Ever, Ever On

The road goes ever, ever on
down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the road has gone,
and I must follow if I can,
pursuing it with eager feet
until it joins some larger way
where many paths and errands meet,
and whither then, I cannot say.

Brush Hollow

Save the last dance for me. Just one more dance. Let's not rush our goodbyes. We'll dance long and slow until the music dies out forever over gorge and glade, over rocky crest and hemlock-darkened brook. And even then, after the last notes fade, still we can stand cheek to cheek lingering in the afterglow until the moment passes from our grasp.

Moments do pass. They rush ahead, without looking back. You and me...we look back. But time does not. Today, since I didn't get to hike on Sunday, I skipped out of work in the middle of the day and took one last trek through the Allegheny National Forest. At long last, I did the Brush Hollow Trail system near the hamlet of Highland.

This place isn't called "Brush Hollow" and "Brushy Gap" for nothing. There are blackberries all over the place, and don't try to hike it in shorts.










Jeff Mitchell calls that top photo "a vista," which is a little bit ambitious. But it's a nice enough view. The whole trail system--mostly meant for cross country skiing--makes a scenic hike, with lots of variation in scenery.


The blackberry bushes are already fruiting, reminding me that
"fruition" doesn't always happen on the same timetable as we'd expect or prefer. Things happen when it's time, and most of us never live long enough to see our labors produce much fruit...

When a couple, very much in love, comes together one last time, do they know it? If one of them is dying, or if they're just getting too old, do they think about the fact that they may never again celebrate the act of physical love? Do they dare admit it, or is the sorrow just too much? Or maybe by that time, they're just too tired and matter-of-fact to care!


I've been trying to hike the Brush Hollow Trails for about three years now, and each time I've been prevented from doing it. Once I didn't have enough time to go further than a quarter mile. The second time, in the dead of winter, I arrived to find a group of about twenty senior citizens on skis. But today was the long-awaited day. It also happened to be my very last hike in the ANF before moving away. I'll hike here again someday, surely, but not as a local. What becomes of all the intimate knowledge I have of this forest? Does it get stashed away in the cerebral archives, there to be slowly consumed by the moths and mold of time?

~It was a gift, this last dance. It wasn't the Trail of Tears. It was a trek much like the others. And now I'll trek in new territory. But I'm grateful for this time, which drew to a close like the arrival of blackberry season, so much faster than I anticipated.

Redemption

I've long believed that you make a life for yourself wherever you go. Life is a moveable feast, and every place offers things to celebrate and enjoy. In Oklahoma, I loved the grassy, windswept plains, but I hated the conservatism. In Africa, I loved the steaming rainforests, but I hated being unable to disappear into the crowd. Every place has its charms and its drawbacks, and you can find ways to lead a meaningful, pleasant existence no matter where you live.

Of course, there are places like Fallujah where life is just hell for everyone. But for the most part, life is what you make of it, and the place where you choose to live is pretty much just the backdrop.

And yet, I have loved living here in the Wilds of Northern Pennsylvania. I've loved it so much because the forests and hills have been more than "the setting" for my life; they've been a character in the drama. I am leaving here a calmer, wiser, happier man than I was when I came. And for that, I'm grateful.

I look forward to the next phase of life with eager anticipation. Last Friday and Saturday, we were at the new house near Pittsburgh to mow the lawn and paint. I've never "owned" property before. There was something very empowering to know that I was mowing a lawn that belonged to me and painting my walls the colors I had chosen.

I'll enjoy life in the Pittsburgh area. We've bought a Civil War-era brick farmhouse, fully restored, and I've claimed one of the outbuildings as my private escape: the old smokehouse with its huge walk-in fireplace. There's good hiking within a forty-five minute drive, at Raccoon Creek State Park and Hillman State Park. I love my new church, too. Heck, my new office even has an executive washroom!

But I will miss this place. I'll miss these people. I'll miss the streams, and the hemlocks, and the boulders. I'll miss the snow and the way the leaves start to change colors as early as mid-August. I'll miss the way they used to run their raucous firetrucks up and down the main street whenever the local team won a sporting event. (Okay...maybe I won't miss that.) I'll miss being a medium size fish in a small pond.

