Just One Night at Buzzard Swamp, ANF

After a quick little backyard wedding on Saturday, I slipped out of the city on back roads passing through hilly farmlands and quiet old towns--up, up, up to the North Country near Marienville.  There's a lesser-known spot up there in the Allegheny National Forest that bears the dreary name of Buzzard Swamp.  This is just one of a few neglected campsites, which see little use.

Buzzard Swamp is anything but a dreary place.  It's a large area of mostly open meadows with a series of about 13 large ponds created as a habitat for birds and fish.  There are many smaller ponds, bogs, and meres, too.  On the downside, fresh-flowing water is scarce, so you need to pack it in.  And there are bugs aplenty.  The deerflies are especially fierce.  But they mostly go for your face and hands, so you'll be okay if you spray with insect repellent and wear a wide-brimmed hat topped off with a mosquito net.  I love my mosquito net.  I call it "The Minister's Black Veil," in reference to the short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Buzzard Swamp was a lovely place to arrive at 5:30pm on a sunny Saturday, just after a rain shower.

I've been to Buzzard Swamp many times, and I've always wanted to work up the nerve to camp there.  I don't know why, but the openness of the landscape always spooked me a little.  I'm a woodland creature.  I like to take shelter under trees.  Where grass and sky replace tree cover, I feel exposed.  Buzzard Swamp has a small network of foot and bike trails--about 11 miles--that are only lightly traveled.  Non-motorized boating is allowed on all the bodies of water, though I've never once seen a canoe or kayak here.  Maybe because you'd have to carry your boat about one mile from the parking lot.  This place only seems to get busy in the fall and in the spring when hunters and fishers come out. 

But I knew of a little spot just inside the woods that looked out over the grassy meadow and one of the larger ponds.  The opening into my forest campsite faces northeast, and so I sat just inside the trees and watched as golden sunlight faded off the water, and the woodland shadows grew deep all around me.

Back in olden times, I used to bring a bike and ride among the ponds.  But that was before I ever started backpacking.  Now I come and wander on foot.  I only had one night to give this place, but it was enough.

These photos are out of sequence, but the days of fastidious woodland reporting are long behind me, aren't they?  This shot peeps into the trees from the grassy path.  The campsite is nicely tucked away and sheltered from wind, and sun, and rain.  

Click on this photo to enlarge it.  This is the view from my collapsible chair among the trees.  There's a deer out in the water nibbling on something beneath the surface.  It must be pretty shallow in that spot.  There were ospreys, and ducks, and geese, and hawks, and songbirds without number, all soaring over acres of cattails and fragrant clover.  I almost hesitate to tell the world that this place exists...but I think I could publish the nuclear codes on this blog and their secret would still be safe.  

I slept better here than I've ever slept in the woods--except with a hammock.  (I'm a recent convert to hammock backpacking, though I don't yet have all the gear, and it's a good thing I brought the tent on this trip because of all the bugs.)  This is a 6:30am shot of the misty morning light.  It made me so happy, after all these years away, to learn that this southerly quadrant of the ANF is exactly 2 hours from where I live--if you avoid the interstates and take the meandering PA 28 up through New Bethlehem.  I've always thought the ANF was more like 2 hours and 40 minutes...but that's because I used to live in the more northerly reaches of the forest.  Two hours seems pretty manageable.  Just jump in the car at 2:00 in the afternoon and go!  It's as if this place was never taken from me in the first place...

Nightfall.  See how the light lingers out over the meadows and ponds while it's already dark inside the trees.  My as-yet-un-hoisted bear bag dangles in the middle distance.  Buzzard Swamp is a beautiful place, one of my long-time hiking favorites and now a new camping favorite.  It reminds me of a book I used to read to my daughters when they were little and we lived up there, Bear's Water Picnic.  It was so nice to retreat into the landscape of a children's book for a night and half a day.