Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 8, Saying Goodbye

 

This is the Nebraska Bridge, which sits low against the water.  It's where my pilgrimage was originally supposed to end until I wound up paddling all the way deep into Tionesta Lake.  There's no paddling under this old bridge; you have to pull out, cross it, and put in on the other side.  The water is deep here, and still.  Fishers stare.  On the last morning of my trip, Wednesday, I had to paddle against the mild current and back up here from my lovely spot on Tionesta Lake.  My friend was meeting me here at noon to take me back to my car, which was parked all the way up at near the New York State line.  It was a pensive morning commute on the water.  I did see an Army helicopter buzzing over the lake as I was packing up.  Whoever was driving it didn't see me, and though I didn't want to get away with anything illegal--like staying the night without permission--I scurried along before he flew back around and discovered that I'd been camping on the lakeshore.  By the time he returned, I was just some kayaker out on the water...

The red line on the left half of the map is the portion of the North Country Trail that I traveled on foot.

Forgive the glare.  The blue line in the middle of the map is the course that I traveled by water on Tionesta Creek.  The drive back to my car took an hour and a half!  I couldn't believe it was so far away.  And what lessons do I bring away from my Allegheny Pilgrimage?  I don't know yet.  I look at these photos and realize that to anyone but myself, it's all just trees and water.  I spent less time meditating and praying than I expected--and I spent a lot more time than I expected just navigating, and worrying about finding a campsite, and worrying about chafing, and spring allergies, and aching feet.  But I believe that spiritual practices bear their fruits later, after we go back to the everyday stuff of life.  It was a wonderful time in a place that I love.  Restorative, invigorating, challenging, and life-affirming.  And for all of that, I'm so glad I did it.  And glad to be home.  That's the mark of any good vacation, or trip, or hike: It makes you glad to be home.

Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 7, Tionesta Creek from Kellettville to Tionesta Lake

Day 7, a Tuesday morning dawned over Kellettville Campground, and the waters called me quickly away.  My goal for the day was simply to put down camp someplace nice where I wouldn't mind spending a long evening and part of the following day.  My friend was supposed to meet me at a place called Nebraska Bridge at noon on Wednesday.  Finding a place to camp proved harder than I'd expected.

As I put out into the water, I paused to gaze at one of the many, many rocks along the stream that carry the imprint of ancient sea creatures.  These upland forests used to be the floor of a primeval ocean, and the creatures that dwelled in those waters were the stuff of real nightmares.  As the waters grew deeper and deeper throughout the course of that day, I pondered a little fearfully the notion that sea monsters once lurked beneath waters on this very spot.  Especially plesiosaurs!

It was a perfect day to be on the water.  Cool and partly sunny.  But I only had a two or three hour trip to Nebraska Bridge, and I wanted to spend most of the day in camp, reading and writing.  This portion of the water journey had some of the most striking natural scenery.  Steep, wooded hillsides.  More handsome birds.  Eagles!  Even more eagles.  And as the water got deeper, approaching the lake, I began to see blue herons--so large and elegant, flying slow and low over the currents.  Big grassy meadows appeared along the stream banks, and I recognized Lamentation Run as I went drifting past.  Although I had thought that I might want to stop there, due to its historic importance in my forest tales, when the place was upon me, I had not the slightest urge to revisit it.  Let it pass.  Let it pass.

Where I did stop was at the next little body of water flowing into the larger stream: Bear Creek, pictured here.  When you get to Bear Creek, you feel like you're in Alaska.  It's wild, and quiet, and far flung.  There's actually a very nice, grassy campsite in the woods just beside the mouth of Bear Creek.  It looks like it's approachable only by boat, and plenty hidden away.  But it was a little strange, too.  Someone treats it like their own private property.  There was a folding chair leaning up against a tree and a few cooking grills hanging from nails.  There were even a few garbage bags full of camping supplies stowed under a nice makeshift table made of stone.  Worst of all, someone left their ugly wraparound sunglasses sitting on the stone table top.  Even though Nebraska Bridge was still quite a distance away, I could have stayed here at Bear Creek campsite--except that it felt as if the owner of the sunglasses might come back at any minute.

I mean, look at this place.  It's great, and so isolated.