More than anything else, I'll miss the fact that there's forest in every single direction from here, and all of it worth discovering. I'll miss being surrounded by the Unknown, full of beauty and adventure. I'll miss knowing, each time I step out into the woods for my Sunday afternoon trek, that I'll discover something I've never seen before, something I'll surely never see again, since there's just so much else to explore.

Living here has transformed me in ways that I cannot confide to the Internet. These wooded hills, these steep valleys, these rocky streambeds with their abandoned town sites and their rusting derricks; these things have given me a whole new sense for life. I'm leaving, yes. But I'm leaving with a new joy for living, determined to drink from these deep, life-sustaining wells wherever my path leads. I'm leaving here...redeemed.

Forgotten Debris of Forgotten Years

Deep in our subconscious, we are told
Lie all the memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, outmoded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.
~Noel Coward

"As the Heart Grows Older"

"Spring and Fall: to a small child"

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are all the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart had heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight that man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

~Gerard Manley Hopkins

Buzzard Swamp

Despite its dismal name, Buzzard Swamp is one of my favorite places in the forest. It's a sort of bird sanctuary, a vast grassy area with fifteen ponds, all encircled by a grassy forest road. It also has a few rustic camp sites.

Buzzard Swamp is mostly level. Some of the ponds are clear and inviting, and others are covered in lily pads and algae. Some ponds are visible, even approachable, whereas others are completely hidden from view.

This might be what rural Minnesota is like. Aside from all the pools, the landscape actually reminds me of an area in Northern France and Belgium, where the grassy fields stretch off to the furthest horizon in endless expanses of wind and sky. I spent a lonely summer exploring that sad countryside on a bicycle, lo these twenty years ago...

But unlike Flanders Fields (where you can still hear the ghostly rumbling of the tanks if you listen) this part of the Allegheny National Forest is a place of intense peace. Fishers come here, and a few birders come in the spring and fall. But otherwise, it's a place of solitude and silence. The variety of birds is overwhelming. Their songs are the only noise. And the wind. And the insects.

There are dragonflies, and great clouds of butterflies, and some of the smaller birds move in unison, like schools of fish.

There are bumble bees in the wildflowers, and the honey bees seem to be making a comeback, at least here at Buzzard Swamp. Even the Canada geese--pests on so much of the continent--are peaceful here, as seen in the third photo.

I don't know what it is about water that draws us. But it does. Water feels like life, somehow. Buzzard Swamp is best on a bike; it's just a little too big to cover in a single 3-hour hike, especially because there are so many scenic spots to stop and linger.

Take South Forest Street southward out of Marienville, away from the crazy 5-point intersection at the heart of town. After about a mile, turn left onto FR127 and go a little more than 2 miles to the parking area. The Songbird Interpretive Trail isn't really that interesting, so pass it by and hike over by the ponds instead.

Perspective

These broad vistas are rare. Most of the time I scramble over rocks, picking my slow way over tree roots, through weeds, and among brambles. I have to swat mosquitoes and watch for mud. I rarely see more than the half-lit forest all around me.

















Surely eyes and voices are wasted on those who have them. These twin boulders have been presiding over this wooded valley since before my ancestors learned how to make fire. There they still stand, blind and mute in ancient splendor. And I pass them by without thinking.

















This mossy chasm, with its walls fifteen feet high, in centuries past may have been the scene of some great act of heroism or cowardice. Or maybe nothing has ever happened here besides the scurrying of woodland creatures, as preoccupied with their own small worries and duties as any modern passerby. There is no knowing.

There's nothing like a wall of ferns to bring things into perspective. Ferns keep their secrets, and one day, they'll wear this boulder down and reduce it to gravel. But not for a long, long time.

Evolution

It's funny how things evolve. All living things: organisms, species, and languages, but also our relation-ships, our awareness, and our identities. Things change and grow, reach their zenith, fall into decline, then cease to be...only to spring up anew as something else.

That's how my attempts to hike the Campbell Mill Loop have always been: susceptible to the vagaries of evolution.

