Vermont Dreaming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.