Temple Rodef Shalom, Pittsburgh

What can I say?  I'm just a guy who likes Jewish temples.  But I also like mosques...and churches.  I'm into religious architecture because it's so ambitious.  It tries to convey a sense of the numinous.  Religious buildings are more intentional than other structures in their attempt to create a distinct atmosphere.  They're self-consciously artistic.  Even if you don't believe in their myths and traditions, religious edifices are works of art, intended to evoke a feeling.  

 Temple Rodef Shalom is the oldest synagogue in the western half of the state, and it's a pretty cool building no matter what your spiritual or architectural preference.  It's built right up against Fifth Avenue, in the Oakland neighborhood.  For that reason, it's hard to photograph unless you cross the street and manage to snap a shot when there are no cars passing...which means 3am on a Sunday morning.  

 In terms of sheer grandeur, it doesn't compare to its elder sister and near-namesake in Philadelphia, Congregation Rodeph Shalom, which is a truly gorgeous building. But this is the hub of Reform Judaism in Pittsburgh and the largest congregation of any Jewish sect out here in Western PA.   

The interior is even harder to photograph than the exterior.  It's just too dark inside for my iPhone to capture.    I took lots of nice pictures, but none of them came out.  I consider myself lucky that blurry photos are the worst I got for snooping around on such sacred ground.  I think Judaism is a rich and beautiful spiritual path.  But let's face it, Moses would have a bloke like me stoned right quickly...and when I say "stoned," I'm not talking about anything harmless and pleasant. 

Fading Fast

          October 20 was the peak day for fall foliage here in Southwestern Pennsylvania.  It's all downhill from here.  Further north, the trees are already mostly bare.  Ours is the so-called "mixed mesophytic forest" type that (like Scotch-Irish settlement and influence) stretches from Pittsburgh--at its most northerly and easterly point--through the highlands and all the way down to the northern tip of Alabama.  Pittsburgh is where the great hardwood forests of the North meet with trees that are more common in the Midwest and South.  It makes for a less grand canopy than elsewhere in the state, but it is nice that the leaves linger this late into October.

October

          Sweet October, how many times have I fallen--exhausted--into your kind embrace?  Mysterious, lovely, as much for the nose as for the eyes, I would give all my Julys and the Januarys for a year of Octobers.  Would that all of life could be a tramp in the October countryside.  

          I love what I do in life, but sometimes I wonder why I didn't throw myself into other things.  "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," and I took the one most traveled by, because I didn't have enough energy, intelligence, imagination, or love to do anything else.  No, actually, all I really lacked was self-esteem.  Will the road-less-traveled-by still be there, waiting for me, when I return?  Or was that my last chance?  I chose the path of least resistance.  I was young, with no responsible adults to guide me.  And sometimes you  let the current carry you so far down a certain stream that there's never any question of swimming back to where you started.    

McConnell's Mill State Park

 The deep gorge of Slippery Rock Creek makes McConnell's Mill State Park one of the most beautiful in Western Pennsylvania.  I have vague memories of this place from earliest childhood.  

 A pleasant, two-hour hike is to park at Eckert Bridge, hike alongside the stream to the old mill and covered bridge, then hike back on the opposite side.  

 Most people who visit the park linger in the northeastern tip, near the mill and the covered bridge.  These are nice spots.  I especially like Kildoo Road, where it passes through all the boulders (not pictured here).  But there's actually a lot more to the place.  Hikers can discover some beautiful backcountry out around the region of the park known as Walnut Flats and along Hell Run.  

 The mill is scenic enough, though I prefer trees.  It doesn't seem to have a water wheel.  

 The park consists of six separate tracts, five of which are unknown to pretty much everyone but hunters.  One of my lesser goals on this trek was Cleland Rock overlook, but I never got there because the bridge on Breakneck Bridge Road--fittingly enough--was out.  It looks like it's been "out" for decades.  

 Unlike Breakneck Bridge, the covered bridge still carries traffic.  There's nothing unusual about it, except maybe its length.  It's like many covered bridges that you find down in Washington County, PA.  Local legend says--if I recall correctly--that if you drive across the bridge at night and turn off your headlights on the bridge, you can look into your rearview mirror and see in your backseat the ghosts of two Amish boys who drowned in the stream years ago.    

Cheeseman is an ugly name for the pretty road that meanders down the side of the gorge to Eckert Bridge, at the bottom.  There are no guardrails, and it is a very steep drop.  Unfortunately, there's no camping in the park, though the North Country Trail passes through.  

Moraine, North Beach

It's empty.  It's silent.  It's better in the fall than in the summer.  