One of the "bucket list" hikes that I've been planning for a few years is the Campbell Mill Loop near Dewdrop Run. Any avid reader of this blog will know that I set out to discover this elusive spot on at least three different occasions, but each time I was spontaneously sidetracked or else turned away by impassable roads.

Once last winter, I set out to go to Campbell Mill Loop but found the Longhouse Byway completely snowed over, inaccessible to all but snowmobiles (which, of course, made that part of the forest all the more tantalizing). I ended up hiking an area known as "Cornplanter's Bridge."

Then in the spring, I went back, but the ice was still packed on the roadway so hard that my little Toyota (knicknamed "Murtha") didn't make it past Kiasutha. So I hiked an almost-indiscernible little trail and did some reasonably adventurous bushwacking in that area.

Most recently, in the late spring/early summer, I set off in search of the Campbell Mill Loop but got sidetracked en route by the mysterious draw of Dutchman Run.

But my days in the ANF are drawing to a close, and so yesterday, with exactly three free hours for hiking, I finally determined to set my face toward Dewdrop Run and the long-awaited trek on Campbell Mill Loop.

I was always drawn to this trail by the promise of gigantic boulders. And it does have some pretty big rocks. But don't be fooled: the gargantuan mosquitoes placed the boulders along Dewdrop Run in hopes of attracting hikers. Also, I like bushwacking, but if I'm on a timeline and have to follow an established trail, it's nice to have some idea where I'm going. The Campbell Mill Loop exists mostly on paper.

So, I finally reached a long-awaited hiking destination, only to lose the trail and end up scrambling among the rocks in the most mosquito-ridden section of the forest I've yet discovered. Funny how the quest for the Campbell Mill Loop was always so much better than the destination... Evolution knew what it was doing.

Speaking of evolution, The Allegheny Journal is about to sprout legs and crawl out of its primordial ocean. You recall, we started off as a political rant. Then we evolved to a hiker's blog about the ANF. Then we expanded our coverage to other wild places outside the ANF, but always in Northern Pennsylvania. And then, finally I announced that we would be closing up shop at the end of July, when I move close to Pittsburgh.

But there's been so much traffic on the blog lately that I feel the need to try to keep it going even after my move south. I'll be a hiker wherever I live. So, in the future, we'll be looking at treks in the western half of the keystone state...mainly southwest, but not exclusively.

Of course, The Allegheny Journal without the Allegheny National Forest might be kind of like The Office without Michael Scott. But there are big wild places down there, too. And beauty. And isolation. And if not ghost towns, at least lots of abandoned buildings.

Lamentation Run, Demystified

The veil of sacredness dissipates when you get too close. If you pick up the sacramental chalice, you can flip it upside down and read the writing on the bottom. It usually says some banal thing like "Hecho en Mexico."

If you peak around behind the gilded surface, push back the tapestried dossal curtain, you'll find raw wood and exposed nails. Nothing more.

Sometimes it's better to leave Mystery alone, as long as it's not hurting anyone... (And Mystery causes far less pain in this world than Certainty does!)

I couldn't leave the mystery of Lamentation Run alone. I just had to find out how it got its extraordinary name. So I emailed the Forest County Historical Society, and this was their reply:

"Ebenezer Kingsley bestowed this odd name on this stream. During his stay in this area, he stated that the wolves were very plentiful along the banks of this stream. The nights were nightmarish and hideous because of the incessant nocturnal lamenting." (Excerpted from a historical book about the county's place names)

So the "lamentation" was nothing more than the howling of the wolves. And I imagined some great, human tragedy, long since forgotten. Ah, but who knows why the wolves were so sad? Maybe they knew their time on the banks of Lamentation Run was drawing to a close?

Kudos to the good folks at the Forest County Historical Society. For a county that boasts neither traffic light nor hospital, their historians are on the ball.

The Tionesta Valley

No offense to our Rainbow friends. They're the greatest, and I hope they'll come back to the Allegheny often. But The Journal is meant to give folks a little dose of woodland freedom right there at their computer screens, so I feel the need to get some people-free pics back at the top of the site.