And yet, there was an eerie presence about it--the wraparound sunglasses had eyes.  Click on this photo.  I actually DID regret not staying there at Bear Creek because after that, it became nearly impossible to find a place to pitch camp.  The banks were either too steep or too grassy.  Those verdant meadows were deceiving; they appeared so welcoming from a distance, but up close the grass was too tall, potentially full of ticks and snakes--no place to put down camp.  I paddled and paddled and paddled--all the way past Nebraska Bridge and into another Army Corps of Engineers' recreation area known as Tionesta Lake--where the creek was dammed to form a spider-shaped reservoir for fishing, boating, swimming, and camping.  My National Geographic map promised that "primitive campsites are numerous along the lakeside," but I paddled for miles and saw none.

Then when I did begin to see lakeside campsites, I investigated and found them all to be overrun with poison ivy.  Panicked, I began to think that maybe I'd have to paddle all the way into the conventional campground and get a drive-in site.  But then...then a vision appeared on a distant shore: a broad, sandy beach with nicely trimmed grassy meadows beyond and hickory trees and walnut trees, perfectly distanced for hammock-hanging.

The most glorious, remotest, most beautiful camping spot of all was there on the banks of Tionesta Lake, with a broad, private beach and lots of luxurious short grass.  The only way to get to it is by boat.

I did find that I had cell service here at the lake--and only 19% battery!--and so I tried to call the local Army Corps of Engineers to tell them that I'd be claiming this spot for the night.  No answer.  It was too late in the day.  So I happily claimed the lovely location as my home for the night, had a big fire, ate up as many leftovers as I could, and even made a clever dessert out of dried peaches and broken granola bars.  Backpacker's peach cobbler.  I carried unsweetened, dried fruit to make up for the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables on the trail.  But as a celebration on this last night of my pilgrimage, I decided to let the leftover dried peaches simmer for a few minutes in just enough hot water to almost cover them.  After simmering, let stand in the water long enough for the peach slices to reclaim their natural form.  It's fun to see the wrinkles disappearing and the fruit becoming rounded and smooth, as if canned in Mason jars by your grandma last August.  At this point, the water in which they're soaking is thick and sweet, just like peach canning syrup.  Drink most of the water, leaving a small amount, and crush the broken granola bars overtop of the peaches.  Backpacker's peach cobbler!  

Such a beautiful sunset over the lake!  And a glorious ending to a long and wonderful adventure.  When I look at a map to see the territory I covered in about one week, I really am amazed.  As far as the journey's status as a "pilgrimage," I believe its wonders will be revealed now that I'm back in suburbia, even if I didn't really have any magnificent epiphanies on the trail.   

Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 6, Tionesta Creek from Hastings to Kellettville

 

Monday was Memorial Day, and so I no longer had the creek to myself.  Various bands of kayakers shouted and cavorted on the water, but I typically passed them all by with a smile and a nod.  It was a perfect day for paddling--breezy and cool with lots of sun.  At my streamside camp in the early morning, I saw two female deer swimming across the creek in the mists.

Somehow, I'd left my hat in my friend's van, and so I had to wrap a T-shirt around my head like a turban.  But it was a wondrous day riding the currents, staring in awe at the bald eagles that soar up and down the valley, and thinking about life--my life, my career, my family, but also the life of the world.

By the time my water adventure was finished, on Day 8, I would put in 25 or 30 miles on Tionesta Creek--including the portions of the creek that constitute Tionesta Lake, a human-made lake with a campground that's run by the Army Corps of Engineers.  But for this day, my humble goal was the tiny forest hamlet of Kellettville, passing through the even smaller hamlet of Mayburg.  Neither town has many year-round residents.  They're mostly just summer homes and hunting camps.  But there is the notorious Cougar Bob's Kellettville Tavern, where I was hoping to have dinner.

This shot was taken from under the bridge in Mayburg.  On the Tionesta, you measure your distance according to the few bridges that span the creek.  What joy to travel the water on a day like this, with the sweet smell of a fresh creek in the woods, and the birdcalls, and the eagles still darting about overhead!

Somewhere on the water between the two towns, you come across Frog Rock, a large boulder in the creek that someone has painted to look like a frog.  I'm glad they didn't paint it to look like a shark.  That honestly would have creeped me out a little.  But a giant frog?  No problem!

