You might not believe this, but I've never spent a night alone in the woods before. Oh, sure, I mean I've camped in conventional campgrounds by myself, and at least one time at Ryerson Station, I was the only camper in the entire place. I've also done a lot of backpacking with partners. But I've never gone alone into the forest, found a spot, and said, "Here. This is home for the night."
It's kind of like a sex columnist admitting that he's a virgin, I suppose. But I just never worked up the nerve to backpack alone...until yesterday. We're at the Chautauqua Institution again--my wife loves it here--and I had to get away from all the lectures to seek the silence of the woods. My sacred place isn't far from Chautauqua--the Allegheny National Forest--and so I went there. The top photo is Sugar Bay in the Allegheny Reservoir--a very remote location that's traversed by the North Country Trail and the Tracy Ridge Trail System. The second photo is my camp about 500 feet from the water's edge and a mile or two from the road. I bushwhacked to this location; no trail comes near it, but I saw it on a map and loved the isolated look of it.
I hiked this section of the North Country Trail some years ago, in winter. But I chose to come back with my backpack because it's one of the loneliest stretches of this great woods. I found the most level bit of ground I could for my camp, then went down to the water's edge to set up my hammock. This is the view from the hammock. Fishing boats did linger in nearby waters from time to time, and the voices of fishers carried out over the water. But all in all, the solitude was stupendous.
And it wasn't even a little bit spooky. There were owls in the cool night, and I had a fire after the sun went down. There was not another soul for miles and miles. The moonlight was radiant out over the water. Such an otherworldly beauty, especially at night. And I saw not a sprig of poison ivy in my whole time up here! Just before sunset, I bushwhacked to the top of a high hill behind my campsite in hopes of getting a text message off to my wife--just so she wouldn't worry. I tried to send four different texts, and only one got through. I didn't have cell service again until I was ten miles back inside New York State.
What's across the water over there, on the south side of Sugar Bay? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I did a lot of map research before selecting this spot, and I hope to return here by kayak someday. There's a boat ramp pretty close by, on PA 321.
There's no such thing as level ground in this part of the world, and though I slept like a baby, I was continuously sliding toward the lake. Oh, how I miss the Allegheny National Forest! I know it's being ravaged by the frackers, and to still live here would be to bear the pain of witnessing its rape. But this part of it is still pristine, almost primeval. In fact, there's some discussion of making the Allegheny National Recreation Area (the emptiest part of the forest, within the Tracy Ridge Trail System) into a federally designated wilderness area. I hope it succeeds; that would protect at least this large part of the forest from the fossil fuelers. And I need to know that this place is still here, still scented by ferns and hemlocks, still ringing with birdsong in the early morning, still waiting to redeem the sorrows that I bring to it, touching them gently and making of them new life.