Here's a shot of the Tionesta Creek from the banks of an overgrown farm on the fashionable Rive Gauche. (Fashionable if you're a nettle, remarkably unfashionable to most human beings...although horseback riders seem to have discovered the area.)


And below, we have a butterfly resting on a thistle blossom. The woods are teeming with butterflies right now.

Rainbow Family Portraits

By popular demand, here are the rest of the photos I took at the Rainbow Gathering. There are few photos of people because I felt awkward wielding a camera. I thought I had taken a photo of a way-cool earth shelter known as a "debris hut," but it didn't come out. I've been thinking about debris huts for several years and had never seen one in real life before, but they make a sensible alternative to tents. Click on any photo to enlarge it.

This first shot is Forest Road 119, which runs along the outside of the Hickory Creek Wilderness Area. All parking was strictly limited to the side of the road opposite the designated "wilderness." This is the entrance to the gathering place. In the trees above the awning, see the official "Welcome Home" banner.













These people are waiting in line at the "Information and Rumor Control" table. Notice all the children present.












The sign reads, "Welcome, Rainbow Family." The tepee in the background looked strangely authentic...but there were tents everywhere.












Of course, cell phones are no use in this quadrant of the forest. So people communicate by message board.












I wish I'd gotten a better shot of this event. In the distance, you can see about fifteen people dancing in a circle. The dance was unfamiliar to me, and it was accompanied by African style bongo drums. The circle of dancers would move in time, three steps in one direction, cry out, jerk forward, then move three steps in the opposite direction. Some ancient, druidic antecedent to line dancing?












As for the meanings of these signs, your guess is as good as mine. However, I believe the sign to the left is advertizing a fire that campers can share for cooking and boiling drinking water, in order to conserve firewood.












"One Love" was a recurring theme in the signage. I kind of liked the idea of quoting Bob Marley among the hemlocks...












This is the trail toward the main clearing, looking back toward "A-Camp," the outpost at the main gate where alcohol is allowed.












This is a big, communal kitchen at "A-Camp." If you look closely you can see a string of flags over the driveway; that marks the entrance from FR119.













I loved seeing these hundreds of cars parked along FR119. And not a one of them double parked! People drove from California and Washington State to attend this event.

Lamentation Run

For several years now, I'd been curious about a little body of water called "Lamentation Run." It originates deep in the ANF, near the two-building hamlet of Muzette, and it empties into the Tionesta Creek, three and half miles upstream.

I guess it was mostly the name that drew me. How does a brook earn the name "Lamentation Run"? Surely it was the site of some long-forgotten tragedy, some massacre or epidemic. (Small comfort that all tragedies are forgotten eventually.) And I liked the way this stream, with the mournful moniker, emptied into a little-visited stretch of Tionesta Creek. So I've had it on my forest-wish-list for a long time to hike from the headwaters of Lamentation Run all the way to its mouth at Tionesta Creek. An ambitious feat, considering that there is no trail: seven miles of bushwacking through a little-known part of the forest.

But these are the days for ambitious feats. My wife and little girls were away, and I was home alone, so I decided to tackle the long-awaited trek: Lamentation Run from start to finish...and back.

I came here to breathe the hemlock-scented air and listen to the water song of Lamentation. I came to mourn for all that might have been, but now will never be. I came to make lament.

It's not that I don't want to leave Kane. Leaving was my choice, one that we weighed very carefully. It's not that I regret the course that my life is about to take. In fact, I'm excited about the future. And yet, there are things to regret, relationships to be missed, places to be left behind. There are hopes that were started but never brought to completion. And those losses must be grieved.

In reality, this trek was a pilgrimage for me, a holy journey. I don't know what great sorrow gave Lamentation Run its name, but when I approached the headwaters of the incipient little stream, gurgling over mossy rocks, I brought my own cries of grief with me. I always knew that I would make this trip one day before leaving the forest forever. I always knew that--when the time was right--I would step into the chilly waters of Lamentation and allow those cold currents to bear me through their shadows and their depths, dragging me over ragged stones and gritty mud. I always knew that I would bring my song of lament one day to these waters, there to be baptized and sung in liquid voice, "the sound of many waters." I always knew that I would immerse myself in the waters of Lamentation, like a sacrament, allowing her mournful song to speak my loss, her wet tears to bewail my sorrow.

