The Allegheny Journal: A Backwoods Adventure Guide

Allegheny Allah Yisallinak!

2011-07-18T10:51:00.003-04:00

Dear Hiker,

This blog has been discontinued, but our stats show us that people are still reading it as a guide to hiking and rustic camping for the Allegheny National Forest and surrounding region. And so we're happy to keep it online.

But be aware: Forests change! Blow-downs occur, obstructing trails and creating new vistas. Logging happens, with pretty much the same effects. Gas companies roll in and wantonly destroy many acres of woodlands each year. For these reasons, some of the information that you find in these pages may be dated. It's disheartening to plan a forest trek, only to arrive at your destination and discover that it has been torn up by Mother Nature or Brother Man, and in these parts, it's usually Brother Man!

The forests of Northern Pennsylvania are a treasure. They provide benefits to the watersheds of many a stream and river. They shelter wildlife, purify the air, regulate the temperatures, and add beauty, wonder, and adventure to our lives. But these forests are increasingly threatened by drillers in the Marcellus shale, by loggers, and by traditional gas companies. Treat them kindly. Happy hiking. And as they say in North Africa, "Allah yisallinak!"

~The Snowbelt Parson

Ever, Ever On

2010-07-27T18:25:00.005-04:00

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

2010-07-27T08:25:00.019-04:00

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

2010-07-26T08:14:00.020-04:00

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

2010-07-20T21:49:00.007-04:00

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"

2010-07-18T16:40:00.008-04:00

"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

2010-07-18T14:55:00.012-04:00

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

2010-07-14T08:31:00.010-04:00

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

2010-07-12T07:12:00.010-04:00

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

2010-07-09T22:04:00.002-04:00

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

2010-07-06T22:21:00.005-04:00

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

2010-07-05T21:15:00.018-04:00

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

2010-07-04T23:12:00.012-04:00

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

2010-07-04T20:40:00.004-04:00

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

2010-07-04T19:31:00.005-04:00

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 12,000 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

2010-07-03T22:06:00.023-04:00

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 postive 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 3-mile hike back toward the main clearing, pictured here, there's a bright, handritten 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 pround 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

2010-06-30T15:28:00.016-04:00

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

2010-06-27T18:26:00.009-04:00

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

2010-06-13T23:17:00.006-04:00

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

2010-06-07T18:12:00.005-04:00

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

2010-05-30T19:18:00.006-04:00

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.

Mystery Pines of Granere

2010-05-25T22:01:00.005-04:00

There are about six rows of red pines in the old residential section of Granere, the abandoned town site described in the last post. On one hand, it's pretty clear that these tattered pines didn't just sprout in perfect rows. Someone planted them. On the other hand, they don't look more than 60 years old, and Granere has been unoccupied for 107 years.

So the question is: Did the Forest Service plant these trees in an attempt to reclaim the gaping clearing at Granere? (And for that matter, why is the town site still mostly treeless after all these years?) The CCC did have a penchant for planting these gangly red pines back in the 30s, a tradition that the Forest Service continued into the 60s.

Or are these trees actually remnants from the days when the town was occupied? As noted in a long-ago post, our hardy ancestors planted pines around their homes as a windbreak and in order to prevent snowdrifts from piling up against their doors and windows. I remember reading once that some evergreens are often older than they appear because the loss of needles on their lower branches causes them to subsist in a sort of malnourished state.

Speaking of suffering trees, I've been getting creeped out by all the dead trees that line the roads, especially the interstate highways. Evergreens are most affected, with dead orange needles; the branches closest to the roadway are always the worst. But deciduous trees are also dying, their gaunt, bare branches clutching at the sky like dead hands. Turns out it's the salt that we use on the roads in the winter. Trees hate salt. So there's a "catch 22." Bad winters are good for trees because they help to kill off invasive species, but the worse the winter weather, the more salt we put on the roads, killing off more trees.

From Here to Granere

2010-05-23T19:03:00.018-04:00

Granere is a ghost town if ever I met one. It's exactly the kind of discovery that makes life in this woodland region worthwhile.

I heard about Granere from Troutdude, a member of that vast Kane Diaspora, a faithful reader of The Journal, and a fellow blogger. Unlike most of the Diaspora, who now live in North Carolina, Troutdude has the originality to spend his exile out in Columbus. So, let's all lift our collapsible water bottles to the Troutdude!

Unlike other ANF ghost towns that I've documented (McKinley, Guffey, Windy City, and Corduroy), Granere's name does not appear on any map. You can Mapquest it and come up with nothing. It was a logging town with 65 homes and a large sawmill, centered around a logging pond. It was a straw fire of a place, active from about 1898 through 1903.

In fact, it seems that Granere was the successor to Gardeau. As one logging company made its destructive path through the forests of Northern Pennsylvania, it built temporary towns, used up all the lumber, and then abandoned the towns. When the lumber at Gardeau was depleted, the company moved on to Granere. In the long run, Gardeau fared a little better than Granere, since the tomb of a once-famous Civil War officer is located there, as well as many hunting camps.

So what will you find if you visit old Granere? You'll find a broad clearing with the swampy remains of a pond. East of the pond is where the town's residential neighborhood stood, and if you pay attention, you'll see the telltale red pines standing in rows. The highlight of any trip to Granere is the stone foundation of a large sawmill that was constructed in a small tributary to the Kinzua Creek. There are some old millstones. There also seems to be the silted-up remains of a canal, not pictured.

I also chanced across a few shards of crockery. It appeals to the latent archaeologist in me, sifting through the remains of these old towns. Who were the unfortunate souls who spent five toilsome years here? What were their names, and where did they go from here? Surely no one ever considered this sad little shantytown "home," and yet surely some child made his or her first steps here. Surely a mother died giving birth somewhere on this site. Surely a man, wracked with the desperation that only the poor can know, hanged himself from the rafters of one of its gloomy houses. Surely there was love here once, and generosity, and addiction, and fear, and hope. Who were they? And where did they go?

At times, when I'm fed up or underwhelmed by my lot in life, I wish I'd paid better attention in Hebrew class. I could have made a life of archaeology.

I've double-checked, and Granere is on public land. To get to it, take US219 north from Lantz Corners about 2 miles, then turn left onto Mead Run Road. Take that to FR186, and follow the forest road for 1.2 miles to a place where it intersects with a well-marked snowmobile trail. (This trail is the old railroad grade for the trains that took the dead tree trunks out of Granere.) Follow the snowmobile route south until it veers back east and descends into the town. You can hear a rooster crowing from the town site, so it's sure that there's a current settlement nearby.

Troutdude also sent me some photos of Granere when it was a living place. I'll try to include those in a future post.

[An anonymous message to The Journal on August 23, 2011, claims that Granere is actually on private land, so it's off limits to hikers.]

Sleeping Giant

2010-05-13T18:35:00.015-04:00

In case you haven't noticed, my attentions have been turning more and more toward rock cities. A rock city is nothing more than a cluster of boulders. They're called "cities" because the best ones have dramatic skylines, like a city.

Truth be told, I'd take an abandoned town site over a rock city any day. But I've already explored most of the ghost towns within a half hour drive of Kane. Rock cities, by contrast, can be found at the tops of most valley walls.

Locals call this place "Sleeping Giant." The rock city itself is sort of unremarkable, aside from a few curious formations, like a boulder--second photo from the bottom--that I call the Flatiron.

Sleeping Giant is a spacious hollow beneath the vast overhang a boulder. Some say the Indians used to camp here, and it's easy to see why they would. The top photo is taken from the top of a nearby boulder. If you look closely, you can see the fire ring and the stone benches that campers have set up inside the camp site. The second photo was taken from the inside; there you see the fire ring with smoke stains on the ceiling.

It's the perfect spot to hang out for half an hour, listening to the rain falling in the forest.

If you head southeast from the rock city, you come to an overlook, seen in the bottom photo. The brook at the valley floor is known as Fools Creek, and from this height, you can hear a waterfall far below.

To get to the fabled and much visited Sleeping Giant--where I found an unopened bottle of diet pepsi--take PA666 almost to Minister Creek campground. Just before rounding the bend into the campground, turn right and ascend a big hill on FR24. The first road to the right is gated and unnumbered (it also doesn't exist on the ANF map). Park there and walk in.

This road passes through brushy forest, recently cleared. In less than ten minutes, you'll begin to sense something big, a looming presence in the trees off to your left. At first it raises the "fight or flight" hackles on the back of your neck, until you take a closer look to see that it's not forest elephants or an army of gray sasquatches, but a rock city. That's your destination.

There's a lesser rock city off to the right, sort of a Newark living in the shadow of Manhattan. It's actually worth a visit, too.

There's no hiking for me this Sunday, and I'll be working on Saturday, so I took half a day today.

Dutchman Run

2010-05-09T20:52:00.009-04:00

Seneca Head

2010-05-09T18:58:00.010-04:00

Here are two shots of a rock that I call Seneca Head. If you look at it long enough, maybe you'll see why. Seneca Head presides over the deep ravine of Dutchman Run, one of the most scenic brooks feeding into the Kinzua Bay.

Like all the best streams in the region, Dutchman Run has a grassy old forest road on one bank, and this old track follows the stream into Warren County. The forest here is magnificent, remote, undisturbed by all the heavy machinery that bedevils its more southerly reaches. Because the terrain around Dutchman run is so rocky, the stream itself tumbles over many mini-waterfalls, and these--coupled with spring birdsong--add a musical quality to the hike.

Also, there's a scent to the forest at this time of year which reminds me of New Orleans long ago. It's a spicy, vegetal smell, pungent and rich.

This old forest road twists and strays but never wanders far from Dutchman Run. It offers spectacular views of the stream, sometimes far below, sometimes very near. The track gets dicey, but never fully disappears.

I wonder if someone, somewhere knows how Dutchman Run got its name? Of course, long before I'd ever heard of the Netherlands, I knew a "Dutchman" to be an Amish person... As a small child, whenever I mispronounced words, my grandmother used to say, "Oh, you're Dutch." She didn't mean Netherlandic; she meant Amish.

You've probably noticed a pull-off parking area on the outside of a sharp hairpin curve in the Longhouse Scenic Byway. The parking area is exactly 3 miles south of Dew Drop and exactly 3 miles north of the entrance to old Camp Cornplanter. There's a narrow path from this parking area that leads into the trees and follows Dutchman Run. This becomes that old forest road that follows the stream for three or four miles. Seneca Head is only about ten minutes in.

["Seneca Head," "Dutchman Run." Why is geography so...racial?]

Eternal Rocks

2010-05-02T19:41:00.005-04:00

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun's life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

~Patrick of Ireland

Watson Run Caves

2010-05-02T18:29:00.009-04:00

The geologic oddities that I call "caves" probably wouldn't do much for a serious spelunker. On the Big Level, we only have caves of the "tectonic" variety. That's to say, we have shallow, hollow areas between boulders: tunnels, crevasses, recesses in the rock, and none of them very large.
Boulders tend to be found near the tops of hills, except that there aren't really "hills" around here. The things that look like hills are the crumbling edges of a vast plateau. This plateau is crisscrossed by steep valleys that have been carved by streams and rivers. And, because most roads and settlements are on the low streams, the tops of these valley walls create the illusion of a mountainous countryside. In fact, there are very few mountains around here, only the jagged upper reaches of a rugged plateau nicknamed "The Big Level."

And I don't know why the boulders tend to be near the tops of the valley walls, but they are. And that's also where you find the tectonic caves. Unlike true caverns, which remain 50 degrees year round, a tectonic cave is usually about the same temperature as the outside world. And yet, a tectonic cave does offer refuge for human and beast, deep shade, and shelter from the elements.

These photos show several of the five tectonic caves that I've explored at Watson Run Rocks, near PA66 at Pigeon. (I returned there today with a real camera.) The bottom photo is the best. It's a high, sheltered ledge under a stony overhang, a restful perch above the one of the most spectacular rock cities in the Allegheny National Forest.

You can't really tell from the photo, but there's a ten or twelve foot drop just beyond the ledge and a good view of the fourth tier of the five-tier rock city. A great place to lay in wait...but I don't know what for.

Vermont Dreaming

2010-04-29T09:28:00.007-04:00

Don't get me wrong. I feel deeply connected to my native place. It's soil is somehow deep in my spirit. I've lived in many places, and I still hold a green card for an obscure African country. But this place is my home.

My father's side is Pennsylvania German, resident here since the 1720s. Snyder County is our ancestral home; it's named for us, and our forbear, Simon Snyder, was the state's third governor. My mother's side is English Quaker, going back even further in the history of the "Quaker State." I'm 1/16th Seneca Indian, to boot.

My roots go deep here, and roots are as important to me as anything else in all of life. I spent the first half of my life trying to escape those roots, and now at the age of 40, that rootedness is necessary to my sense of well-being and balance. If you don't have a secure identity, then you're cut adrift. The French novelist, Albert Camus, called this modern rootlessness "The Absurd." His characters demonstrate the fact that if rootedness and identity are lost, then meaning and purpose are lost as well. I learned this lesson the hard way in sordid African bars and seedy expat lounges. And when I "came to myself," as it says in the Parable of the Prodigal, it was my native place that called out to me, always waiting for my return. That's probably why my posts sometimes seem jingoistic; I believe so strongly in rootedness, in nativism (for all people), and in ancestral memory.

