Old St. Luke's Episcopal Church

 Old St. Luke's Church is still owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, but nowadays it's really more of a museum than a parish church.  It doesn't have a congregation or a clergyperson, and the only "regular" service of worship that is still conducted there is an annual Easter "sunrise service" at 6:30am.  

 Click on photos to enlarge them.  This historic church--founded in 1765--stands above the valley of Chartiers Creek, just opposite Woodville Plantation.  Of course, the Neville Family of Virginia were Episcopalians (Church of England).  

 It's the oldest Episcopal church in the region, though the hardier Scotch-Irish founded many Presbyterian churches that are even older and still home to active congregations.  

Looking from the peaceful churchyard out across the valley of Chartiers Creek, the scene is far from bucolic.  You see I-79 screaming in the distance, and at the bottom of the valley, the worst kind of suburban development: a Wal-Mart, a Ford dealership, acres of parking lots, a busy tangle of streets.  There are bland housing subdivisions on the hills opposite.  

And yet, you can see what a beautiful area this once was, overlooking the broad valley with wooded hills on the opposite shore of the meandering creek.  The church has a website with some interesting historical information.  The cemetery is old and quite interesting, and apparently people still choose to get married here.  

The Unknowing

 A dragonfly's lifespan is twenty-four hours.  A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.  An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.  There are more chickens in the world than humans.  We're surrounded by unknowing.  

We see some of the galaxy's many stars, and we know that they are alien suns, but we don't know what planets and what life forms they may support.  Our knowledge exists like tiny atolls, like isolated islets in a vast ocean of unknowing.  It's the not knowing that makes life beautiful, mysterious, filled with majesty and wonder.  It's the darkness that I love.  I cherish it at least as much as the light.  

USS Requin

The USS Requin--(which is French for "shark")--is a World War II submarine.  It's docked as a museum in the Ohio River, Pittsburgh.  It's not very photogenic, but definitely worth a visit.    

 The interior is too cramped to photograph without a decent camera, which I don't have.  And it stinks.  I can't identify the strange odor inside this boat, but it's similar to tar, and very pervasive.  It gets into your clothes, and you smell it on yourself a full half hour after disembarking.  

 Of course, there were shipyards in Pittsburgh from colonial times up until the 1950s.  WWII battleships were constructed here, then sailed down the Ohio and out to sea through the Gulf of Mexico.  The Dravo Corporation constructed many military vessels on Neville Island.  There's also a little river town on the Monongahela called "Dravosburg"; I suspect ship-building was their thing, too.  

 There was a lot of stuff to photograph inside, and I caught so little on my iPhone.  Knobs, and levers, and gauges, and valves.  But I was mostly drawn to the little indications that people aboard this vessel were just trying to live normal lives.  They had books, and pictures from home, and pin-up posters of girls with flat butts in big, shapeless bathing suits.  Not at all "sexy" by modern standards, but a few months canned up inside this thing, and your standards are bound to deteriorate.  

This is looking up one of the chutes into an upper level.  Many portions of the submarine are off limits to the public.

May Flowers

 The woods are fragrant and bright with spring blossoms.  The dogwood is everywhere, and practically odorless, but something out there smells sweet.  There are more kinds of wildflowers than I could begin to know.  Some are considered invasive, like the non-native intruder known as "Japanese honeysuckle"--which is one of the most fragrant wildflowers.  

 I don't know the story behind this maple labeled "The Wedding Tree."  It sits alongside the road in the now-abandoned Main Picnic Area at Raccoon Creek.  I got turned around while bushwhacking today and ended up revisiting this forlorn section of the park.  It was actually kind of nice in early May.  

 When I was young--in the 1970s--our grandparents didn't allow us to climb dogwood trees.  They believed that the original cross of Christ was made of dogwood, and so climbing them was sacrilegious.  That's too bad because dogwoods are the perfect climbing tree for a kid.  They're small, and crooked, and manageable; they make much better climbing trees than crucifixion trees.   There probably aren't even dogwoods in Palestine, and I've never seen one tall and straight enough to make a decent cross.  And yet, they sometimes bloom during Eastertide, and the flowers are sort of cruciform...hence the legend here in Northern Appalachia.  