The mosquitoes swarm all the length of Lamentation Run. But when I first set eyes on the little trickle among the rocks, the place where the stream begins, the mosquitoes themselves showed mercy. "Don't eat his flesh or drink his blood," they said. "He's having a moment."

Down the course of the brook, the waters grow more plentiful and strident in their march toward the Tionesta Creek and the sea. The banks grow steeper and more lovely the further you go. It took a long, long time, tripping over blown-down trunks, scrambling over boulders, trudging through mud. But at last I arrived at that beautiful, peaceful spot where Lamentation Run empties into the larger creek. The mouth of the run is a gorgeous place, shaded and serene. It's pictured in the second photo.

And there, in the shade of hemlocks, at the edge of an abandoned farm, I stripped and washed my skinny body in the waters of Lamentation. I let the waters roll over me, cold and clear. And after air-drying on a mossy bank, I set my face again toward the long march home. Contented.

Tidioute Overlook

My grandfather used to claim that the borough of Tidioute got its name from a Seneca woman, the wife of a white trader, who used to walk around topless. I really doubt the factuality of that tale. And yet, Tidioute still offers a pretty, um, expansive view...

Cornplanter State Forest

A place will give itself to you anew when you're about to leave it. You'll see it again with fresh eyes... The forgiving lens of retrospect will give it a new glow, a new beauty. As my time in Northern Pennsylvania grows short, I find myself approaching the forest as if with a "bucket list." That's to say, I'm finally undertaking hikes that I'd put off for years because they were too far from home, or too long, or just too undocumented. I feel the urgency to make the most of the time that's left. One such "bucket-list-hike" was the ten miles of trails at Cornplanter State Forest, at the western edge of the ANF. Cornplanter is 1,585 acres of public land with a good network of trails and--like all PA state forests--free backcountry camping. Someone clearly loves this forest because it's very well cared for. The trails are well blazed, well maintained, and they all start at a pleasant little ranger station and parking area where a wide array of maps and literature is available for the taking. Oddly, I had the whole forest to myself for almost five hours. It was the Saturday of Independence Day weekend, and not another soul chose to spend it at Cornplanter SF. I really felt like I should have loved the place... But I didn't. An 8-mile hike through Cornplanter SF starts off like a movie by the Cohen Brothers. You think to yourself, "Okay. A little dull, but there are some promising features. Let's see if it doesn't get better in a few minutes." By the end of the hike (and the Cohen Brothers movie), you think to yourself, "Okay, now what just happened here?" Don't get me wrong. If you dropped Cornplanter SF out in Kansas, it would be a treasure, a verdant little woodland gem. In fact, Cornplanter reminds me for all the world of Mounds State Park in Indiana, a place where I spent a sad week of my adolescent years, trudging alone through the mosquito-infested woods. But around here, there's just not much to distinguish Cornplanter SF. The topography is mainly level. Only two very small streams traverse the forest. There isn't much variety in tree species. There are no hemlocks. No interesting rock formations. No overlooks or vistas. It has the feel of a Midwestern woodlot. There are, however, some old remains of the oil industry, including the wreckage of this old house. The bed frame was sitting nearby, with a tree growing through the bedsprings.

Rainbow Gathering 2010

It's been longstanding policy on this blog not to show photos of people. I like people as much as the next guy. But The Journal is meant to provide its readers with a feel for the forest, the solitude and silence.

And yet, I couldn't resist taking the better part of a free Saturday to trek out into the regions of the ANF where "The Rainbow Gathering" is taking place...just to see what's going on. The Rainbow Family are a diverse bunch of people from all over the country who get together once a year to generate positive energy for world peace

The annual gathering always takes place in one of our national forests and culminates on July 4 in a few hours of silent meditation, followed by group prayers (mantras, orisons, petitions, etc.) for peace.

This is the third time the ANF has hosted the gathering since its inception in 1972. I think that speaks well of us.