The paint seems to be wearing away a little, and it's more visibly a frog when you see it from the downstream side, which I was not able to do because I was too busy attending to the fast-approaching shallows.  In fact, I took far fewer photos on the water than I would have liked because I had to keep my phone safely stowed where it wouldn't get wet.  There were a few occasions where the currents carried me over big boulders that were hidden just beneath the surface of the stream.  Sometimes you would see them through the clear water and go floating overtop with no problem.  Other times they would scrape the hull of the boat.  But still other times, if you hit them sideways, they could easily overturn your boat.  This came close to happening to me just once on this trip, but I'm a pretty experienced kayaker and was able to avoid meeting a Titanic fate on the floor of the...creek.

Before long, Kellettville appeared through the trees. On past adventures, I had looked into staying at the Army Corps of Engineers' little campground at Kellettville, but it never panned out.  This time, the thought of staying at a now-deserted campground with a picnic table, a restroom, and a fire ring was nearly irresistible.  The hostess told me that almost everyone had packed up and left earlier that day, and that there were three "walk-in" campsites that were free to backpackers.  I happily accepted and learned later that the kind hostess knows my father-in-law.  (A lot of people do.)  At dinnertime, I made a little trek into Kellettville to see if Cougar Bob's was open.  It was not.

But en route, I discovered this pleasant snowmobile trail along the creek.  It was here that I finally felt a sense of melancholy.  I hadn't felt any kind of sadness since Day 1, when the trail-runner went flying past me on the NCT.  But on that Monday, walking along the creek that I'd been traveling, a sense of loneliness finally descended on me.  What am I doing here when everyone I love is far away?  And am I mediocre?  And has my living really mattered to anybody yet?  And why do we spend our short lives in places that are not beautiful, places where there are jobs but no bald eagles?  

The gloomy funk was short-lived.  A redemptive thought came to the rescue: It doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter if I'm mediocre.  It doesn't matter if my living hasn't made much difference in this world.  It doesn't matter that we spend our lives in the bland and faceless suburbs.  What matters is that we've been invited to the dance of life, that our living takes part in something bigger than itself, that we belong to the Mystery of Life itself, that in it we "live, and move, and have our being."  It was actually the memory of a Bible verse that pulled me out of my gloomy state--Colossians 3:3--a verse that comforts me with the notion that my own life is somehow lived out within the larger life that we call "God."  And the meaning and the fullness of any one human life are impossible to judge because our lives are all intertwined in something so much big and longer lasting than their own short span of years. I am free to participate in all the goodness, truth, and beauty that our world offers, and the value of a life is not in its achievements but in its participation in those marvels that are not "things" as such.  It gave me joy to think that some of the water molecules that had wetted me on Friday morning at Red Bridge were perhaps joining me again on the creek.

And so, I returned to my campsite at the conventional campground in a happier state.  Maybe I'm not working as an attorney for BLM, and maybe I'm not down at the border putting out jugs of water for migrants in the Sonoran Desert...but I do desire those things, and desires are something.

Oh, how the water calls!

Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 5, Tionesta Creek from Lynch to Hastings

Sunday morning, chilly and gray, saw me revisiting the old parish church that I once served in Kane, not to mention the local Episcopal church where one of my former parishioners is now the rector.  Covid has not been kind to churches in rural areas, and I do fear for the future of religion in the provinces!  The lure of extremism is all-pervasive these days, and socially-responsible faith--the kind that respects science and treats sacred texts metaphorically--is a little too nuanced for a lot of the people who are still interested in religion.  Ah, but for me it was the day to begin my second leg of the journey: the watery portion of the trip.

Instead of hiking the rest of the way to the southern border of the national forest, I decided to borrow a kayak and travel the remaining distance on Tionesta Creek--which is a smaller waterway that was only just barely navigable with 40 lbs. of food and camping supplies aboard.  The rainy Saturday rescued me from rethinking my plan to travel Tionesta Creek.  If the water levels on the Tionesta had been lower than a foot and a half, Plan B would have been to do the Clarion River.  But the Clarion does not pass through the parts of the forest where I wanted to travel.  I wanted to be deep in the heart of my beloved forest--where Tionesta Creek passes like a miniature Congo snakes through forests of its own.  I wanted to pass through Mayburg and Kellettville.  I wanted to row past Salmon Creek, and Lamentation Run, and Bear Creek.  The Clarion only just passes along the southern border of it all--at the edge of things, not the heart.