And yet, the State of Pennsylvania--my ancient home--prostitutes herself to any "mineral extractor" who promises her a handful of blue collar jobs and a few shiny things to wear. The town where I live is selling its treated water to the Marcellus Shale drillers so that they--in return--can poison our water with undisclosed chemicals. And most recently, the PADCNR had the nerve to publish a link to this pro-drilling webpage from Facebook. It's pure, one-sided, state sanctioned propaganda. And worst of all, I'm not permitted to speak out against the rape of our aquifers because I'm a community leader, and natural gas drilling brings some shortsighted benefits to our communities.

I dream about Vermont sometimes. Really...I do.

Watson Run Rocks

2010-04-24T19:57:00.009-04:00

I call this place "Watson Run Rocks" even though the beautiful brook that passes through this valley is technically the "Watson Branch" of Spring Creek. I don't know what locals in Pigeon and Watson Farm call it, but it's the largest, most fascinating rock city I've ever discovered.

Unfortunately, I chanced across this place on a spontaneous hike, so the photos were taken with a cell phone. They don't begin to capture the scope of Watson Run Rocks, a five tiered collection of gigantic boulders that begins on the creek bank and ascends the valley wall as if in terraces. There are only two very large boulders on the banks of the creek, but if you hike up between them, other, larger rocks fan out in both directions. Strangely, they stand in five rows that are roughly parallel with the stream, far below. Between the rows, there is a narrow expanse of woods, perhaps sixty or seventy feet across. I'd estimate many of the boulders to be between fifteen and thirty feet high. Some of them would honestly make a good rock climbing adventure. But alas, the older I get, the more squeamish I am about heights.

The best thing about this rock city is that it's habitable. There are many shallow tectonic caves that would offer shelter from the elements and great places to camp. Also, if you scramble up onto the boulders, there are some fine ledges, hidden from below, with views. And the coolest thing of all is that this place seems relatively undiscovered. Unlike nearby Bogus Rocks, there's not a single "Zack" or "Travis" or "Hayley" carved into any of the boulders.

The uncool thing about this place is that when you reach the fifth and highest "terrace," thinking you're in remotest wilderness, you can see through the trees to the vehicles passing on PA66.

The grassy, gated forest road that leads to Watson Run Rocks doesn't have a number, but take PA66 south; from the only traffic light in Kane it's on the left at exactly 15.5 miles, from the Marienville ATV trailhead, it's 2.5 miles south. Stay on the grassy forest road, resisting the urge to cross the ATV bridge, and after about ten minutes, you'll see the boulders through the trees.

Back in February, a guy who has a camp at Watson Farm emailed me about one of my posts, but I accidentally deleted his message before replying. Watson Farm Dude, if you're still out there, can you shed any light on this rock city? Is this another historical fortress of the long-extinct Erie Indians?

The Flower Fades

2010-04-22T09:16:00.009-04:00

Another pair of lonely McKinley daffodils,

perhaps some earlier, hardier, non-hybrid version

of the flower that still hails an Allegheny spring.

The trees in the background line the old

Main Street of town.

I'm more interested in the flowers

as artifacts than as botanical entities

or things of beauty.

But in answer to my

curious query about the varieties

of jonquils and daffodils,

a mysterious commenter left us this very esoteric link:

http://meyerprints-merianbulbflowers.blogspot.com/

Woodland Ghosts

2010-04-21T16:41:00.012-04:00

Wild daffodils? Only in McKinley, one of the Allegheny National Forest's finest old ghost towns. The best time to visit any ANF ghost town is in the spring, when bulb flowers are still in bloom. Almost all the buildings are gone, and cellar holes are usually filled, but the daffodils still give you a clear sense of where the houses used to stand. These yellow flowers are woodland ghosts, vestiges of happier times, still clinging to an illusion of domesticity, amid the encroaching forest, and reminiscing about bygone days when they graced broad, trimmed lawns in front of pleasant clapboard homes. Who cares that the towns are all gone, little daffodils? The show must go on! Just to the right of center, in this top photo, you can also see an old bath basin, rusting on the spot where an outhouse used to stand. If you get closer to the basin, you'll find the remains of the outhouse and lots of Depression-era metalware. Note the old power line, too.

Guffey and Windy City would also be worth a springtime visit in order to trace out the clues left by the daffodils. I don't know if daffodils, like roses, come in hundreds of varieties. But most of the yellow flowers I see in McKinley are unlike the ones you find in most yards today. They're lacier, more delicate. Are they "jonquils," or just an old fashioned breed that's fallen out of favor with the modern gardener?

The lower photo is the old "pump station" that gave the town of McKinley its reason for being. This rusting old industrial complex is one of three buildings remaining in the village. The ghost town is about six miles south of Kane. Near where the Twin Lakes Trail crosses PA66, find FR352 and follow it west (off PA66) into McKinley. Notice the ornamental trees lining the former Main Street, the yards, and the abandoned concrete steps leading to nowhere. As always, click on a photo to enlarge it.

Pilgrimage

2010-04-21T11:20:00.014-04:00

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zepherus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
~The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer (who surely had the coolest name of any writer in history) was really onto something when he said that people "long to go on pilgrimages" in the month of April. This is a time when the spirit yearns for the open air, broader horizons, and a stiff physical challenge.

And yet, as a "liberal" Protestant rationalist, the whole notion of "pilgrimage" is a little bit foreign to me. In the worldview that I inherited, no place is holier than another, and The Sacred (or "God") is approachable, available, and ready to be experienced at any time, in any place, by any creature. Why make a pilgrimage to far-off Lourdes when you can experience The Sacred in the greening of the earth, the blooming of a daffodil, the laughter of a child?

This is a well-documented shift in thought from the Medieval to the Rationalist. It's a democratization of life--and of The Divine. But like all democratic systems, it has its pros and cons. On the one hand, it places all humanity on equal footing; the old "hierarchy of being," which began with God at the top, the king and the Church in the middle, and the peasant classes at the bottom, is undone. (Hurray.) On the other hand, when all places alike are declared "sacred," and all people alike are declared worthy to approach The Divine, then The Sacred becomes trivialized and banal. (Booh.) The logic starts to sound like this: "Pilgrimages are moot because all places are holy, but this place doesn't feel holy, and that place doesn't feel holy, so maybe no place is holy, nor anything."

I have a theory that Calvinism, by democratizing all of life, is at the root of modern secularism. Just look at the old hotbeds of Calvinist orthodoxy: Geneva, Amsterdam, Boston. (Of course, the leading families down in Pittsburgh were Scotch-Irish and also staunchly Calvinist...and their legacy has mainly been a kind of industrial materialism. No legalizing non-traditional families down there...or cannabis.) And so, the attempt to make all the world holy, in effect, made the world less holy by taking away the sense of sanctity that once lingered like a mist over particular places, like Rome.

Another contributing factor was Christianity's attempts to purify itself. In pre-Christian Europe, people believed that every locale had its little local deity, called a "numen." (Imagine it in a Jerry Seinfeld voice: "Hello...Numen.") This is where we get legends about Green Man, and elves, and sprites. As rationalism caught up with the Christian faith, little tolerance was shown to this ancient belief in lesser local deities. All places were the dwelling place of The Most High, and no place was more sacred than another.

But if no place is especially sacred, then why were the great cathedrals of Europe so frequently constructed on pre-Christian holy sites? I mean, I feel nothing especially moving or sacrosanct about the pretty, cobbled streets around Notre Dame, in Paris. But that spot has always been a place of worship, since long before its first primitive church was constructed out of wattles and daub. First it was a center of Frankish Druidic worship, and then early Christianity, and now modern Catholicism. What's so special about that spot? It's hard to deny that some places seem vested with a greater sanctity than others, like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a hallowed place to three of the world's great faith traditions.

There are new winds blowing in the world today. Not a return to Medievalism, but a new respect for sacred space and sacred time. Nowadays, even a largely rationalistic person admits to an unexplainable dimension to life, perhaps a sense of the Numinous, or even a Myterious Other. It undergirds all the living world, but makes itself especially known in certain places, and perhaps even at certain times. I think I know some places in the forest that seem more poignantly spiritual than others, or at least places that lend themselves to a deeper sense of the Numinous.

What would it look like to go into the forest with a sense of pilgrimage? What would it look like to wander freely under tree and over brook until you found a place that spoke its own sanctity to you, a geographic chakra, of sorts? What would it look like to remove your shoes and stand barefoot in the woods, aware that you're on holy ground?

Bear Creek & Red Mill

2010-04-18T18:18:00.008-04:00

I love to see the forest crawling with fishers. I don't fish myself, but apparently I tend to seek out the same kinds of woodland places as fishers: shady stream valleys far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. It was a surprise to think myself alone in the jimweeds, in the part of the forest known as Red Mill, then to chance across a perfect little village of pop-up campers and RVs.

Alas, although I welcome them and wish them well, I don't go to the woods just to talk with fishers. So hiking Red Mill was out of the question. But nearby on your official map of the Allegheny National Forest is a big patch of green that goes by the unrevealing name of "Bear Creek Recreational Area." It's not a dramatic sort of place, but worth a gray Sunday afternoon of 40 degree temps and drizzly, glowering skies.

There's new life breaking out everywhere. The tips of branches are pale green or red with new buds. Some are white with blossoms. The puddles along the path are teeming with living things, especially frogs.

Bear Creek Recreational Area is apparently just a good place to hunt and fish, judging from the beer cans. The Forest Service has located many primitive campsites along the forest roads in this area, perhaps because of all the trout streams. It's an unspectacular area, but silent, and that's all I need.

Across PA 948 from Brush Hollow is the uber-busy Forest Road 143. Seriously, this place is a beehive during the week, as "frack trucks" thunder to and from Owl's Nest in a desperate and shortsighted grab for natural gas at the new Marcellus Shale wells. (This Marcellus Shale drilling is a topic for a future post. It just makes me so angry that I can't write about it now.) In order to avoid the truck traffic, you have to go on a Sunday. This is very pretty country, with Big Mill Creek following the road. For a decent hike, take FR143 about 3 miles to FR237, on the right, then take FR237 about a mile to FR237B, which is hidden at a sharp angle to the left. FR237B is a narrow, grassy road that's mostly impassable to cars. It runs two miles through pleasant woods and some nice boulders down to Otter Run.

Photo #2 shows the muddied footprints of a wild turkey, a raccoon, and a fawn. What kind of sylvan rendez-vous would unite those three in a single mud puddle?

An April Shower

2010-04-16T16:48:00.003-04:00

Rain! At long last, rain. I can't remember a drier April. The unremitting heat and light was making the forest into an alien place, the dessicated forest floor loud with last year's leaf fall. In North Carolina, they drive into telephone poles when there's a dusting of snow. In Northern Pennsylvania, we drive into telephone poles when the sun comes out. We're not equipped for all this waterless light, and it's nice, at least to have our wonted gray skies back for a day. I thought it would never rain again, and all that infernal sunlight was making me crazy.

Am I the only person who finds too much light depressing and annoying?

Mostly for Silence

2010-04-11T19:07:00.005-04:00

The woods are dry as tinder. The water swell in the brooks is low, and seasonal streams are dried up. Fortunately, the snowmelt was abundant, but we'll need some real spring rains soon. The forest is alive with birdsong, and blossoms, and young buds. The wild leeks (ramps) are good this year, despite the arid spring.

April is my overload month, it always has been. But even when a serious hike is out of the question, it's still possible to take refuge in the silence of the forest. Hike in at any point; leave the road noise out of earshot; find a spot where you could imagine setting up camp, an alluring woodland place, one that speaks to you. (For me, the ideal spot usually includes big rocks and hemlocks.) Then just sit there, preferably on a comfortable mossy rock, for at least twenty minutes in total silence. But seriously, it has to be a full twenty minutes, no less.

There are about half a dozen reasons to go to the woods. Discovery, adventure, beauty, and exercise. I go for all those reasons, but mostly for silence. And when a hike is unspectacular, or rushed, or commonplace, it's still possible to take in the quiet. Twenty minutes of forest silence gets into your spirit, and then for the next four or five days, you can continue to live off it. That wild silence gets stored away in your marrow and slowly emanates from you throughout the coming week. It makes you more patient, and calmer, serene like the wizened Dr. Joel Fleischmann in the last lingering episodes of Northern Exposure.

Heck, if you can't get your silence fresh from the forest, any old silence would surely do the trick. You could probably find it by spending twenty minutes in your guest room closet, too. How is it that people forget their need for silence, and stillness, and solitude? I love people. I truly do. Loving people and "hearing" them is what I do in life. But sometimes I think I love them most when they stop talking.

Choosing a Path

2010-03-31T22:48:00.013-04:00

When you find yourself poring over a forest map, trying to choose a place worthy of your time in the woods, it's important to know what you're hoping to get out of that time.

If you want solitude, you pick the greenest regions of the map, with the fewest inroads and trails. And be prepared to bushwack. If you want to feel uplifted, you aim for rocky heights that offer vistas. If you're in a melancholic funk, and you want to nurse it a little, you scan the forest map for "place names" without any or many structures; that's probably a ghost town. If you want sylvan music to soothe your soul, as most of us do in the spring, you find a stream or rivulet to follow. This is why I'm always searching the map for gated forest roads that follow a stream.

The problem is that not all streams are equal. Their depth, and rockiness, and flow will all affect the music they make for you. Some are too shallow and shrill. Some are too deep and silent. But some rare streams are absolutely perfect, offering bright, wide expanses where the water babbles over stones; deep, still eddies where young frogs croak and sing; tiny waterfalls, swampy tributaries, passing through sunny meadows--where birds love to nest and sing--as well as dark hemlock groves.