And so, while I usually go to the forest for solitude, I just couldn't resist the draw of 12,000 visitors from all over the nation camped out right here in my beloved Allegheny National Forest. I just had to go and see the event with my own eyes.

What I really wish is that I wasn't so camera shy. There were 12,000 bohemian-types milling around smoking weed and strumming guitars, and I was the only person with a camera...(and no, I wasn't smoking weed...or strumming a guitar for that matter). I would have loved to get close up photos of the "sacred belly dancers," or the nudists dancing for the sun, or the way-weird, handwritten signage all over the place. The banner in this photo reads, "Welcome to eternal life."

These several candid photos cannot capture the pulsating beat of African style drums, the chanting of the dancers, or the smells of patchouli, woodsmoke, and marijuana that filled the air. At the entrance to the 2-mile hike back toward the main clearing, pictured here, there's a bright, handwritten banner that reads "Welcome Home." It's a little misleading, since you still have to hike 3 full miles into the forest to find the clearing where the bulk of the activities take place. But the banner marks the entrance to that long homeward trail. It also marks "A Camp," the only place on the grounds where alcohol is permitted (indeed, encouraged!).

They were friendly people. Most of them greeted me warmly. Some even yelled, "Welcome home." It was a strange greeting for me because--well--I felt proud to be their host here in the ANF, the patch of woods that I regularly study, and survey, and explore. They're good folks, if a little out-of-the-ordinary. The Rainbow Gathering is like a big, old-time campmeeting for folks who understand the importance of peace. Of course, just like at the old-time campmeetings, there are a few scoundrels who follow the crowds looking to take advantage. But I'm glad the Rainbow Family includes the ANF in their circuit.

It was a pleasure to see the wilderness hills alive with tents, to hear music ringing out in forest glen, to see hundreds and hundreds of cars lining FR119, an otherwise little-used track that skirts the edges of the Hickory Creek Wilderness Area.

Life in the Shadows

There's a duality that exists for those who love the forest. On one hand, we love it so much that we want to tell its secrets to all the living world. On the other hand, it's those sylvan secrets that we treasure. We love the forest precisely because we're quiet people who would rather stare at a rock than a TV, rather listen to a chattering stream than a yammering radio.

The forest lover lives in both worlds: the world of alarm clocks and deadlines as well as the world of mushrooms and ferns. One world drains us, and the other gives us life. It's not a bad way to plod through your years, moving between desk and trail, between committee meetings and bird concerts. The price you pay is that living in two places makes you a stranger in both.

But alas, The Journal is finally starting to amass a bit of a following out there on the Net, and so I feel some pressure to tell some worthwhile secrets in the one month of publication that remains. And so, here goes:

The ANF is great and worth years of exploration. It really is. But in its southern reaches, especially, there are huge swaths of devastation that can really leave a wilderness seeker feeling frustrated and angry. Drillers and loggers have plowed so many roads through the forest that you really have to plan your excursion carefully if you want to avoid the horrors of tree carnage and large scale death. And so, if you're thinking about a trek in the ANF, that's cool. Plan carefully to avoid all the industrial incursions into the woods. But allow me to suggest an alternative: the Elk State Forest.

The Elk State Forest is vast and little-visited by anyone but hunters and fishers. Like the national forests, it's perfectly legal to set up camp wherever you like, as long as you're a good distance from the roadways. And like our national forest, there is some logging and drilling, but on a much smaller scale. You can wander for hours through the Elk and never encounter a noisy derrick, or a depressing clearcut, or a monstrous truck barreling down narrow dirt roads at dangerous break-neck speeds. And yet, because the few pleasure seekers who turn to our woods are conditioned to look to the ANF, the Elk State Forest passes its serene life in the shadows of its bigger, more industrialized neighbor.

So, get yourself a map of the Elk State Forest. They're free from the PADCNR, and you can even print one off the Internet. This is a PDF, so give it a few minutes to download, then save it to your computer in a file entitled "heaven-on-earth." On the map, you'll see that the bulk of the forest is well to the east and south of the ANF. These areas are out of my league. But look to the isolated patch of green in the northwest corner of the map, the area just around East Branch Dam. This is where you want to go.