Moraine State Park

Had a spectacular hike along the Glacier Ridge Trail (aka, the North Country Trail) at Moraine.  Not another soul on the trail for miles.   

I've always avoided Moraine as a hiking destination because I took a hike there about six years ago and found that the trail ran alongside a noisy public roadway.  That was in the far northeastern corner of the park, where the parkland is a narrow finger of woods projected into farmland and residential areas.  Now I know enough to research my hikes a little more carefully before setting off.  This one was way better. 

If you park near the gated Link Road (which is deceptively named, since it's a dead end that links exactly nothing), you could follow the old road to its end.  

There you'll see a pathway into the woods on the right.  It goes past three hiking shelters and up to a forested ridgeline.  There it joins up with the North Country Trail.  

The shelter village was a nice discovery.  I didn't know that overnighting was allowed anywhere at Moraine, aside from the cabins and group tenting areas.  

The North Country runs along the ridge for about two and a half miles before descending onto Mount Union Road, where I turned back.  The trail crosses the lane and continues.  There's obviously a lot more to discover at Moraine.  On the whole, I think the north shore of the lake offers more possibilities than the south.  

Windy City, PA

           I remember this place as the ghost town of Windy City, Pennsylvania.  The photo was taken in the summer of 2009.  That's all I know about it.  I never labeled it, and so here we stand.  It's just a nameless place, somewhere up North, where (in many ways) my heart still is.  Probably Windy City.  You can tell where the town used to be because of the trees planted alongside the road, all in rows, and the domestic flowers that still bloom in former yards, where oil derricks crank away noisily.  

           I truly believe that forgetfulness occurs in increments of three years.  I can remember last summer, and if pressed, the summer before that.  But three summers ago?  That's where things begin to get hazy.  More than three years ago is the territory of dreams, and visions, and imagination.  I do recall things from as early as thirty-eight years ago, but they're more the property of dreams than of reality.  I was a child, and the visions were childish. Did those things really happen?  Shouldn't there have been some responsible adults around to make sure things were better than the way I remember? 

          Ah, but "The wind listeth where it will."  Isn't that right, Windy City?  

The North Side, Pittsburgh

           It's hard to photograph the neighborhoods on the North Side of Pittsburgh because the streets are so narrow, and the houses are so close together.  There are lots of lush, healthy trees that block the view of the beautiful townhouses, too.

           This is Western Avenue, which like much of the North Side, can be pretty gritty in places.  It also has enormous, lovely old houses, many of which are just waiting to be claimed by some aesthetic dreamer who loves the urban life.  Others, like these, have been lovingly restored.  I think the North Side is the most truly "urban" area of Pittsburgh.  It's got blight.  It's got gentrification.  It's got gorgeous old architecture falling into disrepair.  It's got one of the coolest urban parks in the city, as well as some great cultural institutions: The Andy Warhol Museum, the Mattress Factory (a modern art museum in a line of rowhouses), the National Aviary, the Children's Museum, the Carnegie Science Center, Heinz Field and PNC Park, where the Steelers and Pirates play.

           The North Side is Pittsburgh's Brooklyn.  It's just across the Allegheny River from downtown.  It's got tree-lined avenues with brick and brownstone mansions.  Fortunately, people are seeing the charm in this part of town, and it's experiencing some major renewal.

           My favorite street--perhaps in the whole city--is Beech Avenue.  And though I couldn't get a very good shot of it, my favorite house on that street is the dark stone house in the photo just above.  It's shaded and elaborately sculptured.  It's still stained with the soot of bygone days, when Pittsburgh was the industrial city par excellence...days that nobody misses.

          In fact, maybe it's just a single block of Beech Avenue that I love.  Some of it--as above--is nice but relatively unexceptional.  These brick rowhouses are of the same style that you find in the Lawrenceville and Bloomfield neighborhoods.  In fact, this looks almost exactly like an intersection that I know near Rittenhouse Square in Philly.  Sometimes I think I could give up the acre of grass to live in a neighborhood like this.  

Bushy Run Battlefield

           My wife asked on the phone, "Where are you hiking today?"  I replied, "Bushy Run," and waited for some signal of recognition...but there was none.  She's an educated woman, but she probably hasn't heard of Bushy Run since 7th grade history class.  I never understand people who don't care about history, but when I do my weekly treks out into the Big World, my inner history buff often struggles with my inner treehugger.  One urges me to explore historic sites, and the other mainly wants wilderness.  Ironically enough, the treehugger usually kicks the history buff's ass.  But not today.  On this day, the history buff scored a rare victory and led me to Westmoreland County for a history trek instead of a nature hike...