There are more streams in the Allegheny National Forest region than I'll discover in a lifetime. And yet, the most perfect I've discovered so far is Middle Fork Run, a tributary of the East Branch of the Clarion River. Middle Fork runs through State Game Lands #25 at Glen Hazel.

Hiking the Game Lands is new territory for me, which is precisely the point of doing it. They've got some fussy rules and regs (like no camping), but as long as you don't go in high hunting season---when hiking is ill-advised anyway---the Game Lands offer an oft-overlooked alternative to the hiker. And SGL25 is just about superb: vast, wild, neglected, and little frequented by anyone but the occasional fisher.

Near the bridge in the hamlet of Glen Hazel, very close to East Branch Lake, there's a stone monument commemorating the first state game lands or something...(in which case, I don't know why it's SGL #25 and not SGL #1). Passing just behind the monument is an unmarked gravel road which is popular with fishers and follows the East Branch Clarion upstream. If you follow it far enough, it leaves off and begins to follow a smaller stream (the Middle Fork) into SGL25. The gravel ends at a gate, and there's lots of room to park. This is a fantastic road to hike, as it follows the perfect stream: in places raucous, in places bubbling, or silent, or swarming with frogs. It's also very scenic. I recommend hiking in about a mile; notice the "gallery forests" on the steep hillsides. There's almost no understory, which gives the woods a regal, park-like feel. In fact, the lofty peaks on both sides, the perfect stream alongside the road, and the gallery forests in this area remind me very much of a certain trail near Winter Park, Colorado.

About one mile past the gate, there's a fenced-in regrowth area on the left with a small gate marked "MF2." If you go just a a few dozen paces past this small gate, there's a tiny brook on your right that flows down into the Middle Fork. Follow this brook into the beautiful streambed of the Middle Fork and ford the big stream on a fallen hemlock. On the opposite bank, there's an ancient road---long disused---that you see pictured in this last photo. This is none other than the Highway to Heaven, the Narrow-Way-and-Few-There-Be-That-Find-It. I recommend crossing the Middle Fork and following that pilgrim path until you achieve enlightenment. (But who am I to say?) This is truly a spectacular region to explore, and so remote.

If you were to stay on the main road instead of taking the road less traveled, it would eventually take you into the western patch of the Elk State Forest, where back-country camping is allowed.

Thoreau believed that the walker doesn't choose his or her path; instead, the path chooses the person. "What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright." I have to agree. Life experiences condition us for certain things. We begin to expect those things, look for them, prepare for them. Our memories and circumstances shape us so that we will recognize the path that's best for us. I'm not talking about kismet, or fate, or even the doctrine of predestination, long-time darling of the country parson. I'm speaking about how a person's lot in life turns out to be just an expression or fulfillment of his or her character. Your path somehow picks you. It calls out to you and claims you. And all you can do is follow. Or not.

The Big East

2010-03-27T20:04:00.013-04:00

It's not that I'm getting tired of the Allegheny National Forest. The ANF is a place of wonders that would take decades to discover. It's just that I've been dreaming about those big, townless spaces to the east: vast stretches of state forestland with names like Susquehannock, and Moshannon, and Sproul. A decade ago, when I was just home from five years in Africa, I got a job in the suburbs of New York. I decided to cross Pennsylvania on old US Route 6 instead of Interstate 80. (All unknowing, I drove past the very house where my children would later learn to walk, and speak, and have their first memories of the world. I drove past the mock gothic church where I would later be ordained.) I took Route 6 because I hadn't seen autumn in my homeland for five long years. Africa was a wonderful place for an adventurous young man. I left a part of my soul there, and I still miss it every day that I borrow breath. I'll never wash its red soil off my heart. But Africa wasn't my home, and it was half a decade of endless summer.

I guess, by traveling Route 6, I was also attempting to succeed where Jack Kerouac had famously failed. When he decided to strike off and see the country, he hitch-hiked from New York up to Route 6 and waited in vain to catch a ride west at the Bear Mountain Bridge. Unlike the dharma bum, I was headed east. And I couldn't believe the glorious wildlands of northcentral Pennsylvania. And here lately, I've been looking at maps and dreaming.

There is a series of outstanding state parks, most of them surrounded by state forestland, beginning in Potter County and extending east about 100 miles. This region has the darkest night skies on the east coast. (I didn't even know the wonder of truly dark skies until one clear, moonless night in Mills Canyon, New Mexico, last September. It blows my mind to see all those stars and to think of the millions of galaxies out there and the mathematical chances that there's so much life beyond our knowing, or seeing, or imagining.) One National Geographic article calls this stretch "The Wild, Wild East." And so, I've been dreaming about Cherry Springs State Park, and Sinnemahoning, and Kettle Creek. They look like a whole new dimension of beauty and isolation.

And the closest of these mythological places is a state park called Sizerville, one hour east of Kane. So I bit the bullet and spent precious hiking time in the car. And it was worth it. The Elk State Forest and the Susquehannock State Forest run together out here. There are amazing trails and forest roads, abandoned farmhouses, and land for sale! Wonderful, far-flung woodland property for sale! Hunting camps and cottages for sale, too. Some of them with porches that I would settle for.

I hiked a trail in Sizerville State Park called Nady Hollow. It was very, very steep with fantastic, unphotographable views. At some places, as in the top photo, it looks as if you could step off a bluff to the end of the world. Unfortunately, the trail crests at a clear cut in the Elk State Forest, but that's just old Mother Pennsylvania reminding you not to be beauty-greedy. The bottom photo is Colonel Noah Parker's tomb in Gardeau, the southeasternmost settlement in McKean County. Parker figures in the outlandish local legend about Blackbeard's treasure. Believe what you want about that. (I think it's perposterous.) But his grave is desolate.

If I didn't have a wife, and family, and career to anchor me, I think I would wander off into that big eastern woods and disappear like that kid in "My Side of the Mountain."

More Ketner Photos

2010-03-22T19:47:00.016-04:00

"Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!"

"When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest, most interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum."

"There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature. The wildwood covers the virgin mould, and the same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck."

"A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. "

"A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below--such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey."

~Henry David Thoreau

Ketner Dam

2010-03-22T09:37:00.012-04:00

I'm aware that most people do not set off with a walking stick and a bottle of Poland Springs as soon as they read about the hikes that I describe on this blog. (But, hell, I'm a minister; I long ago made my peace with people not putting my words into practice.) My main intention when I created a hiking blog was to give myself a sort of photo-journal of the places I discovered while exploring the Allegheny National Forest and its environs. That said, this time I'm for real: you really need to go to Ketner Dam.

Some friends from Johnsonburg recently discovered this place and told me about it. They even found a website documenting its history. But strangely, very few locals seem to know anything about Ketner Dam, Ketner Lake, or the former village of Ketner.

I say "former village," although the place is not exactly a ghost town. There are some very nice year-round residences out here, as well as some camps that--once again--I would give a body part to own. (Lightly-used, 40-year-old ear lobes, anyone? Never pierced, need occasional shaving.) But it is a ghostly kind of place at the end of a dirt road. And yet, Ketner once had a railroad station, a post office, and a great big old reservoir with a dam and control tower. It's reminiscent of Austin Dam in Potter County. It differs from Austin Dam in that it's mostly undiscovered; since large scale disaster was averted when Ketner Dam broke, the place has returned to nettles and jaggers. Oh, but this is one of the most spectacular scenes of ruination I've come across, and no melancholy loner within two hours of Wilcox, PA, ought to miss it!

Instead of talking about the place's past, I'll let interested parties do their own research. Instead, let's talk about these photos and how to get to Ketner. The top photo is the breached dam with control tower, taken from the outside of the old reservoir. The second photo is the tower from atop the dam, and the former lake bed beyond. The third photo is an old unloading tipple that stands along the railroad tracks at the end of Ketner Road. The bottom photo is the last building that remains of the original village. The old "railroad town" architecture is recognizable to anyone who's spent any time around here. This place is now a hunting camp that goes by the name of "Hidden Valley Ranch." (Why do unimaginative people have all the best cabins?)

Driving from Bendigo State Park toward East Branch Dam, you'll take a bridge to exit the village of Glen Hazel on the north end of town. Immediately after the bridge, there's a gravel road to the left. It cuts sharply and follows the East Branch of the Clarion River along the opposite bank. This is Ketner Road; set your odometer as soon as you turn onto it. At exactly 0.8 miles, find a place to park and look for a hard-to-find trail off to the right. This is one of three ways to get to the old dam, but it will give you the most scenic approach, as it follows the steep ravine carved by Johnson Run. After less than a mile, you begin to ascend the earthworks of the outer dam. Off to your right you'll find a big sluice where people sometimes camp. And soon enough you'll come to the dam itself. Take your time through here. The brambles will be harsh in full summer, and this place has got to be teeming with snakes. You can walk out onto the dam walls, try to climb the tower, and explore the floor of the old lake. When you decide you're ready to hike back to your car, go looking for the other sluice gate on the opposite side of the dam. There's a very old road that leads up the wall of the valley onto the railroad tracks. You can follow the tracks leftward as far as the unloading tipple (pictured above) then get down onto Ketner Road and walk back to your car. Walking this entire loop will take an hour or less, but you'll want to give yourself lots of time to explore, too.

Kiasutha Trails

2010-03-14T18:26:00.012-04:00

My goal was the Campbell Mill Loop at Dewdrop, which is supposed to have some really great rock formations to explore.

Unfortunately, the Longhouse Scenic Byway is still almost impassable to the average car, and I didn't want to push Murtha too hard on the curvy, downhill road between Kiasutha Beach and old Camp Cornplanter. (I've named the ancient Toyota "Murtha" in honor of one of the greats: like her namesake, she's steady and sensible, if unglamorous.) The road was still too slick, despite all the recent sun and warmth.

So, with a glowering gray sky overhead, I made my peace with hiking the trails around Kiasutha. The "Longhouse Interpretive Trail" at the Kiasutha Recreation Area (which is closed for the
season) is one of the worst. It's hard to find, overgrown, and poorly blazed. It's also a "one way" trail because its ghetto-blazes, which are spraypainted onto trees, are only visible if you're going one direction. Otherwise, you're on your own.

So I'm not a huge fan of the trail at Kiasutha. But there's some worthwhile countryside in this area. If you can manage to locate the dull blue blazes near the Kiasutha boat ramp, you can follow them up across the paved road (The Longhouse Byway), and up the hillside that flanks the road. At a certain point, the trail turns left and follows a very old forest road. The trail follows the forest road for only a short distance, but instead of following the trail as it exits this old road, cut cross country and bushwack straight up the hill to your right. In time, you'll come into another abandoned forest road, also bushy, but much larger and more recent. Follow this road to the right as it wraps around the mountainside, passes through some hemlocks, and takes you to a fantastic pair of broad, grassy clearings at the summit of the hill. This would be a perfect
place to set up a tent.

Is that a hawk's nest or a squirrel's drey? Look closely at the light gray area in the dead center of the top photo. That's Kinzua Lake, way down in the valley below. This is a great place to summit because, unlike many peaks in the ANF, you can actually see how high you are here. The clearings provide a vista, and the lake gives it the valley floor clear visibility.

Elk State Park

2010-03-09T16:11:00.016-05:00

If you look
very closely
at the floor
of this drained
lake, you'll
see the
remains of
the town of
Instanter, PA.
(As always,
click on
the image
to enlarge.)

Either the snow is hiding most of it, or else I'm like one of those poor saps in college who could never make out the images in the then-popular 3-D posters, which initially just look like a bunch of colorful dots. (What ever happened to 3-D posters?)

I do see something
that looks
like old bridge
supports.
And a few l
ines of
cement or stone
formations
could be
foundations.

This was a living place
until 1948, when the
government began to
buy up all the propetries
in order to make
East Branch Lake.

But I don't really see much. At least when a town is drowned by the Army Corps of Engineers, its memory is kept alive. Most of the ghost towns in this area aren't as well documented as Instanter, which has a boat ramp and a road named after it. Click on the above link, and you'll even find "interactive photos" of the old town during its living years.

This is Elk State Park, the location of Instanter. It's really just a boat launch with some picnic tables and restrooms. A nice place. There's lots of woods within the bounds of the 3,200 acre park, and even more in the adjacent Elk State Forest, but there are no hiking trails in either. A bushwackers paradise, but not till spring thaw. My little girls and I sat on a picnic table and read Dr. Seuss books in 52 degree temps, but I'll be back when the snow's gone and the lakewater's back.

Three Bears' Cabin

2010-03-07T18:27:00.014-05:00

As Goldilockses go, I make a pretty poor one. For one thing, it's been years since I've sported "locks" of any color, and for another thing, I have enough trouble falling asleep in my own bed, much less someone else's. But I do share Goldilocks' curiosity, and I would love to publish photos of the private property where I tresspassed today! But alas, photos could get me in trouble.

This is one thing I love about the Allegheny National Forest: it's splintered by small, odd-shaped slivers of private land. This means that you can be bushwacking far from the beaten track when, suddenly, through the trees, you see what looks to be a cottage or even a full-scale house. Some of these places are pretty nice, like the one I discovered today. It was an old, beautifully maintained brick house in the middle of the woods, with a deep wrap-around porch. This place was entirely snowbound. The long private road that connects it to the world is impassable under the snow, and so the only way to get out there is on foot or snowmobile. Its winter isolation is spectacular, but it's obvious that no one ever goes there in the winter.