From the village of Glen Hazel, there's a road that follows the East Branch of the Clarion River to a gate. From that point, it follows the Middle Fork deep into the heart of the beautiful State Game Lands #25. (SGL25 is perfect for a trek, and even wilder than the Elk SF, but camping is not allowed on any PA gamelands.) You'll reach a point where the road veers leftward, and a much lesser traveled track continues dead ahead. Take the leftward track toward the Elk State Forest. This is uphill all the way. You'll pass the black and yellow gate pictured in the last post, and from that point, you can camp wherever you like.

Once you start the downhill trek into Briggs Hollow, you'll be glad you brought a bike. The scenery is great, and the ride is easy, with the wind on your face. Make sure your brakes are working! Now you've got a huge swath of wildlands all to yourself. Follow Briggs Hollow Road to Naval Hollow Road. From there, make a loop up onto Straight Creek Road and back down to where the loop started. Also, you might want to trek west the whole way to the banks of East Branch Lake and pass a night close to the water. Be careful not to set up camp west of the "state park" signs, since a very narrow stretch of designated "parkland" encircles the lake, and backcountry camping is not allowed in the park.

There's a lot of life flourishing in the shadows. Elk SF is superb in its own right, but often gets overlooked...the same way Philadelphia gets overlooked by tourists who hit New York and DC. The top pic is my ancient mountain bike parked along the lonely stretches of Briggs Hollow Road at the bottom of the valley. The second photo is Briggs Hollow Run, which meanders lazily through some very wild back-country into East Branch Lake.

A View from the Ferns

The ferns were here first. Sometimes I wonder if they won't be here last.

Long before there were ash trees, with their emerald ash borers; well before the elm trees evolved, much less Dutch elm disease; before anyone had ever yet laid eyes on a white oak or a gypsy moth, the world was green with ferns. Of all the living things that greet the woodland wanderer, the fern is oldest. Millions of years ago, before Lucie the protohuman shuffled through the Great Rift Valley, the dinosaurs dined on ferns. That's an impressive pedigree.

Funny thing about ferns: they thrive on all the things that destroy trees. Global warming? The ferns are glad someone turned up the heat! Air pollution? It's mother's milk to a fern! Excessive logging and drilling on public lands? The ferns will be the first to reclaim the wasted acreage.


If you let the ferns have their way, they'll shade the forest floor so darkly that no new trees will ever sprout. If not for human intervention, the Wilds of Northern Pennsylvania would be mostly treeless. Ferny hills, ferny valleys, ferny meadows, ferny river banks. You've got to hand it to those ferns. They survive.

When my life is in flux, sometimes I like to take it to the ferns, as I did today in a remote stretch of the Elk State Forest. So beautiful, so far flung, so alive with birdsong and brooks. Today is the first time I've thought to ride a mountain bike into the forest in order to get as far into the wilderness as possible before choosing a remote spot for a hike. The mountain bike is a great way to save on precious weekly hiking time...especially since the old Allegheny National Forest and I are soon to part ways.

Yes, friends, that's right. The parson is leaving the snowbelt. "The Allegheny Journal" is not an ancient, adaptable, long-surviving fern. No, the Journal is more like one of the short-lived boomtowns that I've documented on this site. They say that you become the things you think about. Maybe, by spending so much of our woodland energy digging through the wreckage of Guffey, and Granere, and McKinley, we've brought the fate of those extinct towns down on this site itself. Soon, the Journal will be little more than a bit of abandoned real estate on the Internet, the Windy City of the worldwide web. I'll continue to publish my treks through the Month of July, then it's off to balmy Southern Pennsylvania for the parson.

I don't know. Maybe I'll start blogging about some other patch of trees down there. Or maybe I'll take up exploring abandoned buildings, like Mayview State Hospital, less than two miles from my new home. In the meantime, I've still got a few things left to say on this blog. And I'll continue to maintain the site as a resource for hikers well into the future.

Here you've got a photo of those resilient, old ferns. The wisest plants in the forest. The bottom pic is an unguarded border crossing 2 miles from the Land Before Time.