           And yet, it turned out to be both.  There's enough nature here for most folks.  This is where the Battle of Bushy Run took place in August of 1763, more than a decade prior to the American Revolution.  It's exactly an hour from where I live...if traffic is light.  In the mid-1750s, the British had promised the Indians that they would cease westward expansion if the Indians supported them against the French.  But at the close of the French and Indian War, after the Indians had shed their blood in support of the British cause, settlers kept pouring over the Alleghenies, and British forts were not abandoned.  An Indian war, usually known as "Pontiac's Uprising," took place.  It was an attempt to push the whites back east of the mountains, and it began with attacks on the fort at Detroit, which stood strong.  Most smaller western forts were taken by bands of Ottawas and Hurons.  Soldiers and settlers were brutally tortured and murdered.  Here in more easterly places, the Shawnees and Delawares, who had recently fought alongside the English, now fought against them.  They sacked the forts at modern-day Waterford, Franklin, and Presque Isle.  In order to protect Fort Pitt--at Pittsburgh--General Henry Bouquet was sent west from Philadelphia with a small army.  He was ambushed by Indians on the crest of Edge Hill, seen here.  After two days of battle, he fought them off and continued to Pittsburgh.

            The problem with hiking at a place like Bushy Run Battlefield is that you might just show up to find school buses in the parking lot...which I did.  The lady at the visitors' center sent me away until the school group completed their tour.  She told me to come back after they left.  I hiked the woods and fields by myself and never did go back to the little museum.  I stayed away partly out of mean-spiritedness.  I've heard the employees at other historic sites--most notably the Fort Pitt history museum--talking fretfully about the number of visits they'd had on a given day.  Every warm body counts in the history business.  By not going back, I wanted to show them that they'd chased off a paying customer... (I admit that I can be kind of petty when I feel slighted.)

            It's a scenic place, crisscrossed by a labyrinth of trails through pleasant woods.  There are nice, rolling green hills and broad, grassy fields.  If the goal was to spend a crisp day in the autumnal countryside, a day of solitude and discovery, then it can be counted a great success.  If the goal was wilderness and sylvan grandeur, then I'm afraid it was a hardly achieved.

          This bottom photo shows the famous Forbes Road, one of the earliest ways through the wilderness of Western Pennsylvania.  The top photo is the site where Bouquet erected a small fort out of flour bags at the summit of Edge Hill.  As for the little log house, there was no sign of any kind to explain it, though it clearly isn't 250 years old.

Pioneer Area, Raccoon Creek

           The fall season has me thinking again about going alone into the woods to do a vision quest.  It's a spooky prospect.  Besides, the only place where backcountry camping is permitted in the immediate region is in certain areas along the backpacking loop at Raccoon Creek State Park.  Backpacking in Raccoon Creek is kind of like going to the "China section" of Epcot Center and saying that you've been to China.  Yes, there is some genuineness about the place, some real Chinese people, and artifacts, and sights.  But you can step away from it at any moment.  (Much of South Florida feels like a third world country in a seriously cool and interesting kind of way; who needs Epcot?)  At Raccoon, the backpacking loop goes almost 20 miles, but it encircles the park and runs relatively close to public roads in too many places.  If you really needed to, you could bushwhack across short stretches of trackless forest and be at somebody's kitchen door in very little time.

           That's to say, at Raccoon, you might hike a whole day to get from the parking lot to your rustic campsite, but that doesn't mean that you're a whole day's trek into the woods.  You could be an eighth of a mile from a paved road, with attendant traffic.  And you'll feel remote, but you'll hear the occasional cars passing.  For being 35 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh, Raccoon is great.  It's pretty enough, with lots of untrammeled woods.  But wilderness it is not.  Noisome airplanes are forever ascending or descending in the sky just overhead, since Pittsburgh Airport is several miles due east.

          Backpackers into Raccoon have to reserve either a tent site or an Adirondack shelter in the "Sioux" or the "Pioneer" areas, both in the lonelier western reaches of the park.  Last week I checked out the backpacking campsites at the more accessible Sioux camping area.  They were sufficient, if a little close together.  The woods in that area is flat and relatively young.  Today I went into the Pioneer area, which is considerably further afield and can only be reached on foot...or bike...or horseback. Pioneer is far more scenic than Sioux, and Shelter #5 is the most remote.  The problem with doing a vision quest so close to home is that there is a real risk that you'll show up at your backpacking site only to meet your backcountry neighbors...and their dogs.