There were no "no tresspassing" or "private property" signs, so I didn't even know I had strayed off public lands until I was in the front yard. Also, there were no curtains in the windows, so I didn't know I was peeking inside until I saw the quaint, grandmotherly little rooms full of antique furniture, old wrought metal beds, carved wooden dressing tables, and ancient woodland prints on the walls. (Okay, so I had some idea I was peeking in the windows, but it was pretty clear there was nobody home.) This place had the distinct feel of someone's granparents' house. It had a big fireplace in the living room, a wood stove in the kitchen, antlers on the walls, old fashioned trinkets. It even had a full basement!

But my favorite part of any house is its porch, and this place had one of the best, a porch worthy of The Chautauqua Institution: broad, deep, impeccably well-kept, with a view out over a steep forest valley and a little frozen pond in the front yard. All the Adirondack chairs were stacked upside down along a wall, so, like Goldilocks, I chose my favorite chair and sat on that enchanted porch for half an hour and listened to the melting snow as it dripped off the roof. My dreams in life are few and simple. I've already attained most of them. But this one still goes unmet; I want a cabin in the woods. I want one so bad I would give a lesser-used body part for it. (Use your imagination.) But life hasn't positioned us in a place where we can justify the luxury expense, and good property in the forest is never for sale.

The Allegheny's charms lie--in part--in the traces of humanity that you can discover in the forest. This is its paradox. We who love the forest are forever trying to resist all the human incursions into it, especially the expansion of drilling. And yet, it's precisely the "incursions" that make the place so fascinating to explore. Sure, it would be nice if we had a pure wilderness here. But the ghostlike traces of human presence and activity make this forest unique and enticing, the ghost towns, the abandoned industrial sites, the cottages tucked away in little pockets of private land, the grassy old roads leading nowhere, even the old oil works. They add their own dimension of human interest to the forest, giving the curious hiker opportunities to dabble in archeology and occasional Goldilocks ventures.

Deer Lick Run

2010-03-06T19:31:00.003-05:00

Ever wonder how a place gets a name like Deer Lick Run? Is running what you do after licking a deer? Jeff Mitchell (peace be upon him), the guru of the Allegheny, is rarely wrong. But his entry on hiking the valley of Deer Lick Run is pretty much doe-doo-doo. Either he says "right" when he means "left" or else the lay of the land has changed drastically since he researched the chapter. (As if a single right turn would kill me after 40 years of leftward migration, but I tried that mistaken rightward course last time I was here.) Anyway, I find his directions a little misleading, but the good thing about following streams is that you can't get lost doing it.

Deer Lick Run is hard to find because it's tucked away behind a private campground near Sheffield, but it's one of those absolutely beautiful streams that meanders lazily through a broad valley, beneath hemlocks. There used to be a reservoir in this valley somewhere, and it still appears as a body of water on your ANF map, but I find no traces of it.

Of course, I've only ever visited this part of the forest in March...two years running. Last year, Jeff's directions got me so far off track that I considered the hike a kind of defeat. This year I decided to give it a second go, and though Jeff's directions were still a mystery, I managed to find great hiking down along the stream bed on forest roads.

This is the beauty of earliest spring. It was 4o degrees in the sun, warm and windless, bright and clear. And under those hemlocks, it still felt like winter. There are birds back in the forest, singing to each other about their recent vacations in Brazil. "Gladys, you're back! Where's Frank? Oh, we had the lovliest little spot in a mango tree, right on the banks of the Amazon this year! Say, did you see the Caldwell's birdfeeder isn't open yet?" You just have to wonder what those little birds have seen in their lives, the spectacular views that have been wasted on them. And why do they come back here while it's still so cold? The animals are all so hungry at this time of year, and the bears will be lumbering out of their dens. I came across several spots where deer had dug up the snow in search of food.

I'd like to come back to Deer Lick Run when the snow's gone to see if there are any lingering traces of the old dam that held the reservoir. From Route 6 approaching Sheffield from the east, take Toll Gate Road north into the forest. Ignoring Jeff's one and only printed mistake, just follow the stream.

March at Last

2010-03-03T14:30:00.003-05:00

Life in the rural Northeast is more pleasant, fuller, more meaningful, for people who refuse to hibernate. As I've said before, and as many a wise person has said before me, if you're going to enjoy life here, you can't let the weather stop you from doing anything. Camping, kayaking, hiking. Do it regardless of the weather...(unless there's freezing rain; that stuff'll kill you). That's why--for the first time ever--I hiked all winter this year. In previous years, I stayed in during the winter and only began to hit the trails again in late March.

But there are two problems with that timorous "hibernating" approach to outdoor life: 1) March is really the worst month for hiking because the trails and forest roads are packed down with slippery, melting snow, and 2) by the time you actually get back out into the woods, in March, you've been cooped up so long that you need the perfect wilderness experience so desperately that a short scrambling slide on an ice-packed path is going to disappoint you sorely.

Last week on A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor said that "March is to show people who don't drink what a hangover is like." I know that there are still temps in the teens ahead of us, and probably more snow. But if you dig beneath the snow in about a week, you'll probably find the coltsfoot already in bloom. There's pollen in the air. And there are bugs, and moths, and insects out skipping across the snow.

New Jersey: 10 Reasons to Love It

2010-03-02T12:33:00.007-05:00

Okay, I realize that I'm getting carried away, but when was the last time you spent a Tuesday at home with a 4-yr. old and a 5-yr. old? Besides, one of my most uber-cool young readers out in Seattle has recently given me permission to write about anything I want, and I want to write about the Top Ten Reasons to Love NEW JERSEY:

10) It has the courage (or effrontery) to call itself "the Garden State."

9) It has the Pine Barrens; an episode of The Sopranos is set in the Pine Barrens, and it ends with a really beautiful, haunting aria sung by...a soprano.

8) It can serve as a sort of Mecca for people struggling with identity crises.

7) People come from all over the world to pump gas there. (In fact, you're not even allowed to pump your own gas in the Garden State.)

6) There are some really interesting boulder fields near the Delaware Water Gap.

5) The Jersey Shore has its charms, especially Cape May. It's way better than the sterility of the Outer Banks.

4) The way New York Governor David Paterson intones the name "New Jersey" on Saturday Night Live.

3) The Palisades make it look defensible from a distance.

2) There really is some rugged and scenic countryside in the northwest corner of the state.

1) It just makes its neighbors look so good.

Okay, I wanted to write another Top Ten List for Ohio, but this blog has too many faithful readers in the Buckeye State, and I should go read a Dr. Seuss book to my kids.

New York: 10 Reasons to Love It

2010-03-02T09:29:00.004-05:00

As long as we're on the topic of loving our neighbors, and as long as I have a day off at home with the kids, here are the top ten reasons to love our mighty neighbor to the north, NEW YORK STATE:

10) Meet the Parents is set on Long Island.

9) New York City: sometimes you just have to take comfort in its hugeness, its proximity, and its immense variety of seething humanity, with attendant cultures, religions, cuisines, and direct overseas flights.

8) That long, long border with Canada...largely unprotected.

7) It was the first state to outlaw talking on a cell phone while driving.

6) Those fake ruined castles along the Hudson River, which are just about the pinnacle of anglophile pretension.

5) Saturday Night Live's dramatic portrayal of Gov. David Paterson's scathing, hate-filled rants about New Jersey.

4) Saturday Night Live's dramatic portrayal of Gov. David Paterson.

3) There's widespread, popular resistance to drilling for Marcellus shale even among rural people in New York State, which demonstrates a concern for the long-term effects of turning a quick buck, as well as some forward-thinkingness.

2) The Adirondacks and the Catskills.

1) The vast, beautiful Allegany State Park, which is an almost pristine slice of western Appalachian heaven, or basically what our Allegheny National Forest would be if its recreational potential were maximized, its environmental well-being considered, and if it were protected from rampant logging and drilling. (If you don't believe me, hike the North Country Trail from the ANF into New York State sometime and see the difference!)

Vermont: 10 Reasons to Love It

2010-03-01T21:17:00.008-05:00

The Top Ten List of Things to Love about VERMONT:

10) Fox News has never called it "a battleground state."

9) It's the only New England state where it's impossible to get attacked by a shark.

8) It shares a largely unguarded border with Canada...Quebec, no less.

7) Only Wyoming has fewer people.

6) There's no risk of its ever becoming the next trendy location in the nation. (It gets snow.)

5) They make cheese there, I'm pretty certain.

4) Frederick Buechner lives there. (If any mainline clergyperson in America tells you he/she doesn't want to be Frederick Buechner, it's a lie.)

3) It's not sitting on top of any oil, or natural gas, or coal.

2) Aside from the aforementioned Buechner--who's only famous among dorks--no other famous person is from there, nor has ever set foot there, nor could even spell the name of its capital.

1) They really take pride in their Green Mountain National Forest. Just compare its website to that of the Allegheny! Can you say "citizen involvement"?

Route 666...Highway to Hell

2010-02-28T15:46:00.005-05:00

Henry's Mills, like most quaint, riverine locations in the ANF, surely used to be industrial hell. You can tell by the name that it was a "mill town," and I'm not referring to a scenic flour mill with its water-wheel creaking and turning rhythmically in the stream. No, it was probably home to one of those godawful mills where they stripped the bark off the hemlock trees to use the acids in treating leather. But history has been kind to Henry's Mills. Today it's a picturesque hamlet on the banks of Tionesta Creek, about two dozen beautiful little seasonal homes, and hunting camps, and a few chalets.

The North Country Trail cuts straight through Henry's Mills, and the beautiful PA Highway 666 is the main road through town. (Interestingly, New Mexico--easily the 2nd creepiest state in the country--also has a very nice Highway 666, which is nicknamed "The Devil's Highway" and passes by the very eerie Shiprock.) At Henry's Mills, PA666 runs parallel to Tionesta Creek on one side, but don't miss the gated old Forest Road 600, which follows the creek on the opposite bank.

My guess is that this road used to be a railroad track. Only 3/4 of a mile downstream, it crosses a small tributary called Mead Run and becomes a narrow, difficult trail. You'll have to find a way to ford Mead Run because the bridge is long gone. I shimmied across on an oil pipeline, which goes to prove that even evil, reprehensible things have their better moments. This little riverside trail runs the whole length of the Tionesta, all the way to the bridge at Lynch, to Minister Creek, Mayburg, and eventually to the borough of Tionesta, where the creek becomes Tionesta Lake and joins the Allegheny River. Henry's Mills to Tionesta would make a very cool linear backpacking trip if you didn't mind being right across the water from a lesser-known, little-used, and sinisterly named state highway.

One of my long-term hiking goals is to explore a Tionesta Creek tributary known as Lamentation Run, which enters below Kellettville. I wonder how a body of water gets the name "Lamentation Run"?

Clear Creek in the Snow

2010-02-27T18:24:00.012-05:00

Not a prime day

for trekking into the Big Woods,

since

the snow accumulation

has been overwhelming,

but you take the day you're given.

Trails were impassable

to all but snowshoers,

and bushwacking

was out of the question.

I was in the neighborhood

and ended up at

Clear Creek State Park.

Last fall, I accidentally rediscovered Clear Creek

while exploring the southern end of the ANF.

The streamside beach looked strangely familiar,

and it all came back to me:

My grandmother (and favorite adult)

used to take us swimming there.

She called the place "Clear Crick."

That weird rediscovery

and those memories

make Clear Crick

a sacred place for me.

Hiking the gated road

(closed for the season)

back to the log cabins

by the Clarion River

was good enough.

It was great to hang out

on the snowy porches

of empty cabins,

watching the snow fall,

absorbing the silence.

Getting the old Toyota

up out of that valley

nearly killed me. Twice.

"Their Smoking Hearth"

2010-02-24T12:41:00.008-05:00

These old photos were taken in the late 1890s somewhere around Galeton, just east of the ANF. My guess is that the setting is in or near present day Lyman Run State Park, but I'm sure nobody knows. Like many of the public lands in the Commonwealth, Lyman Run was so devastated by the logging industry that Harrisburg had to purchase it and nurse it back to health over a 90 year period. By 1900, the logs were all gone, leaving behind eroded hillsides, polluted streams, and a sad collection of broken and barefooted people.

Alas, our state has always sold its resources, its people and their wellbeing, not to the "highest bidder," but to the very first bidder. We'll have to wait a few years to see how all the rampant drilling for Marcellus shale affects the cancer rate in the Keystone State. But tomorrow has never been our most pressing concern.
In his semi-fantastical book A Winter's Tale, author and rightwing pundit Mark Helprin describes the endless appetite of the ever-growing metropolis of New York at the turn of the century:

"Builders and machinists came from everywhere to layer the city in new steel...Pennsylvania, an entire wilderness, became their smoking hearth. They stripped the forests just for frames to help the ironwork. They mined, logged, and blasted, and brought everything to the city..."

It just gets to me, the way history repeats itself! Our home is still somebody else's smoking hearth, with people in faraway places despoiling its resources, then leaving the mess for us to clean up, or live with, or die from. The guy who got caught dumping toxic waste into old oil wells (above link) doesn't have to bathe and feed his own children using local tap water... He lives in sunny California, and his cynical lackey in Sheffield surely uses bottled water when he tries to wash the blood from his hands. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Judge McLaughlin is going to give these guys a slap on the wrist before inviting them back to his place in suburban Erie for a single malt Scotch.

Ah, I really need to get out into the woods this weekend. Last Sunday was a perfect day for hiking, but I had to finish a paper that was due Monday. Now, everything is turned in for the semester, and this Saturday and Sunday should be a go.

