Lamentation Run

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.