the Lighthouse. Heck, my copy of Jeff's book is as well-worn as the little black book that I use at weddings, and funerals, and baptisms. When Jeff describes a hike, or gives directions, or estimates distances, his accuracy is astounding. What I sometimes find frustrating about Jeff's book is that he always withholds judgment. He never says things like, "Don't bother with this trail if you hate hiking in oil fields," or, "This trail is as dull as Food Network." But I only get Sunday afternoons to spend in the woods, and it sure is frustrating when I dedicate my precious hiking time to a place that isn't really all that great. I kind of wish he had left his readers a clue that the Tionesta National Scenic Area will be a whole lot nicer in 100 years.

"The Road"

On November 25, the film "The Road" is going to be in theaters. (Though the drive-in here in Kane only shows films like "Monsters vs. Aliens," and it closes in October anyway.) "The Road" is based on the post-apocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy, and set in a world where all living things are reduced to ash. Nothing grows. The few survivors have to scrounge for canned goods or else cannibalize each other. It's a world where meaning is lost in the featureless, fearful fight for daily survival. Against this bleak backdrop, a father and son make their silent way south along some unnamed and treacherous road in hopes of finding warmer weather. Incidentally, much of this movie was filmed along a derelict 13-mile stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike that was bypassed in 1968.

Here's a long quote from the novel "The Road." I'm using this quote in my doctoral dissertation to talk about the erosion of meaning in postmodern language:

"He tried to think of something to say but he could not. He'd had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair. The world shrinking down to a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever."

I think that too often we're made to live anonymous lives: on the computer, in our cars, on the phone, staring blankly at the fictitious lives of others on TV. In all these things, we're unknown. And human beings were never meant to be unknown. We're meant instead to live in close proximity with each other and in direct relationship with the earth that gives us life. I think the thing we most need today is a stronger sense of place, and communal identity, and the greater good. What we need is to find our own unique identities within the context of "our place," rather than moving to North Carolina because it stays so warm in the winter.

I even think that "The Road" uses the symbol of "the road" to refer to geographic rootlessness of modern life, and the way our lives lose meaning when we're always on the move, never able to commit them to a single place, always trying to carry our identities with us, as if 'who we are' could be unrelated to 'where we're from'. Anyhow, I'm looking forward to seeing the movie "The Road," even though the book is oppressively dark. Dark books and movies express a real truth, all the while reminding us not to take hope for granted...

Interior Design at Tapper Camp

Here you see the little gas stove inside the shack at Tapper Camp. (Too bad it's not a wood stove.) Here, too, is the only window, with its 90 year old glass pane still intact. If I had discovered this place as a kid, that glass would be history, which tells me that not many kids visit the camp....

Tapper Camp

This is a place I call "Tapper Camp." I'm pretty sure it's on public land, but the ANF border runs a little crooked through this area, so I'm not certain. Also, I like having Tapper Camp to myself. For those two reasons, I'm not going to say where it's located. Surely hunters and bushwackers know about it, and yet, in three years, I've never found trace of another human there.

We used to call the guys who worked the oil fields "tappers." Hence the name Tapper Camp; it's where tappers used to bunk down when they got stuck out on the mountainside at night. As you'll see in the following post, it's a shack just big enough for a bed and a small gas stove. The thing that amazes me about Tapper Camp is that it's completely intact. The glass in the window is unbroken. The pane still opens. Despite a few leaks, the roof still holds. With some work, you might be able to close the door. In a pinch, you could still hold up there for the night, but the gas stove is long since disconnected.

Tapper Camp sits at the edge of a great rock city. I wonder if the boulders have protected this little shack from the elements? There was surely a time when these little cabins were all over the forest, but since the 1920s, most of them have collapsed. I wonder what keeps Tapper Camp standing. Anyhow, interior shots are coming in the next post.

In Praise of Hemlocks

The things that make hemlocks so beautiful are the same things that make them hard to catch on camera: their deep shade, their delicate--even elegant--needles, their evenly spaced branches, their streamside setting. The hemlock is constant, if not flamboyant, the graceful matriarch of the forest.