Kinzua Bridge, part two

2010-02-08T20:35:00.008-05:00

Kinzua Bridge State Park is usually the domain of railroad buffs, nostalgic old-timers, and Harley dudes. And yet, there's some rugged and scenic back country here to discover, too. You have to be willing to bushwack, and I don't know how passable the terrain would be in high summer, with all the brambles that surely cover the valley floor. It's hard enough to climb over all the fallen trees; rose cane and thorn bushes would make it well nigh impossible.

So, I think this is best as a winter hike. Besides, this is a scene of waste and desolation, and I always find that destruction is best served with a bleak season to bring out its full flavor. Winter complements this place beautifully: the silence, the cold, the absence of greenery. It all goes very well with the twisted metal, the tumbled bridge, and the vast swath of mangled forest. In fact, when I was here, a flock of crows circled above me most of the time, calling out in their almost human voices, as if waiting for me to expire like everything else in sight. (Isn't a flock of crows called a "murder"?) This is a February outing, or early March.

From the parking area, there's a broad, grassy walkway labeled "General Kane Trail." This leads eventually to an electric line that it follows for some distance. Where the electric line and the path make a clear turn to the right, the bushwacker goes straight, past a gated sapling plantation and down, down onto the valley floor.

Here at the bottom of the valley, you're standing right in the tornado's path, and it's awe-inspiring to see the things the wind destroyed and the things it left. It seems so random. Consider the sheer power of that storm! What was it doing so far east?

There's a lane here that follows the valley back toward the bridge. Seeing the bridge from the underside is tempting, but that's an adventure for some other day. A lone bushwacker would rather cut across the tornado valley, strewn with tree trunks, and make for the rock city on the opposite wall. It would be pretty easy to twist an ankle or even break a leg bushwacking through such a big blowdown under the snow. That's why I located a nice set of deer tracks to follow. Deer are heavy and sure-footed. Following deer tracks saves you from getting your foot caught in the crotch of some long-dead tree, hidden beneath the snow.

From down here, there's a nice long line of boulders visible on the opposite wall of the valley. That's the destination: a place of wonders, a good place to spend two hours exploring. Here, too, there are great views of the ruined forest below, distant scenes of the remains of the bridge, and access to deeper woods at the crest of the hill. Up under the overhang of a huge boulder, I found the most beautiful sheet of ice I've ever seen. It looked like pure glass. It was perfectly smooth, five feet tall, and almost a foot thick in places, but perfectly translucent. This photo doesn't do it justice.

It might be rewarding to follow this summit back to the side of the Kinzua Bridge that no one ever visits.

Kinzua Bridge State Park

2010-02-07T18:36:00.013-05:00

I'm not as taken with the Kinzua Bridge as many folks around here are. I don't have fond childhood memories of it. I never rode my motorcycle across it drunkenly, as so many citizens of Kane and Mt. Jewett did back in the 70s and 80s. No one ever dared me to walk across its railroad ties, 300 feet above the valley below. To me, it's always been a colossal railroad bridge laying half in ruins on the floor of an equally ruined forest...in perhaps the lamest PADCNR "state park" in an otherwise outstanding system.

Now, I'm all about ruination and the sad, jagged remains of bygone industry. (To my knowledge, I'm the only person documenting the ghost towns of the Allegheny.) So you might think I would have always liked Kinzua Bridge. I do admit that there's a stark beauty about the half-fallen structure, like the skeleton of some oversized dinosaur, sprawling where it collapsed, spread across a tornado-ravaged landscape. It speaks to my sense of human tragedy and my deep, abiding conviction that everything we raise will eventually fall. And there's something riveting about ruination on such a massive scale. It's hard to take your eyes off the spot where the remaining portion of the bridge meets thin air, as if daring you to take that last step, as if saying, "Here, I'll take you this far, and after that, you're on your own." As Bugs Bunny used to say, "That last step's a doozy." All of those things are admittedly lovely.

Kinzua Bridge is the only state park in McKean County, and for that reason I've been trying to make myself like the place for a few years. I mean, it is at least an outpost of the awesome PADCNR, right? And yet, I never did like it for a variety of reasons: 1) In the summer, there are always swarms of loud Harleys there; 2) in every season, there are always two or three colonies of trailers and modern industrial equipment all over the place, as if they're going to get right to work rebuilding the bridge; 3) the "General Kane Trail" is a short loop that follows an ugly utility swath through an uninteresting woodlot; 4) much of the forest there is tree carnage from the same 2003 tornado that destroyed the bridge.

And yet, today I was surprised and happy to discover that there are things at Kinzua Bridge State Park to enjoy. You have to go in the dead of winter, when the post-tornado jaggers are buried under the snow and the Harley dudes are all gone. And you have to bushwack out away from the bridge, crossing the awesome path of the tornado's wreckage, and into the rock cities on the opposite wall of the valley. That trek will be described in the next posting. For now, here's a photo of the fallen bridge. (As always, click on any photo to enlarge it.)

Winter Sun

2010-02-04T14:56:00.005-05:00

Oh that winter sun, when it decides to shine
after long days of featureless gray!
It's like forgiveness,
like a long overdue reunion,
like a state of grace.

February's a hopeful time,
as the days begin to lengthen,
and the sunlight comes in at new angles,
penetrating those long-dark corners,
chasing away old shadows,
casting the same old world
in a whole new light.

The light of late winter touches old situations with fresh, new perspectives. It can even help you to re-see the old-seeming people and the same old places of your life. The woodlands of Northwestern Pennsylvania have their beauty in any season, but they take on a haunted feel after months of glowering gray and bitter cold. February is here, with its new radiance and new vision.

It's still winter, as it will be for a good long while. But the world is rolling back around to the light. Ah, light! You can turn your face away from it. You can avoid it, deny it, glory in its absence. But it always comes rolling back around, in time. This is the way of the world: new life, stasis, decline, death, new life, stasis, decline, death, new life, stasis, decline... Why is the old, eternal cycle always so surprising?

Longhouse Scenic Byway

2010-01-27T14:55:00.012-05:00

Discovered--much to my disappointment--that the Longhouse Scenic Byway is only passable to snowmobiles and really tough 4WDs during the winter months. I always knew that there was "no winter maintenance" on the road, but I somehow imagined that a '99 Corolla could handle a treacherous, narrow, curvy road that passes over high drops...as long as there was a nice layer of tightly packed snow to drive on.

I shouldn't be allowed to drive.

When I ended up going to Cornplanter's Bridge on Saturday, it was "Plan B" after a failed attempt to get to Dewdrop, which is just one of many remote and huber-cool locations that can only be reached by traveling the Longhouse, or else by boat, or else by walking across the ice of Kinzua Bay. And now in midwinter, when the Longhouse is essentially closed to the masses, that whole vast section of the forest stands abandoned by humanity: Dewdrop, Kiasutha, Elijah Run, old Camp Cornplanter, and all the many backroads, and the dark little valleys of the streams that trail off into the Kinzua Bay.

The west bank of Kinzua Bay is one of the most scenic and rugged parts of the ANF. Oh, and it's tantalizing...all that woodland sitting devoid of noisy humankind. If only I had a nice, loud snowmobile to get me into that part of the forest....

In an unrelated thought, I visited a nursing home today (part of the job). The chaplain's wife was sitting at an electric piano playing old, old tunes from the residents' youth: "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," "By the Light of the Moon," "In the Good Old Summertime." It made me wonder: when I'm old and sitting in a nursing home, will a chaplain's wife come in an play songs from my youth on an electric piano? Songs by Nirvana, and Pearl Jam, and The Red Hots? Just a little old lady playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? "Crazy Mary." "Here They Come to Snuff the Rooster." It's a nice thought.

January Thaw

2010-01-23T16:25:00.007-05:00

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Charles Dickens' worst novel is A Tale of Two Cities because it's written about a time and a place that wasn't his own." Well, you're right, his least memorable characters are in that book, and I think I see your point. Your point is that the dithering old parson, too, should stick to topics he knows and resist the urge to report on lakeside parks in the lowlands of New York State. Point well taken.

It's good to be back in the woods again... After a whole day of working on a really dry and esoteric final paper for one of my classes, I discovered that I still had some daylight hours left. So, I went to a part of the forest I know too little about, an area known as Cornplanter's Bridge. About a half mile from the entrance to Red Bridge, and on the opposite side of the road, there's a beautiful little brook that flows down off a very steep mountainside. Following streams up mountainsides is bushwacker paradise. Photos can't capture the allure of this stream valley under the snow, and it was the perfect destination after too many weeks away.

The steep hillsides are spectacular. Summitting, on the other hand, can be a little anticlimactic in the ANF. In this case, the summit, which promised glorious vistas from afar, was a clear cut with two major forest roads and three active oil derricks. Even when the summits are wild, they're usually little more than broad, level areas with trees and rocks. Views are relatively rare.

This January Thaw surely ruined some of the fun up at the annual Winterfest at Chapman State Park, but it provided a great day for hiking...if you don't think too much about just how extraordinarily warm and long the "Thaw" has been... (Global warming, while horrible, is at least better than the New Ice Age theory that's propounded by some pseudo-scientists in the pocket of Big Oil.)

Chimney Bluffs

2010-01-12T21:29:00.009-05:00

If you absolutely HAD to live in a city, if you had some sort of health issue that required you to be close to a major medical center, or if you were a devout practitioner of some uniquely urban faith, or some such thing, then Rochester wouldn't be a completely unlivable option. It's got great old buildings, shady, quiet neighborhoods, and lots of human diversity. It's also got Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, one of only about a dozen overtly progressive seminaries in the nation (which is why I find my way here each June and January). And yet...it's still a city.

I used to say that a person can make a meaningful and fulfilling life anywhere in the world. Once you commit yourself to a place, you find ways to make it livable. I mean, I even managed to enjoy living in Oklahoma...long ago. There was something almost Zen about those big, empty spaces and that long, flat line where the grasslands meet the sky. But that was long ago.

Today, with a few free hours in the morning, I made an early trek out to a New York State park that the locals don't seem to know about: Chimney Bluffs. Interesting earthen formations along the coast of Lake Ontario, "an ice age legacy." Here are some pictures. I like the otherworldly feel of the place. It's as bleak a spot as January offers, like some sort of cross between a Beaver County strip mine and the Ice Planet of Hoth. And that frozen lake, stretching off to the horizon, gives the place the feel of a looming presence. Not a bad place to visit, but a pale substitute for my explorations in the ANF.

What I always forget about cities is how long it takes to travel in them. How frustrating that travel is. How inhuman people become in their cars, how anonymously they behave. And how much wiper fluid you need to drive across a northern city in January.

On one hand, cities are great. I have a personal relationship with New York and Paris. They're places where I've spent lots of time, places that I've been returning to again and again for the past twenty years. Whenever I visit either, I have my favorite haunts, my hideouts and well-worn paths, my private city within the city. Far better than New York and Paris, I know the African cities of Douala and Yaounde, labyrinthine and dangerous. I know their open air markets, and their seedy expat bars, their sordid hotels, their squallid back streets. I know their Greek bakeries and "European" grocery stores. I know their public places and squares...because they were once the backdrop to my life. When a man is still young, his life intersects easily with the world's many places. (At least that was the case in the 90s.)

And yet, I don't think my soul is an urban thing. And I feel a deep conviction that the cities of my life are quickly becoming memories to me, ever more distant, the old familiarity fading like the names of the students I taught a decade ago. I just don't find those cities "life-giving" anymore. Alas! Three years in the Allegheny National Forest have ruined me for all other settings.

Sorry about the navel-gazing. We'll return to backwoods reporting as soon as I get home from Rochester and finish writing a few 20-pagers. (Can't believe I'm still doing homework at my age.)

A New Decade

2010-01-01T12:55:00.007-05:00

Every time my father moans about how wonderful the 1950s were, and how things fell apart in the 60s, I try to tell him that the 60s were a product of the 50s. Everything that came to a head in the 60s was already in the works by the late 50s. But he won't hear it. For him, the world just changed (for the worse) out of nowhere.

Now, I for one, don't believe that the 50s were probably all that great. Jim Crow laws in the South. Racial injustices and tensions in northern cities. Fewer options for women. The looming and constant threat of nuclear holocaust. People are always looking back in time for a golden era to re-create.

I don't believe in golden eras. I don't believe in supermen, or in heroes, or national deliverance. What I believe is best said in the words of Paul Tillich:

"Here and there in our world, now and then in ourselves, there is a new creation."

A moment or two of 'new creation' is good enough most of the time. Oh, and I hope this is a good year for growing tomatoes, too. Ours were awful last year.

More Bogus Mysteries

2009-12-29T13:58:00.013-05:00

So, I've got the day off, and I'm home alone with the kids, trying to plug away at my doctoral coursework, but to no avail. It's impossible to concentrate with the kids around.

Besides, there's a brutal shortage of hiking and blogging in my near future, as I'm leaving for classes in Rochester this Sunday, then writing papers (as well as juggling a very tolerant parish and a relatively-tolerant-but-don't-push-it-buster wife...and two children) until February 22, when this term's papers are all due.

And so, in this "calm before the storm," I decided to do another post about Bogus Rocks...since I'll probably be living off the memory of that last hike until late February. (Most things are bearable if you know for how long you'll have to endure them.)

I thought it would be really clever to name the first photo "Dos Equis," but it doesn't quite evoke the Siberian feel that I associate with that ghostly quadrant of the forest. The derelict tracks off to the right lead to the Rocks. And the icy road leads off into the forest to a place called Watson Farm. The signs are for real when they say "no winter maintenance," too.

And did I say that those rocks were thirty feet high? Well, they're surely thirty feet at the overlook. But in most spots, the height is probably something between fifteen and twenty feet, as you see in this second shot. Still a nasty fall.

