Evolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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