Oh, it was lovely to set out on the water!  The smell of the fresh, clear stream!  The breezes lightly passing over the surface of the deep.  It's not quite a river, but it's a large creek, and deep in many places.  But it also has long gravelly stretches that are broad and very shallow.  I probably had to get out of the boat and tug it along behind me five or six times throughout the course of my three days on the water.  Other times I made it over the gravelly shallows by staying in the boat and pushing hard with the paddles.  But most of the time, it was smooth going...and so wonderful.

Although I'd intended to put in at Sheffield--in the dead center of the national forest--my friend wisely advised me to put in a few miles further downstream, where the water would be deeper.  We bid farewell at a place where the town of Lynch used to be.  Now there's just a bridge and a lonely hunting camp.  It was already getting close to 2:00 on Sunday afternoon, so I didn't paddle far before I stopped to make camp on one of the few riverside banks that was level enough.  In those first few hours I saw fine redheaded mergansers, and wood ducks, and two bald eagles!  And when it was time to sleep, it was wood thrushes and barred owls that sang their melodic songs. 

Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 4, Kane, PA

 

My wife met me on Friday because Saturday was our 17th anniversary.  She picked me up at Red Bridge, and we went back to Kane--that borough in the forest where I spent 3.5 happy years.  The place has changed a bit.  There are fashionable new restaurants on the main street, and we went to one of them for our anniversary dinner

All in all, it's still a provincial place with worn out buildings and rough characters in flannels.  But it's got a depth to it, too.  When we lived there, I used to compare it to that old TV show, Northern Exposure--a small town in the wilderness, peopled by backcountry intellectuals, and misfits, and outcasts from contemporary urban America.  Most of the people I knew there are not at all "rednecks."  They were judges, and lawyers, and dentists, and eccentrics who made biodiesel out of used cooking oil.  Kane is all of those things.  But there's something else, too.  There's a darkness, something gritty and humorless with a dark and very real undercurrent of rural poverty and Trumpism.  

Kane Manor, the home of Civil War officer Thomas Kane--for which the town is named--is now a bed and breakfast, and I highly recommend it.  It made a nice switch from sleeping on a hammock among the trees.  Even just to get a shower!

The house was built by Kane's widow after his death.  Lovely place, 18,000 square feet.  The new owners are putting a lot of energy into the place, and I hope they make a go of it.  

There's something sort of enchanting about a moldering old mansion on the edge of a haunted little town deep in the forests of the East.  Actually, the place was hopping with guests.

A reprieve from the drafty sleeping arrangements of late.  That is my only complaint about hammock camping.  The roof is sold separately, and though it protects you from the rain, it does not keep the night air out in the same way my tent does.

Ghost-chasers love the old Clay Street School, in Kane, which is two doors down from the mansion.  It's sat empty for years and there are plenty of legends about the place.  It was nice to spend a Saturday back in Kane--where my now-teenage daughters learned to walk, and speak, and use the toilet...  The place where I was ordained, where I did my first baptism, and where I first stood at the Holy Table... I miss this place.  Not badly enough to live here again, but enough to keep coming back.  I ran into so many people I used to know, and I was reminded of the joys of small town life.  Being a clergyperson in a little town in the woods gives you a position of prominence and status.  I don't have that in the suburbs.  But one of my daughters, at her suburban school, has two classmates named Viraj.  That's something small town Pennsylvania cannot offer: ethnic diversity.  (Small town New York actually does a whole lot better in that department!)

Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 3, North Country Trail, Hemlock Run to Red Bridge

 

Thursday morning, bright and clear--deep, deep inside the forests of the North!  The path was calling, so we set off to see where it might lead.  The goal for the day was Red Bridge, and I actually ended up going a little further.

Just this, nothing more.  Daylight on the greens and grays of the woods.  A light shimmering sound as the breeze touches the leaves high in the canopy--a noise reminiscent of the ocean.  Birdcalls.  A cool and sunny day.  This is all I needed.

The portion of the trail that runs along Hemlock Run is very scenic, and it comes to a glorious climax near the spot where the creek empties into Chappel Bay--right here at this large campsite near the lake.

Distances become hard to estimate after you cross PA Route 321 again.  What seems like it should only take an hour or so ends up taking longer.

So many forest crossings.