And check out the poor, denuded tree, exposed to the winter weather. What strange woodland varmint climbs so high to eat the bark of trees, and why does it eat so selectively, bypassing perfectly identical bark closer to the base of the same tree? Other trees had the bark chewed off a full twenty feet off the ground (no exaggerating this time). Are we dealing with young black bears here?

And finally, who made these tracks in the melting, two-day old snow? A young bear? A bobcat? Do you think he knows that he lost his glove?

Anyhow, rock on, most excellent rocks. (Dude, that was bogus.)

Bogus Rocks

2009-12-27T18:26:00.012-05:00

A pretty entertaining movie that got totally overlooked by the world was Transsiberian, a 2008 "neo-noir" Sundance thriller starring Woody Harrelson. As I set out in quest of "Bogus Rocks," I was reminded of the film: long expanses of abandoned railroad tracks stretch through miles of the level pinewoods. This is a dark, eerie quarter of the forest, silent and blanketed in snow. The terrain could definitely pass for Siberia, or Yakhutsk...or Irkhutsk.

Bogus Rocks don't get their name from being made of styrofoam. They're real rocks, and big ones at that. Once, long ago, this part of the forest was blessed with an industrial site called "Bogus-Something-0r-Other," and the name stuck long after the factory disappeared. Bogus was surely the name of the guy who owned the factory, although when I was young, and could still get away with using pop slang (back in the days of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure) "bogus" meant something roughly equivalent to today's "lame"...which Bogus Rocks are not.

The stream that runs through this part of the forest is called Bogus Run, too.

Bogus Rocks are a long stand of boulders overlooking a broad basin-shaped valley, or depression, in the forest floor. Several streams flow through the valley, and local legend has it that there was once an "Indian fort" here. Others say that the Indians used the valley to corral livestock...which seems pretty unlikely to me. Not because it wouldn't make a great natural corral, but because...what kind of livestock would they have corralled? Elk?

In any case, earlier inhabitants of Kane asserted that there were wooden pens, earthworks, and defensive ramparts in the slopes above the valley. Some say that you can still see ancient carving in the rocks themselves, but I find nothing.

In the 1920s, an archaeologist from the U. of Rochester documented a site somewhere around this area, and he called it a "hilltop stronghold" claiming that it was bulit by "proto-Erian" people 600 to 800 years ago. He collected pottery and other artifacts. That's pretty cool because so little is known about the Erie Tribe that originally inhabited this region. The Senecas in nearby New York State exterminated them in the early 1600s, but left their land largely unoccupied.

Nevertheless, I have my doubts about whether Bogus Rocks are indeed the site of the archaelogist's "Indian fort." The site of Bogus Rocks is in Howe Township, Forest County. The history books situate the old Indian fort in Highland Township, Elk County. True: Bogus Rocks are very close to the line between these two backwoods political entities, but---unless I'm very much mistaken---it's still on the wrong side. That gives me reasonable doubt that the locals are right in saying that Bogus Rocks is the same site as the old Indian fort.

Bogus Rocks make a great hiking destination. There's an overlook, seen in the second photo. In the third photo, you see an icy cliff edge dropping off to the forest floor thirty feet below. The fourth pic shows some sort of lair among the rocks. I couldn't identify the tracks, but whatever creature lives behind those icicles has itself a nice little pad up there. Is it a porcupine? It climbs high into the trees to eat off the bark.

Strangely, hiking guides of the ANF don't tell you how to get to Bogus Rocks, so take note! Go to Chaffee, the intersection where PA948 leaves PA66 and heads toward Warren. Continue on PA66 toward Marienville, but only go about one mile. Reach a Y in the road where the pavement (PA66) veers to the left, and a dirt road (Chaffee Road) continues due west. Take Chaffee Road into Forest County, and cross the railroad tracks two times. Park at the second railroad crossing, and follow the tracks to the right. After less than half a mile, there's a sign and a well-worn path off to the right.

The Weary Road

2009-12-23T19:37:00.007-05:00

"And you, beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing.
And rest beside the weary road
To hear the angels sing."

This sentimental old Christmas carol always seemed so sappy to me until I learned that it was written by a Massachusetts minister in protest of slavery. After learning that, it became my favorite Christmas song; you can see traces of outrage in all the lyrics, poetic cries against the injustice of human bondage.

(It's said that there are more slaves in the world today than there were when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, many of them foreign women hidden in dingy trailers at ordinary truckstops...where caring people buy their gas then zoom off to their destinations, all unawares. Alas, although The Allegheny Journal is mostly about "escape," human trafficking is beyond the scope of our homespun journalism. )

This Christmas Eve, I find myself thinking about the power of metaphors. One cool thing about Christmas is that it's a time when people expect metaphors and parables. I've hated Santa from the time I was five, and I noticed that his liar's beard was made of cottonballs. But other Christmas metaphors / parables have their power: You don't have to believe in "The Whos" for the Grinch's story to get its point across. You don't have to believe in ghosts for Scrooge's story to speak to you. And you don't have to believe in angels and miracles for the Nativity story to touch your soul. In fact, stories are really the most powerful medium for speaking to the soul, whether they're literal fact or simple parable. Even the best literal stories work themselves into parables at some point, becoming a strange mixture of fact and fantasy, taking on a more than literal meaning.

Christmas is a time to tell ourselves stories. Pick good ones. We'll get back to some serious backwoods discoveries next week. For a few days, at least, The Journal is going to "rest beside the weary road." Hope you'll do the same.

Winter's Silence

2009-12-20T18:49:00.007-05:00

There's a silence in the winter woods unlike any other season. No insects. No people. No birds.
Winter hiking can be less exciting because the plant life is all hidden away, as are the old industrial artifacts. Parking near trailheads can be difficult, too, since the pull-offs usually aren't cleared. You can only cover about half your normal distances in the snow. And yet, winter hikes are worth the pain.

It's the profound silence that I love, "the silence of eternity." Once you get out there beyond the noise of the road, there's a deep hush over all the frozen landscape. That intense quiet takes me by surprise every time, even if it's the very thing that called me to the woods in the first place. It's an unexpected visit from an all-too-rare friend. The only sounds are the gurgling brooks, not yet frozen, the creaking branches, the snow underfoot.

Today's trek covered the southern terminus of the much neglected Mill Creek Trail. You gotta love making the only set of tracks in the snow, even if it does bode ill for the trail's future. (In the Darwinian cycle of funds apportionment, the upkeep goes to the most utilized facilities...like the ATV trails.)

When I was a kid, I used to think it was weird that, in the woods, Christmas Day looks just like any other. The squirrels are still holed up; the wind still rattles bare, snowy branches; the same supreme silence reigns. There's nothing special about the day, no music, no lights, no feasts or gifts. The childhood magic of Christmas ends where the woods begins, stark and cold. I used to think it was a little sad, how December 25 was just another day in the wintry forest.

Now it makes me want to spend Christmas in...the woods. The silence is a gift.

The Holy Experiment

2009-12-15T21:43:00.010-05:00

This famous painting, by Bucks County folk artist Edward Hicks, is known as "The Peaceable Kingdom." It depicts an encounter in the 1680s where William Penn is talking cordially with the Lenni Lenape, the indigenous people from whom he purchased much of the colony of Pennsylvania. Penn is a Quaker. He believes that there's a fragment of the Divine in every human being, and so he is duty-bound to treat everyone with respect, and to honor his agreements with the original inhabitants of the land. The river in the background is the Delaware.

In the foreground, you see the fulfilliment of the words of the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah:

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox... They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain." Isaiah 11:6-9

Penn and his followers called Pennsylvania a "Holy Experiment." His was the only colony that guaranteed absolute religious freedom for anyone who claimed to believe in some version of the Christian God. That's narrow by modern standards, but it was pretty liberal back in the day. In fact, the Quakers were so tolerant that they were soon outnumbered by people far less tolerant than themselves. And in time, those "less tolerant" folks rose to power, where they sit entrenched these 300 years later. But as long as Penn lived, the land was never "taken" from the indigenous peoples, only "purchased." That's pretty fair, since Penn could have behaved like other European settlers, laying claim to the land and purchasing it only with musket and sword.

This second picture, of course, lampoons "The Peaceable Kingdom." It depicts a ruinous place where respect has been supplanted by the shameless and shortsighted drive for material gain.

I know--as you do--that there's no returning to innocence once it's been lost. And all the Utopian experiments in the history of the world have failed. Wisdom cannot be legislated, but only acquired through pain and openness. Respect will never be as glitzy and glamorous as raw material gain. But how did we get so far from where we started? I don't mean "How did we get so far from our religious roots?" God knows religion has been a huge part of the problem! I mean, how did we go from a society based on respect to a society based on individual gain? And what can be the future for people who make such a shift?

Images

2009-12-13T13:57:00.010-05:00

My philosophy of life in the Pennsylvania Outlands is this: Don't let the weather stop you. If you're a ninny about the weather, then you will never enjoy life here. Heck, if you're a ninny about the weather, then you've probably got deeper issues that this blog can't address.

And yet, I'm more than a little saddened that I got freezing rain during my week's most sacred hours, Sunday afternoon. Freezing rain is the one thing that can usually make you wish you'd stayed in. And so, instead of reporting on the weekly adventure, I am left to pour over images from finer seasons, the Ghost of Hiking Past.

They say there are two phases to life. There's an earlier phase when you're primarily oriented toward the future: marriage, children, career goals, adventures, etc. And then, after all your goals have been met (or left glaringly unmet), and the flower of youth begins to fade, there comes a second phase, where you are primarily oriented toward the past. This second phase comes earlier for some than for others, and it isn't necessarily a bad time in life. How bad it is depends on how you invested the energies of your earlier days.

I wonder why no one ever gets caught up in the present, the here-and-now? Why don't we ever fix on the phase we've got in our hands at the time? I don't know. But I've got to admit: I'm definitely oriented toward the future this week. I've got a lot of hopes riding on the afternoon of Sunday, 12/20, the next chance I'll get to hit the trails.

I was hoping to explore the ghost of Pig's Ear, but the ATV trail reopens down there next Sunday, so it might have to wait for another day. I'd love to find out how that place got its name. Was someone really trying to make a silk purse or something?

Byways

2009-12-11T20:26:00.009-05:00

A lane rose steeply off to the right.
It flanked the mountainside a little crookedly,
tunneling beneath hemlocks
before disappearing from sight
and rolling on forever
into other byways
across mountains
and through valleys
that I would never see.
It called to me, that road.
In promising tones,
it chanted the old, old song of my soul:
Come away. Turn away.
This is the path of
adventure,
freedom,
solitude,
peace.
After all these years,
the anthem is unchanged:
Discover. Escape.
And when I’m old,
that road will still beckon.
Come away. Turn away.
This is the song of every way
I’ve ever had to shun;
once it rang with promise,
tantalizing and sweet,
but today the sacred song accuses me,
for we’ve both learned
that I do not come away.
I never turn aside.

Pines, part two

2009-12-10T15:17:00.009-05:00

As noted below, our hardy ancestors planted evergreens around their rural homes in order to keep the cold winds off the house and to retain warmth. In bigger towns, the houses sat side by side, insulating each other. But in isolated areas, it was necessary to plant pines to act as windbreakers. Today, you can identify many abandoned town sites on the ANF because of the pines planted in neat rows. The three sites that come to mind are Guffey, Corduroy, and Windy City. In two of these ghosts, all that remains is the pines. And in the case of Windy City, the name itself should prepare you for what you'll find remaining there: rows of tall evergreens.

But as I shoveled a narrow path through the snow between my office and my house, for the third time today, it occurred to me that our ancestors had another reason for planting pines. They did it in order to keep the snowdrifts from piling up against their houses. Mounds of snow against the doors would make it impossible to get out, literally snowbound inside your home.

My grandparents used to talk about the fierce winters of the 1930s when they had to climb out of their house from the second story windows, wearing snowshoes. A nice stand of pines would have borne the brunt of such a wintry onslaught, leaving a canyon of protected space between the house and the trees.

Anyhow, here's another shot of Corduroy. Too bad you can't see the creek from the grounds of the old house. You surely could at one time, but now there's too much brush.

Lonesome Pines

2009-12-09T12:20:00.009-05:00

The abandoned village of Corduroy is little more than an empty post-residential lot surrounded by large, sweeping pine trees. Like the camp site at Guffey, it's a spacious grassy lawn with a stone fire ring on the spot where a big house used to stand. Or it might have been a church or an inn. Both ghost towns sit in pretty stream valleys. Corduroy is unlike Guffey in that there is no evidence of any old industrial complex here, and the town site is entirely level and low-lying. Corduroy is also smaller and a whole lot further afield.

Of course, our hardy ancestors planted pines around their rural homes in order to insulate them from the bitter cold winds. Today, the pines at Corduroy are so tall that they provide more beauty than warmth. But that's okay because nobody ever camps here except fishers, in the spring and summer when the weather is good.

I mainly like these fine pines because they show me traces of what used to be. I'm fairly certain that this is the spot where the largest house in the hamlet stood, presiding over a broad green lawn on the banks of Hunter Creek. I know nothing about this old settlement. I don't know if it was a lumber town, a tanning town, or just a regular old farming town. But the thing I love about ghost towning is exactly this: to stand in a place where there are traces of long-forgotten lives and to imagine them. Who were they, with their real hopes and fears, their genuine sorrows and joys? What living, what childbirth, what labor, what abuse, what passion, and lovemaking, what dying and grieving took place on this very spot, which is now just a patch of grass in the forest? What heartache and horror took place right here; what lives were lived out in this place, and how different were they--really--from my own? Their stories will never be told. Aside from a few pine trees in a row, their tale is lost forever. As the Hebrew psalm says, "Their place remembers them no more."

