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.