And so many idyllic bodies of water to be crossed!  Water levels were low, especially for May, but we did end up getting some rain by the following morning--and then all the next day and most of the one after that.

Again, the water glinting in the sunlight just through the trees.

By this third day, I had songs that I sang as I walked alone--old songs that bring me comfort.  I felt more truly like a pilgrim.

At one point, weary and dragging, I thought I saw a picnic table through the trees at the top of a hill that I was slowly climbing.  Surely it's a mirage, I said to myself, but it was not.  More and more of these backpacking shelters are being erected along the trail, and they make nice places to take a break.

On this day, I did meet another backpacker in the woods, a Ford employee from Cleveland who had been laid off.  I wished him well and encountered him again a little further down the trail--where he had laid claim to the Root Run campsite that I had been aiming for myself.  I left him to it, thinking there would be more camping closer to Red Bridge.  I was wrong.  The terrain from that point to Red Bridge becomes pretty unwelcoming.

A shagbark hickory.  How could you not hug a tree like that?

The rest of the evening became something of a fiasco.  I got to the day's second road crossing at Red Bridge with no trouble--but weary from the long trudge.  Red Bridge is a national forest recreation area with a popular campground, and I told myself that as a last resort I could ask if they had any vacancies, but it seemed unlikely since it was coming up on Memorial Day weekend.  Looking at the map, I decided to cross the long bridge (which is not the slightest bit red) to camp in the forest on the far side, close to the water.  I found a spot and began to set up when some rowdy fishers showed up.  They didn't see me, but I heard them loud and clear, so I moved on and finally ended up pitching a hasty camp in a small patch of woods close to the road.  And yet, it was a glorious night in the forest, and a long rainy morning in my hammock the following day until my wife arrived to meet me at 3:00pm on Friday.

Allegheny Pilgrimage: Day 2, North Country Trail from Handsome Lake to Hemlock Run

 

Sunrise over Handsome Lake Campground, with mists still on the waters and in the woods.  On Wednesday I set out at 7:30am and told myself that an early start is always best when doing a "through hike" with quantifiable distances to attain each day.  I was convinced that I would start by 7:30 every day of my pilgrimage, and in retrospect I wonder what gave me so much confidence in myself.  

The fresh green of the springtime forest is especially lovely when backlit by the golden morning sun.  It was a beautiful day for walking among ferns and hemlocks.

I did about 10 miles a day on the NCT.  This stretch of the hike was pleasant, but it does feature two road crossings and one roadside trek of about a quarter mile.

Despite these brushes with the motorized world, I encountered not another soul on the trail all day.  Chafing started to become an issue.  I thought regular old boxer shorts would serve better than briefs, and I was wrong.  In the end, it proved best to forego underwear altogether.  Fortunately, I brought some other skin ointment that worked well on the abraded skin.  Later, at the Rite Aid in Kane, I would find a product that was made especially for hiker's chafing. 

It was nearly a perfect day in the woods--though I lost my beautiful Protestant prayer beads, the ones with jasper stones and a copper Celtic cross.

Water is almost never an issue in the Allegheny National Forest.  There's always a brook, or a creek, or a "run," which is something in between the two.

Silence and Solitude were my companions.  Portions of this trail I had hiked before, but most of it was new to me.  I wondered how I lived here without having explored every square foot of this forest.  But that is one of the things I most miss about this place: I discovered something new each time I went out.

There's just SOOO MUCH to discover up there.

And 3.5 years is not nearly enough time to squeeze it all in.  By the time we moved away, I had only just begun to know that marvelous place.  By the way, this is the first time I ever hiked using two trekking poles, and I think it really helped my speed and balance.  It returns your bipedal self to a quadrupedal design, which redistributes weight and effort to four limbs instead of two.  

The Hemlock Run campsite is a little dark and forlorn.  It straddles the trail, with the fire ring on one side and the tent area on the other.  I typically prefer to sleep out of sight of the trail, but it was less easy than I'd expected finding areas suitable for setting up the hammock tent--pictured here.

See how the trail runs right through the site?

In the interest of giving myself easier evenings, I stopped hanging a bear bag on this trip.  Instead, I invested in some odor-proof plastic bags and a bear-proof sack--which I simply dangled from any tree branch.  It's a lot more convenient when you're pitching camp just before dark.