They say you can find anything on Google. I sure can't find anything about Corduroy except the vain promise that it is "a populated place" in Elk County, PA.

December Skies

2009-12-06T20:42:00.010-05:00

Oh, those moody December skies above the Allegheny: brooding, dramatic, uncertain. As winter advances, the sky becomes less steely and less low. It's no longer the gun metal gray of our usual November; instead, there's a luminous, watery light that makes me think of the old Dutch painter Vermeer de Delft. It's a timid light that refracts beautifully off the dusting of snow on the forest floor. Winter hiking isn't my favorite, but it is its own thing, with its own pleasures and rewards. The views are long. There are no bugs. You don't get overheated. It's also a great time to find artifacts of bygone settlements, since summer foliage tends to hide such things.

There's a rare, fully intact CCC camp, built in 1933, still standing along Forest Road 124 near Duhring. This place was used as a prisoner of war camp during WWII, and staffed by conscientious objectors. The old camp is privately owned and mostly used for horseback riding, but you can see it from the road, that distinctive old CCC architecture applied to a Hogan's Heroes-style campus. (The only other fully intact CCC camp I know is at Clear Creek State Park, where you can rent the tiny, old log cabins.) This shot was taken from one of their horse riding trails, which passes up over a partially cleared mountaintop and back down the other side. The trail becomes FR124B and rejoins FR124, which is how I discovered it: by snooping around FR124B, a track that clearly doesn't get much motor vehicle traffic. The backroads around this area are worth exploring.

Today I hit the abandoned town sites of Pig's Ear and Corduroy, too. (Do you think everybody up and left these places because of their really uncool names, embarrassed to have addresses like '56 Four Corners Road, Apt. B, Pig's Ear, PA'?) Nevertheless, Corduroy is a pretty site along the upper reaches of Hunter Creek (see below). I'll surely make it the topic of a future post.

Pigeon Run Area

2009-12-01T13:38:00.012-05:00

In keeping with my original promise to provide a "backwoods discovery guide," I'm posting some photos of the area around Pigeon Run and Spring Creek, although I'm fairly certain that the body of water pictured here is a tributary called Hunter Creek. This area of the ANF crosses over into State Game Lands #28 without warning, and if you really cared about the border, you would have some difficulty keeping track of it.

Given the relatively tiny readership of this obscure blog, I sometimes give myself license to rant or wax philosophical. (Hence the angry posting below.) Alas, that's what happens when you're at home with the kids all day on a Tuesday. In any case, the hike described as "Pigeon Run Falls" by Jeff Mitchell is great if you're in a hurry. If you've got a little extra time, follow his directions to the waterfalls, then cross Pigeon Run at the falls, and follow it back downstream until you reach an old forest road going up the mountainside to your right. This road trails off into some of the most beautiful, loneliest country in the Southern reaches of the ANF. These photos were taken on a cell phone, and they don't do justice. But the valleys are deep and steep. The pathway runs right along the edge with great views to the various streams below.

I don't know why I can't just blog about theology like other ministers. I have close friends who never even read what I write here because the Allegheny National Forest isn't a pressing matter in their lives. They look at this page and say, "It's just trees. Why aren't there any people in your pix?" I think it's because I mostly go to the woods to be alone.

Anyhow, unless I miss my guess (which is really unlikely), the narrow track over the mountain above Pigeon Run Falls--described above--winds all the way north to Four Corners and eventually becomes a road that joins PA66 at the big Chaffee intersection.

Owl's Nest

2009-12-01T11:14:00.009-05:00

Owl's Nest is one of those places I've been hearing about for years. It was a hamlet in the Allegheny National Forest that owed its living to the natural gas industry. The residents are all gone, though some gas company still operates some machinery there. Because of my morbid fascination with abandoned town sites, I took an interest in the place.

I've had ideas about visiting Owl's Nest for about three years, strictly on the back burner. Looks like I'll be putting those plans on an indefinite hold. Front page headlines of the aptly named Kane Republican trumpet "Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling Near Owl's Nest." The long awaited and much anticipated Marcellus Shale has finally struck a blow in Northwestern Pennsylvania. Never mind that the company doing the drilling is out of Oklahoma, and the drillers have been imported from Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, and Colorado. Never mind that this Marcellus Shale drilling can only pollute our aquifers and give the local economy nothing in return...unless, perchance, the drillers choose to spend their weekends living it up at the famous Hallton Hilton, which, like Owl's Nest, is another local legend I have yet to experience. And who owns this bed of ancient shale anyway? (Hint: Not you.)

The drilling is taking place two miles west of Owl's Nest, on State Game Lands #28, a beautiful spot that I know well. It's where Pigeon Run meets Spring Creek. In his book Hiking the Allegheny National Forest, Jeff Mitchell calls the path through this area "one of the most scenic trails in the ANF." It follows an abandoned railroad grade that runs alongside Spring Creek and passes through both the state game lands and the ANF. (See hike #34 on page 82.) Here's a cell phone snapshot I took in the fall of 2008. I wonder what the place looks like today. And what will it be in a few years? Do people really think that Marcellus Shale is going to bring prosperity to this region? How much drilling will have to occur, doing irrevocable damage, before local people admit that drilling for Marcellus Shale makes no returns to the local economy and runs the risk of destroying the quality of life that we currently have?

Calm Before the Storm

2009-11-29T20:18:00.006-05:00

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

2009-11-24T09:50:00.006-05:00

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

2009-11-22T20:23:00.008-05:00

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

2009-11-21T17:34:00.012-05:00

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

2009-11-19T08:39:00.009-05:00

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

2009-11-17T08:46:00.010-05:00

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"

2009-11-16T21:59:00.005-05:00

...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

2009-11-15T15:06:00.006-05:00

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"

2009-11-12T16:39:00.018-05:00

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

2009-11-11T16:46:00.009-05:00

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

2009-11-11T13:10:00.010-05:00

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

2009-11-08T18:25:00.006-05:00

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

2009-11-07T15:35:00.012-05:00

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

2009-11-05T13:10:00.001-05:00

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

2009-11-03T14:37:00.000-05:00

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

2009-11-02T09:07:00.000-05:00

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?

Kudos to Pennsylvania State Parks

2009-10-28T09:13:00.000-04:00

Just an appreciative nod in the direction of our state park system. On October 16, they were awarded the prestigious "National Gold Medal Award" (which is like the state parks version of one of those movie awards that all the directors strive for, and which I ignore so thorougly that I don't even know their names...Oscars? Tonies? Cannes? Sundances?)

The goal of the PA DCNR was to put a state park within 35 miles of every resident. Of course, that includes urban parks, like the uber-cool Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh. But it also includes such woodland gems as Chapman, Elk, and Parker Dam. Where do you stop in listing all the fantastic state parks? Raccoon Creek, Oil Creek, Ohiopyle.... (Sorry if I don't say Kinzua Bridge, but I wish they would develop some trails there.) Clear Creek State Park is one of my favorites, with its miles of beautifully maintained trails passing through hilly forests, its CCC architecture, and its cold little beach, pictured here. (As always, click on the image for a better view.) Check out this link to read about the award.

Occasionally Pittsburgh will win the name "most livable city" for a given year, and each time it happens, the world stands amazed. "Pittsburgh? Really? Not Phoenix or Seattle?" I have a friend out west who maintains the illusion that Pennsylvania is all strip mines and rusting factories (more about that in a future article). Now, I don't mean to sound "jingoistic" or anything, but this is what I love about the unglamorous places on the backside of the Eastern seaboard, places like rural Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier of New York State: The quality of life is unparalleled; it's inexpensive, and the larger world isn't forever encroaching, crowding in, trying to claim its part. We live quietly and well. These awards and moments of recognition are nice every once in a while, but in the end, the nation at large will go back to overlooking us, and our way of life can continue undisturbed.

"Antlers in All of My Decorating..."

2009-10-26T20:13:00.000-04:00

On the one hand, I know a lot of really great guys who are hunters. Many of those guys show up on my door and offer my wife and me choicest cuts of their forest kills, and we gratefully accept. (I think they secretly pity my wife for having a husband who doesn't bring her dead animals.) I don't begrudge them the sense of manly accomplishment that must come with providing meat and proving their status at the top of the foodchain. There's surely something satisfying and primal about stalking, killing, and eating a wild beast without any help from anyone but the good folks at Winchester. I get that. Too many people are too far removed from the earth. They're completely out of touch with their own food sources, and they'd be lost without the industrial food business. (That rant belongs to a different blog, but you gotta read The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan.)

On the other hand, why is it that so many guys believe that they aren't allowed to go into the woods unless they're armed with deadly weapons? And whenever you ask a guy 'why' he hunts, most of them will tell you, "I just love being out there in the woods."

Anyhow, I came across this really cool hamlet of hunting camps on a little patch of private land surrounded by the national forest. Just four simple cottages that sit there all year and wait for the hunters to come back in the late fall. This cabin was called "The No Tell Motel." (What are those hunters doing out there that they can't tell their wives?) I don't know what the name implies, but this place clearly hasn't seen a woman's touch in a few years. The racks above the door made me think of Gaston, the hunter in the Disney version of "Beauty and the Beast." There's a scene where Gaston is singing a tribute to his own superior manhood, and he sings, "I've got antlers in all of my decorating."

Ah, hunters. They make us flee the woods every fall, for fear of their stray bullets, and they're trying to take Sundays away from us, too. But I gotta say, most of them are nice enough guys.

Loleta, You Will Never Know...

2009-10-23T14:28:00.000-04:00

Maybe you've heard of "Loleta," a recreation area in the ANF, several miles south of Marienville.

Now, for most folks in their late 30s, the word "Loleta" does two things. 1) It reminds us of an old Elton John song, where he croons, "Nikita, you will never know anything about my home." (Nikita. Loleta. They both sound vaguely Russian.) And 2) It reminds us of a controversial novel by Vladimir Nabokov... also undeniably Russian.

I mention Loleta here only because the Loleta Trail makes a way better hike in the fall than in the summer. It's a 3-mile loop that follows the scenic Sugarcamp Run, passes through hardwood gallery forests with very little understory, goes through big, grassy meadows, does a sidespur to a great rock city that could take several hours to explore, and climaxes at an "overlook" that only has views when most of the leaves are off the trees.

I'm not usually one for the trails. I far prefer to hike grassy old forest roads. But I can guarantee that you will have this trail all to yourself. The views on the second half of the loop are broad, looking out over the valley of Millstone Run. But when the green leaves come back, all the vistas will disappear.

"Yellow Leaves, or None, or Few..."

2009-10-21T18:57:00.000-04:00

If I understand leaf coloration at all, I think the recent snowfall killed off our best October colors before they got a chance to appear. Apparently the leaves can take the cold, but they get tinged with brown when snow settles on them. The southern edges of the Allegheny are still decked out in vivid array, but around here, the colors have been muted and toned down.

In any case, I'd like to apologize on behalf of Mother Nature (or Pan or whoever) to all the poor, disappointed leaf peepers I see driving Route 6 with their Ohio plates, looking in vain for the mid-October splendor of The Big Level.

Ah, but it's still fall, and I'm still a melancholy ex-English teacher, so here's another poem just for the occasion. This one's a sonnet by William Shakespeare in honor of all those 400 year old trees in Cook's Forest that began their life in 1609, the same year these verses were published.

"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

The song of the ephemeral autumn. Love it well.

The Clarion River Valley

2009-10-20T19:10:00.000-04:00

Never under-estimate the importance of a river. Every great civilization had its river, drawing life from its waters, approaching the world on the highway of its currents. Think about it: the Euphrates, the Nile, the Yangtze, the Thames, and the Seine. Even today, the cultures of the world develop along the banks of great rivers, and those rivers still bring life.

The river that forms the north border of the ANF is the well known Allegheny, and the Forest is its namesake. Outside of Pennsylvania, the word "Allegheny" still evokes images of steel mills, smokestacks, and Pittsburgh under the mid-afternoon darkness of polluted skies. The Mississippi is the river of American commerce; the Potomac is the river of power; the Hudson is the river of culture. And the Allegheny--despite its spectacular scenery and ecological comeback--will forever be remembered (alas!) as the dirty river of 19th century robber barons.

And so, what about the Clarion River, the lazy, shallow body of water that saunters along the southern border of the Forest? Well, let me tell you a secret: the Clarion is an outdoorsman's paradise. It passes through some of the wildest, most scenic country in the sate, much of which is public land--whether state or federal. There's fantastic backpacking in the Clarion Valley. The river is shallow enough to make easy canoeing and kayaking. Bridges are rare in far-flung parts of the Valley, but you can even ford the river on foot in places. Cook's Forest is the Clarion's closest brush with fame. The river also passes alongside Clear Creek State Park. But consider the parts of the ANF that run alongside the Clarion.

Next time you visit Loleta Recreation Area (the subject of a future article), do yourself a favor and follow the Loleta beach road (Millstone Road) southwest, away from the beach, as it follows Millstone Run toward the Clarion. This road runs four miles through a beautiful, riverine landscape, lonely places known only to fishermen. After about four miles, the Millstone joins up with the Clarion, and there are great campsites set up all along the river. These are all ANF sites. They're free, undiscovered, absolutely beautiful, and tranquil like some new kind of Eden.

Hell, there's probably a river out there for everyone. But if you're reading this obscure blog, then you probably belong to the civilization that takes form along the banks of the Clarion River. Go check it out.