Many moons ago, I used to listen to the "Largo" from G.F. Handel's opera "Xerxes." I'm not an opera fan. Too much screaming. But this is a well-known song, sad and haunting. The lyrics are in Italian, and I never knew what the tenor was singing about. I always just imagined that he was singing the profoundest words of self-disclosure, words of heartbreak, words of deepest sorrow mingled with wisdom and calm. Just a few weeks ago, the song came back to me in a fit of melancholy. Google had been invented since I last thought about the song, so I did an Internet search to see what the words really are about.

They're about a tree! A friggin' shade tree!

"Never has there been a shade
of a plant
more dear and lovely,
or more gentle. "

At first it was disappointing. I wanted to go back to a state of ignorance. When you don't know what the words mean, they sound like the Mystery of the Ages unveiled. When you find out that the guy's just singing about the shade of a plane tree, it's a let down...

But honestly, when you get under the shade of those streamside hemlocks and hear the brooks prattling against the rocks, and see the afternoon sun in the laced branches, you could see how someone might write a song about it. It's definitely worthy of a haunting melody. In any case, here it is: Ombra Mai Fu, also known as "Xerxes Largo," by G.F. Handel. (In this version, there is no human voice, just a cello. I prefer that for the same reason I prefer to post photos without people: it seems to express the solitude of the forest.) And this photo was taken in the area of the much-neglected Mill Creek Trail, parts of which are hemlock heaven.

A November Scene

The vivid yellows and oranges of October have faded into the browns and grays of November. It's the annual juxtaposition, as the year's brightest month is supplanted by its successor, November the Gray. No month is drabber. And yet, they're all beautiful in their own way, and not a one of them could be spared, not even the cold ones. Consider it. November teaches us how to part with beloved things. December and January force us to share close quarters with the ones we love. February, with its lengthening days, sends new light again into corners and crevices that had long been dark, calling us to see old things in new ways. And then there's March! March is named after Mars, the God of War, because ancient kings used to wage war in the early spring. (If you're into historic arcana, take a look at II Samuel 11:1. See, I really am a parson....) March teaches us perhaps the most valuable lesson of all: that no season lasts forever, not even the most dismal.

In November, blue skies and golden sunlight are rarer and more precious than at any other time. And the bright, hot days of mid-July are sweetest to those who know the short, dark days of late fall. Enjoy November in all its austere beauty. Here's a November scene, a beaver lodge on the Kinzua Creek between the ghost town of Tallyho and the ghost town of Guffey.

A Place in the Forest

Think about the places that make up your life. Count them. It's strange how few "places" you have, when you think about it. You've got your workplace, and your home, your few selected weekly haunts, and the places you visit on occasion. Each of those places has its own spirit about it, its own psychology, its own unique identity. And because of that, your life's places--which you chose--end up shaping you. You may live in a modern apartment and work in a windowless cubicle beneath flourescent lights. If so, then the mood of your life is very different from mine, since I live in a 120-year old Victorian with five bedrooms, and I work in a dark but lovely wanna-be-gothic church. The backdrop of my life is stained glass and ornate woodwork in a declining rustbelt town surrounded by a beautiful forest. But my neighbor just next door could have a very different life despite living only twenty-five feet away.

They say that every New Yorker has his or her own private New York, and it looks different from everyone else's: one's own neighborhood, shopping places, workplace, hangouts, favorite haunts, travel routes, etc. That's how it is that 8 million people share one city, but they all have very different versions of it, from Donald Trump to the impoverished youths playing basketball on 124th Street. The same is true in small towns. And it's true of everyone who shares a public forest, too.

What are your places in the Allegheny? What's your home base? What streams, and roads, and trails do you branch out to? I think of Twin Lakes as my default location in the forest. It's rustic old CCC administration building and lakeside pavillion are my own personal ANF headquarters. Twin Lakes with its outgoing black bears, its grassy hillsides sloping gently to a glassy, motionless lake. It's a pond, really. And good luck finding its "twin." But there's a nice beach there with shockingly cold water. Best of all, Twin Lakes is a trailhead to lots of lesser known wonders in the southeastern part of the forest. It's a gateway to fantastic streamside hikes, shady forest roads, wild places among boulders and beneath hemlock, places where it's twilight at high noon. For me, Twin Lakes is a home base, a starting point. And no matter where you end up, you need a starting point.