Ghostly Foxglove

During most of the year, you can only tell where Windy City was located by the tall pines that still line its two streets. If you look closely, you'll see that the clearings on either side of the roadway are about the size and shape of residential lawns. There are derelict electric lines, too.

A nice time to come to this abandoned town site is in the early summer. If you come in June, you'll see the foxglove blooming among the gravel heaps and rusting derricks, as in this photo.

I actually think Windy City is the creepiest of our ghost towns. It's at the end of a series of twisting dirt roads. The derricks pump oil out of the old front yards, and beer cans litter the back yards. The place feels exposed, somehow. And as you travel the roads in this part of the forest, you almost always encounter slow-moving, unsavory-looking characters in ragged vehicles.

If you Google "Windy City, PA" you'll get a map to the eerie old town site. It's still listed as a populated place in Elk County, and our outdated forest maps still show six or eight structures standing in town. In reality, those buildings have been gone since the 70s. I know I said I wouldn't be describing any treks for a while, but I got to come back to Kane just for the day, and ended up doing some unexpected bushwacking in some beautiful country west of Windy City. Can you believe I got lost in the forest again? Seriously lost. Maybe I need to take up a more sedentary hobby, like--I dunno--drinking, or toy trains, or origami.

Biannual Exile

It's time again for my biannual exile to Rochester, New York, so we'll have several weeks with no woodland treks to report. Tune in again sometime near the end of June. Until then, faithful reader, I leave you with a thought from the Bard.

"And this, our life,
exempt from public haunt,
finds tongues in trees,
books in running brooks,
sermons in stones,
and good in everything."

~William Shakespeare

Fox Dam

Rarely has a day in the forest been so strange. It had a surreal, vision-like quality. Not only did I wander aimlessly through unknown territory, but this was the first day the woods had a genuine feel of summer.

A friend called and invited me to go along with him while he cleared and reblazed a section of the North Country Trail that he maintains. He said he was going to start at Fox Dam, an old town site in the forest that I've been hoping to visit. I've never been to Fox Dam because old timers will tell you that, yes, it does exist, and you really ought to go there. But nobody can tell you how to get there. Like so many places deep in the forest, you just have to know the way already, or else follow someone who does know, because the roads out to the place are a labyrinth, a complete rabbit's warren.

A brief history of Fox Dam: Some say that the town of Ludlow originated here, and many of the buildings in Ludlow were moved up to Route 6 from this far-flung site. There was a dam here to control the water levels on Tionesta Creek. Of course, Ludlow was a tanning town and a hellacious place until the wealthy Olmsted Family built their fine estate there.

Fox Dam is a good place to fish, camp, and swim. And that's what folks were doing when we got there today. This spot is one of those annual Brigadoons of the ANF: it's an empty space in the forest that becomes a town again on Memorial Day weekend, a tent city this time around. Come Tuesday, it will disappear and anyone who chances across the place will see little more than a grassy clearing in the woods and a footbridge over the East Branch of Tionesta Creek.

And so, I followed my friend out to Fox Dam, saw dozens of people camped out there with children and dogs. We went our separate ways; him to the North Country Trail and me up along a gated forest road that led far out into remote and wild country along the creek. I thought my trail was a loop that would bring me back to the crowded little town site. I was wrong---which was pretty surreal in itself---and I wandered far off into the woods.

Even with a map and compass, I couldn't be sure where I was. When you don't really know where you're going in the summer forest, the place becomes an incoherent vision of deep green and birdsong. The heat was stifling, too. In time, I chanced upon a bridge, which is rare, and the semi-permanent camp site pictured here.

And I settled down at the campsite and took a nap. That, too, was odd. I don't know if I slept half an hour? An hour? Upon waking, among late afternoon shadows, I decided to admit defeat and retrace the long route back to the town site and my car. On the return trek, I came face to face with the hiker's worst fear: a lone bear cub. Fortunately, the little fellow tore off into the greenery before I even had time to think about where its mother might be lurking. I was impressed by how fast that little guy could run.

I located the car and managed to find my way back to Route 6, but honestly, I couldn't tell you how to get back out to Fox Dam. It was all a blur.