Mill Creek Trail, Allegheny National Forest

           THE PARSON'S RETURN: DAY ONE.  My abortive, long-ago attempt to hike the northern half of the Mill Creek Trail--in the Allegheny National Forest--is described in some long-ago post.  It was an acceptable hiking destination.  All things considered, the southern half of the Mill Creek Trail doesn't make for a spectacular hike either.  It's a scrubby, neglected trail passing through mostly level terrain.  In fact, Jeff Mitchell warns that the trail eventually just disappears altogether.  And it does.  The northern and southern halves never quite meet in the middle.  There are plenty of ugly blowdowns in the area, to boot.  But I didn't care.  I was back in the Allegheny National Forest for my Second Annual Winter Pilgrimage, and my heart was content.  The forest was still there, exactly where I left it, waiting to welcome me back.  Despite the fact that I'd lived in this area for three and a half years, I had never bothered to trek more than a few hundred yards down the southern end of the Mill Creek.

          My last-ever hike as a resident of the ANF region was at Brush Hollow, which shares a parking lot and trailhead with the south terminus of the Mill Creek Trail.  If I returned to the unglamorous southeastern segment of the forest on my first day back in the Big Woods, it was only because time was limited, and I needed a quick hike close to the borough of Kane.  (As a general rule, the ANF gets better the further north you go.)  It was all of 7 degrees that day, but I gave not one damn.  I had three hikes planned for my two-night sojourn in the forest, and it was okay if the first one was the least dramatic.  I dropped the family with their friends and headed out into the hills.  Under a fine mist of snow, I hiked the old Mill Creek Trail north until it petered out, then backtracked to hike this natural gas pipeline swath eastward into that Big Woods.  So vast.  So varied.  So wild.  It was so good to be back.