The Allegheny National Forest, Revisited (February 2012)

            The vast tracts of unpeopled land!  The dense forests pushing up against lonely roads!  The water, the snow, the sky!  The Allegheny National Forest is a sacred place to me.  When I lived up there, I mainly explored its southern marches because I lived in the south and hiked on a strict schedule--usually four hours every Sunday afternoon.  Time in the woods seemed better than time in the car, traveling to some faraway quadrant.  But the more northerly stretches of the forest are so much wilder.  It's only now that I'm beginning to discover them.

           Some of the more southerly reaches of the ANF can be a little depressing; the industrial incursions into the forest are frequent and so ugly: clear-cuts, oil wells, gas wells, logging, new dirt roads being cut haphazardly through the trees.  But PA 321 from Marshburg northward to the New York State line is like 20 miles of Alaska, right within reach.  Also, since this stretch is designated a "national recreation area," it's more protected than the tattered southern fringes of the forest.

          A national recreation area, yes.  Well-known and much-visited?  No.  I spent a full six hours on the Johnnycake and North Country Trails up there on Saturday and saw not another soul.  I was aiming for the Handsome Lake campground, an ANF camp site that can only be reached by boat or by one long-arse walk in the woods.  "Handsome Lake" doesn't refer to the body of water; it was the name of the famous Seneca Chief Cornplanter's brother.  Handsome Lake was a powerful medicine man and statesman.

          Actually, it was a nine-mile loop hike that should have taken four hours, but took me six because I lost the trail at mile-marker 6 and had to turn back.  An erratically blazed but well established trail gets less and less visible the further you go; finally, all blazes disappear, and it just peters out three miles short of its destination.  It was frustrating, but such a beautiful way to spend a day, alone in true wilderness, miles from the nearest human being, on snowy mountainsides overlooking a frozen lake.
     
         So apparently Johnnycake Run is a body of water named after "johnnycakes," those dense biscuits that our pioneering ancestors used to take with them on long journeys.  They were originally called "journey cakes."  I think this is going to become our new annual pre-Lenten tradition, to travel back to the ANF for some concentrated winter hiking before my life starts to get crazy busy.