I meet lots of folks who love the forest as much as I do, and each of them has a relationship with it as intimate as my own. And yet it looks so radically different for each person. Some start from completely different geographic angles--like Willow Bay or Buckaloons--and some come to the woods for completely different reasons. What we share is the woods that draws us. When most of our neighbors choose Oprah, or video games, or online chatrooms, or team sports, we choose a place in the forest. And like all things, we choose it, then it chooses us. Our choices shape us, and define us, and re-create us. Everyone needs a starting point. And if you want any kind of perspective on life, you could do worse than to choose a place in the forest.

Guffey: The Mystery Unravels

Here you see the high street that passes through the ghost town of Guffey, a place that's about as photogenic as its name is poetic (which is not at all). Guffey is so weed-choked that it's hard to catch the scope of the place, and its vistas, on a little digital camera. But this picture is most interesting for the things that are barely seen. Notice the metal guardrail to the left of the old street. It protects a cliff that drops almost thirty feet to a lower street, which runs along the Kinzua Creek. The only evidence you see here of the low street is the old power line just above the guardrail. (If you look near the upper right hand corner of the photo, you can also make out the electric lines that run alongside the high road.) I tried to follow the low road along the creek, but it was too overgrown, which proves to me that the good folks of Guffey preferred to 'take the high road' whenever possible....

I asked a local history buff about Guffey, and he in turn referred me to the proprietor of the Westline Inn, a historic hotel about five miles downstream from the ghost town. Just a word in passing about the Westline: it is undeniably the Rivendell of the Allegheny. It's in a beautiful, remote valley. The rooms are rustic and charming. The bar is rustic and rowdy. There's nothing rustic about the restaurant, though; it's easily the best in McKean County. My wife and I aren't crazy about the ancient taxidermy that graces the dining rooms. (A dead squirrel only keeps for so many years.) But even that is consistent with the spirit of the place.

Anyhow, here's what the fine chef at the Westline knows about Guffey: "Guffey was a small oil boomtown. It was founded by a Cornel Guffey, who fought in the Civil War. The town was documented by the Forest Service before it was taken down. There was a large water injection plant there that used to discharge into the creek until the 80s. The Forest Service should have old pictures and info."

I wonder if by Cornel Guffey he means "Colonel Guffey," a Civil War officer? I mean, surely a person wouldn't have to go through life with a name as hideous as Cornel Guffey....

The Bridges of Guffey

Some fishers know the ghost town of Guffey (McKean County) as a pleasant crossroads in the forest where there stands not a "village," but a well-maintained monument to the village's war dead. There's a nice campsite on a piney hill just above the monument: a fire ring on a broad grassy lawn, surrounded by enormous evergreens, all in rows. It's a beautiful spot above the Kinzua Creek, which surely once belonged to the town's one and only mansion, or maybe the village church. If you poke around, you'll find an old driveway with a concrete bridge leading up to the secluded site.

Well, that's Guffey's swank neighborhood. To see the grittier parts of town, approach it from the neighboring ghost town of Tallyho---which, unlike Guffey, has left not a trace to posterity. That's to say, go to the valley where you would turn off to go to Westline (Rivendell of the Allegheny!) but instead of following the Kinzua Creek downstream toward Westline, follow it upstream and eastward, toward Guffey. You'll see old fashioned electric lines running alongside the creek. These lead over very wet tracks to a huge old industrial site. There are some nice overlooks, with rusting guardrails, where the main street ran along a cliff above the creek. And there's a long-overgrown side street where company row houses probably stood. The woodland that has overtaken the actual townsite is only about 30 years old, so it's a scrubby place that hides hundreds of industrial artifacts. If you google it or look it up on the ANF map, Guffey still appears as "a populated place" with permanent structures. Good luck finding them.

The back road to Guffy is pictured here; unless you want to ford Pine Run on foot, you have to cross this bridge. It's not for the faint of heart. There's also a strange metal bridge that traverses the Kinzua. The nearby hills, which are known around here as "Tallyho Mountain" and "Music Mountain," hide more antique oil works than any other part of the forest that I know. They look lovely and wild from Highway 219, but under the trees, it's all rusted pipelines, rotting wooden half-barrels, and the scarification of greed. What happened in this place? Does anyone recall?