The Ancient Forest

2009-10-19T14:20:00.000-04:00

Cook Forest State Park (known to locals as "Cook's Forest") is surely the most popular woodland destination in the western part of the state. Unless there's some corner of the Poconos that attracts hordes of New Yorkers, my guess is that Cook's Forest is the most popular patch of trees in Pennsylvania. What explains this popularity?

On the one hand, much of Cook's Forest is virgin woodland. That's to say, it has never in all its history fallen under the axe or saw. That's pretty cool. In the area known as "Forest Cathedral," pictured here, many of the trees are 300 to 400 years old. It's mostly white pine, hemlock, and beech, which were once the dominant species in this region. They make for a pretty dark forest, but there's just something almost mystical about standing next to a living thing that was around in 1609 when Henry Hudson first discovered the Delaware Bay, the year that Shakespeare's sonnets were first published, the year that "Three Bilnd Mice" made its debut....

And yet, I don't think the 400-year old trees alone explain the park's popularity. I mean, there are 20 acres of virgin forest at Heart's Content, in the ANF, and the campground there is still threatened with closure for lack of use.

Cook's Forest is as commercialized as any spot of so-called "wilderness" in the Northeast. PA36 is lined with "Indian" trading posts, replete with giant statues of Yogi the Bear and oversize cigar store Indians. The stores and cabins are all done in a mock-rustic style. The private cabin rentals are a booming business because, as our hostess told us on a recent stay, "The forest sells itself." At only 8,500 acres, Cook Forest is a fraction the size of the adjoining Allegheny Nat'l Forest. And yet, because it's a state park, it's much more carefully maintained and more geared to recreation (hiking, backpacking, camping, canoeing and kayaking) and natural preservation than the Allegheny...which some call a "black cherry plantation."

Strangely, you can hike for hours in Cook's Forest without encountering another person on the trails. It's as if all the many visitors want to be *near* the Big Woods but not *in* it. The park is so small that there are few places on the trails that are out of earshot of vehicles passing on tarmac. (To me, that's the definition of solitude: an absence of noise from trucks and cars.)

Does a forest sell itself to visitors? Really? If so, then why is nearby Clear Creek State Park so little known to the outside world, despite being pristine, quiet, located on the same Clarion River, just as beautiful and far less touristy? What "sells" a forest?

Rimrock in Fall

2009-10-12T13:45:00.001-04:00

When was the last time I went to Rimrock? For me to go to Rimrock would be like a New Yorker going to the Statue of Liberty; it's something you only do to entertain out-of-town visitors (which is why I was there today). The Rimrock Overlook might just be the only place in the National Forest where you can always find a fairly cosmopolitan mix of people. Even on a Monday morning, like today, there were people there from Switzerland and Brooklyn.

The Road Less Traveled

2009-10-10T17:12:00.001-04:00

So, there are 305 million people in the USA. 12 million of those folks live in PA. I think that means that 24 out of 25 Americans live outside the Keystone State. I wonder what they all do out there without an Allegheny to discover and rediscover in every changing season? Surely folks in Iowa and Nevada do more than surf the Internet and play car-crash games on their wiis? I mean, I know there are other wild places out there, and I know that some of those places are filled with beauty and adventure, but I feel sorry for folks who don't have the Allegheny in October.

In any case, in celebration of October's arrival in the byways of the Allegheny National Forest, painting the woodlands in hews of yellow, orange, and red, here's a poem that might seem overused...until you listen to its words. And let's raise our canteens to "the road less traveled by," as Robert Frost calls it, for it does indeed make all the difference in this life.

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry that I could not travel both
and be one traveler, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
and perhaps having the better claim,
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

~Robert Frost, 1920

Mill Creek Trail Beaver Pond

2009-10-10T16:45:00.001-04:00

I'm plowed under with work, and tomorrow morning is the deadline. In addition to about a million other things, being a minister means preparing a 10-page essay (a 20-minute sermon) every single week and being ready to deliver it. It has to be engaging, entertaining, relevant, natural-sounding, poignant, and delivered with confidence and poise. And in my congregation, it can't be too preachy, either.

But today was partially sunny...after a long stretch of gray days. The wife and kids were away. The house was quiet (which is perfect for writing sermons). And the old Mill Creek Trail was just a-calling my name. So I spent this whole blasted day in the woods.

October is the perfect time to discover new territory in the Allegheny National Forest. It's cool. The hunters aren't out shooting the place up, yet. There are no bugs or snakes. And the leaves are beautiful.

Now, the northern reaches of the old Mill Creek Trail don't get much publicity. It's a brushy old path that runs through a relatively level section of forest that has suffered a lot of blow-downs. But like all lesser discovered trails in the ANF, it's got more than its share of hidden gems. You can hike the Mill Creek Trail from the point where it diverges from the Twin Lakes Trail (which will be the topic of another post in the near future), and you very quickly find yourself as far from human noise and bustle as is possible in the nation's 5th most populous state.

Striding south at a normal pace, you'll find yourself coming into wet territory about 45 minutes from the trailhead. When the path cuts up the left side of a broad, shallow valley, a basin-like place with a boggy floor, that's when you need to start looking off to your right to find the beaver pond. Bushwack due west from the trail down across the marshy floor of the valley, and within ten minutes, you're at a strange little beaver pond made entirely by wadded twigs.

How do those little critters stay so hard at work, flooding valleys, building dams, cutting down trees, when all it takes is a partially sunny sky to call me away from my duties?

Beaver Meadows & the Dodo Bird

2009-10-03T16:56:00.000-04:00

The Beaver Meadows hiking trail system is pretty cool. It's a network of interconnected trails that circle the mostly-level terrain around Beaver Meadows Lake--4 miles north of Marienville. Last time I tried to hike the biggest loop, I made the mistake of taking my 3 and 4 year old daughters in their little red wagon. What was I thinking? It's largely pinewoods and lakeside savannah, which is great if you're into birds. I prefer denser forest myself. You know: moss, big rocks, ferns, hemlocks. But the Beaver Meadows trails are definitely worth checking out. Sadly, the campground at Beaver Meadows may soon have something in common with the dodo bird: extinction.

Recent literature from the Forest Service indicates that Beaver Meadows Camp Ground is probably going to be closed or turned into an ATV camp (which is to say, an open-air bar where everyone brings his own Coors Lite, and drinking Sam Adams will get you killed). In response to letters from concerned citizens, the Forest Service states, "This campground as it is currently used, although a great place to camp and visit, provides an experience that not enough people are looking for on the ANF, and which is available at other locations on the ANF. It is not a question of quality as much as it is providing too much of something that people want less."

The literature goes on to state that the campground will remain open through 2009, and a 'feasibility study' will be made. If the study finds that the campground could get more use if it was linked to the Marienville ATV trail, then it may remain open. If that option isn't feasible, then it's good-bye Beaver Meadows.

Of course the Forest Service can't be mowing and maintaining a campground that only sees 20% occupancy, and who can blame them if they close it? After all, the government can't afford to be sentimental. But the thing that irks me is that the only way to keep it open would be to link it to the ATV trail. I mean, no offense intended, but aren't ATVs for fat guys who are too lazy to camp and hike? How is it that you almost never encounter another hiker on the Twin Lakes Trail or the Baker Trail, but you can't drive down PA66 on a Saturday without seeing scores of ATV enthusiasts in wanna-be-Harley helmets trying to cross the road at 45mph on their loud machines?

Strangely, Minister Creek Campground--the smallest in the ANF, with its 6 beautiful self-pay camp sites--is pretty well filled up with Ohioans every weekend from May through October. And those who can't get a site in the campground itself end up roughing it in the woods all around the grounds. They just flock to Minister Creek. (I personally find that the word "minister" sends people striding in the opposite direction.) Is it because they love to fish for trout? The spectacular view at Minister Creek Overlook? What takes folks to Minister Creek and not to Beaver Meadows, where today I counted 9 occupied sites out of 38? Let me tell you, though, they were 38 spectacular sites! Deep woods, very private, primitive, quiet. Try to go there before the weather turns, and before it either closes or gets overrun with ATVers in scratch-on tatoos.

THE GOOD NEWS is that even if Beaver Meadows does go the way of the dodo bird, its 34-acre lake will still remain open for fishers, kayakers, and canoers. The little picnic area and the excellent trail system will remain open to the public, too.

Local Medicinal Plants, continued

2009-10-02T20:34:00.000-04:00

Here are some more medicinal plants of the Allegheny National Forest and surrounding area. I get the impression that forest rangers all over the world bill these ones as their own "local" species because they're so widespread. But they do grow here, and they do have curative properties...apparently.

WITCH HAZEL (first photo): This stuff supposedly works wonders on a wide range of ailments, most of them skin problems, but not all: acne, rashes, burns, poison ivy, bruises, razor burn, sun burn, and even varicose veins, eye-strain, chicken pox, and hemorrhoids! It's called "witch" hazel because its flower blooms in winter. (Anything so extraordinary has to be caused by witches...)

JOE PYE WEED (second photo): A native American healer in the Boston area supposedly saved thousands of lives with a concotion made from this plant, which is named after him, during a typhus epidemic. It's thought to have some antiseptic or even antibiotic qualities.

MULLEIN or FLANNEL LEAF (third photo): This leaf is soft to the touch but not easily ripped or broken. Some swear that if it's dried and smoked in a pipe, it can treat emphysema, apnea, and various lung diseases.

Wild touch-me-nots also treat poison ivy and stinging nettles, and a strong tisane made from teaberry (steeped for two or three days) is supposed to work like an aspirin, too.

Local Medicinal Plants

2009-10-02T19:56:00.000-04:00

So I realize that if I never publish this blog to the web (which I haven't) almost no one will ever find it. I'm debating whether to link it to my facebook page, but I don't like the idea of always writing to an audience. I mean, I write for an audience every week, and although I love it, it's also pretty draining....

My little family and I were camped at Twin Lakes--arguably one of the most beautiful and least discovered "recreation areas" in the National Forest--when a ranger came and did a little spiel about useful plants in local Seneca Indian folklore. Collecting recipes for herbal cures was one of my hobbies when I lived in Africa, and so I was kind of interested. Here's what the ranger said. (And if you try any of these at home and then sue me when you go blind or lose hearing in your left ear, I'll be really mad.)

ASH LEAVES (fourth photo): Leaves of the ash tree contain sallicylic acid, just like aspirin. They can be made into a tea and used for pain relief.

ASTER LEAVES (third photo): These are edible and used in cooking and salads. I think they taste like grass, with just a soupcon of...grass.

COLTSFOOT (second photo): This is ground and used for coughs. Apparently a pretty widespread home remedy.

HEALALL (first photo): This familiar plant with the tiny purple flowers was used in all kinds of concoctions to heal wound, illnesses, and fevers.

Land of Many Uses

2009-09-30T20:21:00.000-04:00

Most of these national forest signs include the unpoetic and utilitarian phrase
"Land of Many Uses."
It's not a catchy motto, but it does tell it like it is. I used to think it was a slogan unique to the Allegheny, but apparently the Forest Service says it to all its girls.

And too many uses, some might say. I mean, why do you go to the woods? Why did Thoreau go to the woods? I go to get away from the kids. I go to escape career life, and domestic life, and the need to produce, and behave, and impress. I go to the woods to be alone, for the silence, for the beauty, for the adventure of discovery. I park my car along some old, forgotten forest road, and I strike off with a compass, a stick, and a bottle of water. And the further I get from my car, the more the tension in my shoulders relaxes. The usual tightness rests on my shoulders, like Bluebeard's parrot, it gradually takes flight. By the time I'm away from the noise of passing cars on the nearest blacktop, I'm a whole different person: a man without pretense, without pressures, without burdens. I go to the woods because it reduces me to something primal, and there's not enough "primal" in my life.

I hope to avoid politics in this blog. I hope I can talk mostly about some of the hidden wonders of the Allegheny. But a political battle rages over the use of this forest like none I've seen. I know the local economies depend on exploitation, but when I round a corner and running into an oil derrick or a clearcut, I'm right back to square one! Annoyed, angry, composing letters to the proper authorities in my head.

Ghost Towns of the Allegheny

2009-09-29T16:33:00.000-04:00

So, I recently got back from a "ghost towning" trip in North-eastern New Mexico. Fantastic place to sift through the wreckage and detritus of bygone settlements. However, I will leave that for other bloggers to explore. (In fact, the ghost towns of New Mexico are the subject of many Internet sites.) Lesser known are the ghost towns that can still be discovered in the ferny glens of the Allegheny.

Around here, ghost towns don't usually have much in the way of abandoned buildings. Unlike New Mexico, the wet climate and bitterly cold winters of the Pennsylvania highlands quickly reclaim the territory once conquered by fickle humanity. You have to look a little closer to find an Allegheny ghost town because they tend to consist of rows of cellar holes, foundations, domestic trees in artificial rows, and overgrown lawns. When you're hiking out in the woods and you come across a non-native brand of tree, or ornamental shrubbery, or a patch of daffodils, then you just might be standing in a ghost town.

I've documented two abandoned villages on the popular website ghosttowns.com. Click here for a link to McKinley, and here for a link to Windy City. If you google either town, you'll get an online map of their whereabouts, and they still appear on official maps of the National Forest as if they were inhabited. (This is a snapshot of the main street in old Windy City, which is--as they say--gone with the wind.)

There are other ghost towns on the Allegheny, and I'll post them as I discover them. Does anyone out there know of ghost towns other than McKinley and Windy City?