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.
I now live in Muzette, in one of the two houses you mention.This hamlet got it's name from my husband's great grandmother, Elizabeth Muzette Joslin (known as Zettie), its first postmistress, who lived in the other house in the hamlet. At that time Muzette was a booming little village of lumberjacks, farmhands, cattlemen and their families, who mostly lived a mile or so down the road toward Vowinckel, in a village called Bowmantown. There were homes, farms, a general store, and a school then. Now all that remains of Bowmantown is the mansion at Ward's Ranch, surrounded by beaver lakes and meadows. Our own home was a hunting camp owned by my husband's family for nearly 100 years on the back end of the Joslin farm. Before that, this building was a one room school house in Siberly, north of Oil City, for many years, until it was relocated here. There is a sad story in the family that may have led to the naming of Lamentation Run. Elizabeth Muzette Joslin's grandmother, who established the homestead, was orphaned in an Indian raid on the premises. Grandma Sanford was a young girl then, and escaped by crawling into a hollow log. As the story goes, she must not have climbed in far enough, because a dark skinned daughter was born shortly after. Please stop to visit us at the Lucky Buck Lodge and see the photos of these folks if you're ever in the area again.
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