They claim that Raccoon Creek is botanically unique.  It's the easternmost limit for some Midwestern plants, and it's the westernmost limit for some Eastern plants.  It's not a perfect crossroads: truly Northern species--like the white birch--don't often extend this far south.  (You do occasionally see a nice white birch around here, but only few in the wild.)  I think the southernmost limit of many distinctly Northern plants is somewhere north of here.  Even sugar maples are much more abundant in the forests north of I-80, even though they're not exactly rare down here.  All the same, the park does offer a nice mix of Northern and Southern species, too.   

I followed an old, unmarked forest road away from the lake beach and up a steep grade on the edge of a deep ravine.  It's just a grassy little lane that passes through some lovely forest and crosses the main park road.  It eventually peters out in a far-flung meadow, and I got a little confused as I bushwhacked out of the area.  I ended up heading back toward the beach, but I thought I was headed away from it.  

It was kind of a trip...walking past things I should have known and not recognizing them, only to realize later where I'd been.  I like getting lost in a place I think I know well.  It reminds me that there's still so much to discover in the world; things and people we've known for years can still be seen with fresh eyes and rediscovered with wonder.  

 There were lots of fishers on the lake.  Although I keep to myself, I did enjoy seeing some other people in the park for a change.  In all, it feels like the place is gearing up for the summer.  The bait store is open, as is the boat rental shop.  There are maintenance workers and park rangers buzzing about, looking busy.  I even saw two older couples having romantic midday picnics, which warmed my heart.  The Parson's only picnic companion is James Salter's new novel, All That Is.  Unfortunately, it's almost certain to be the author's last, since he's in his mid-80s, and it's not as good as Light Years, but it's still Salter.  

Wild Chartiers Creek II

 Much of human history has been the attempt to control water.  Everything from the Spanish Armada to the gutters on your roof: the never-ending quest to make water your servant rather than your master.  Water has only one goal, which is to be where it is not.  Even seemingly still water is on its way back to the ocean.  But ocean water, too, is restless and forever lapping at the shore, evaporating into clouds, escaping to the earth only to return again, in time, to the sea.  That Great Ocean, Mother of All Life!  What earthbound being is not drawn to her pulse, her power, her finality?  

 I put the kayak in at the place where Mayview Road crosses Chartiers Creek, near the old guard booth at the main entrance of the now-mostly-demolished Mayview Hospital.  From there, I followed the gentle current most of the way into Bridgeville.  In places it was shallow and fast-moving, but it was a beautiful ride.  There were enormous blue herons among the sycamores; they would take flight on loud, rushing wings when they caught sight of me.  The fresh smell of the water reminded me of the ponds and brooks of my childhood where my brothers and I would wade, and swim, and fish.  Those little bodies of inland freshwater (and the freedom they represent) are still nearby, in terms of geography, but so far from the man I've become today.  And yet, even just the fishy, vegetable smell of the water can take me back there, touching my spirit with an old, old rush of freedom.  There were fishes darting beneath my little boat and a pleasant smell of creosote on the nearby railroad tracks.  The sunlight was warm and bright, but the soft breeze was cool.  It all combined to give me that springtime feeling of renewed youth.  You know, the one that makes you say, "Hell, I could just follow this stream all the way to the ocean..."  

I followed Chartiers Creek much further than I should have.  The paddle back toward my car--against that seemingly "gentle" current--was not easy.  In places, I had to get out and walk the kayak through the forceful current.  The riverbanks smell like ramps--which we call "wild leeks" up north.  They're a woodsy mix between garlic and onion, and early May is prime ramp-digging season.  I paused to collect a few, then finally gave up on fighting the current.  Instead, I dragged my little boat up onto the tracks and followed them back to the car.  Earlier, when I was still drifting idly downstream, a small train labeled "Central Ohio Railroad" passed on the tracks.  A quick Wikipedia search tells me that the Central Ohio was purchased by the Baltimore & Ohio in the late 1800s.  The B & O--in turn--got swallowed up by the company we now know as "CSX Transportation."  Was that little train a ghost?

The west bank of the creek is kept relatively free of development by the presence of the railroad track and a steep valley wall.  I was pleased to find that the east bank is mostly wooded, too.  As I was looking for a place to put my kayak into Chartiers, I came across a new discovery: There's a nice stretch of protected land along the east bank known as the Wingfield Pines Preserve, an outpost of the Allegheny Land Trust.  It's mostly a place where detestable, entitled suburbanites let their dogs run off the leash, but it combines with Boyce Mayview Park to ensure a good bit of open country on the banks of this historic creek--which is otherwise so threatened by suburban sprawl.