Sunday, June 16, 2013

The Strip Mines

 I call this place "Appalachia Beach."  It's the homestead in Venango County where my wife grew up.  
 This tired old land has been strip-mined so many times that I almost can't believe there's anything left to dig for.  And yet, here they are...digging again.  Strip mining, in the long run, is less destructive than longwall mining.  And yet, stripping completely obliterates the human and natural history of a place.   Even the best reclaimed strip mine is a treeless earth-scar, a scrubland for at least three decades.  
 Apparently there's one vein of coal at one level, then there's another vein at a lower level.  That's why they pillage the same landscape several times.  But they don't stop there.  Beneath all the coal, there's Marcellus shale gas, and beneath that, there's Utica shale gas.  
Energy companies promise that they'll be suckling on this land's teat for decades to come.  They don't mention the fact that they send all their money back to Texas--along with all the frack employees that they brought here to do the job--leaving the poor people of this poisoned place to die early deaths in the toxic sludge they leave behind.  I wish to hell they'd finally give it a rest.  I hate the native sympathizers worse than the alien occupiers themselves....

As a kid, my brothers and I used to play in the strip mines, and to this day I have to admit that they hold a kind of fascination for me that hearkens back to my childhood: the lunar landscapes, the barrenness, the unnatural topographies.  Back then, they were a place of adventure and discovery.  They could easily look like the landscapes I was reading about in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  (C'mon, I was a kid; I've long since outgrown hobbits.)  It's the murky water that has always haunted me.  From earliest boyhood, I used to have nightmares about what might be lurking beneath the cloudy water in the strip mines.  

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Oliver Miller Homestead, 1772

There is a historic farm on the grounds of South Park.  It figures prominently in the history of the Whiskey Rebellion, which took place in the 1790s mainly here in the South Hills of Pittsburgh.  The homestead does reenactments and demonstrations, but it was closed today when I happened to be in the park.  It looks like it might be worth a visit, and it's cheap: only $2 when there's an event and $1 when there's no event.  I came across a lady working in the vegetable garden who told me that they largely grew things that could be kept through the winter, like carrots, squashes, parsnips, turnips, and potatoes.  That's kind of the direction I'm going with my garden this year, too.

William Hogeland's recent popular history of the Whiskey Rebellion implicates Oliver Miller in igniting the incident which set off the armed uprising.  It took place right here at his farm.  

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

A Place Away From the Light

 Summer is my least favorite time to be in the forest.  It's really too bad.  I wait for summer all year.  When a dreary winter stretches out all the way through May--as it did this year--I long for summer.  I yearn for it like a lover.  
 But then when it gets here, it brings mosquitoes, and biting flies, and poison ivy.  It brings overgrown trails and all that goddamn light.  Endless, merciless, all-invading light.  They've been promising us rain since last Saturday, but all we get is this blinding, glaring, soul-destroying sunlight.  The grass is already starting to turn brown.  
 My thought today was to get onto the Forest Trail where it crosses PA 18 and head west until the trail crosses over Traverse Creek--pictured above.  From there, I wanted to bushwhack along the creek until I came to the place (far from any path) where Little Service Run flows into it.  It looked like a great trek on the map: a place to myself, at the confluence of two streams, deep in the forest.
But now that summer is well underway, the stream banks are so overgrown that bushwhacking was out of the question.  I'll have to try it again sometime in the late fall or winter.  Down here in the southern part of the state, all this searingly hot light penetrates to the floor of these patchy forests.  Unlike the forests just forty miles north of here, these southerly woods lack a dense, rich canopy to keep the forest floor dark; all kinds of undergrowth springs up.  I just want a place away from the light.  

Saturday, June 1, 2013

The Great Allegheny Passage

 This is the Great Allegheny Passage, a "rail trail."  It's an old railroad bed that's been converted to a beautiful, level path for bikers and walkers.  It runs from The Point at downtown Pittsburgh, through the mountains, into Maryland, and then all the way to Washington, DC.  
 Railroads often follow rivers, and this one was no exception.  The GAP begins following the Monongahela, then at McKeesport it branches off to follow the Youghiogheny--known locally as "The Yawk."  It passes through some very scenic and historic spots, like the old Dravo Cemetery at the site of the now-defunct Dravo Methodist Church, in the equally extinct river town of Dravo.  
 Click photos to enlarge them.  
 Because this was a group outing, I planned this trip with some intentionality.  There's a little outfitter on the Yawk, just outside McKeesport, known as Ted's Peddler's Village.  Their website sucks, but they provide an awesome service. For $5, they'll rent you a bike to ride 6 miles up the GAP to the little hamlet of Buena Vista.  From there, for $25, you can take one of their kayaks or canoes back downriver to your car.  It's about a three-hour boat ride with the gentle current flowing circuitously northward.  It's called a "pedal paddle," and both the trail and the peaceful water are great, with wooded shores on both sides and little islands in the river.   
 They'll let you use your own boat for a $15 shuttle fee...which is what I did.  They said that if you go on a weekday, you'll probably have the river to yourself.  I traveled with a group on a Saturday, and it was still utterly serene.  Though the water does get pleasantly choppy in a few shallow spots.  
 We stopped for lunch at a shadeless island with a shallow channel on one side and a navigable channel on the other.  It's always fun to take the narrower channel around an island.  
Long before the American Revolution, George Washington hoped that the Yawk would provide a good route from the valley of the Potomac to the headwaters of the Ohio.  The river proved too treacherous for his purposes, but it sure works for mine.  

A Stolen Moment

 I know this means I'm a dork, but there's a place in the forest where I sometimes go to pray.  If you enter at the wrong spot, it can take an hour to get there.  But if you find the right entry point (which I finally did), it's only half-an-hour's trek into the woods.  Unless you ride a horse or a mountain bike, the only way is by foot.
 When I say that I "pray," I don't mean that I speak to some Imaginary Friend for Grownups.  I no longer think of God as a person with intentions and plans...aside from a general and all-embracing tendency toward healing and transformation that is always at work in the world.  Prayer, for me, is simply directing my thoughts and silences to the life of the world around me, embracing the profound Mystery, naming it, welcoming it into my consciousness.  This is who and what God is for me: Life, Love, Joy. 
There's precious little "virgin territory" left for me at Raccoon Creek, but I found some on my prayer trek.  The Appaloosa Spur Trail is mainly for equestrians, but it takes you from a small public road to the main "Raccoon Loop," which is the backpacking trail that encircles the entire park.  When it's dry--as it is these days--hikers can follow the horse trails, but when it's wet, keep away.  The hooves make all the "shared use" trails muddy and impassable.

The park is busy again with hikers, and campers, and picnickers, and swimmers.  It was strange to find so many people enjoying my solitary getaway--a place where I take refuge year-round--but I was glad for it.  At least I had this far-flung corner of the park to myself.  The old deer stand in this tree is surely leftover from the days when this part of the park was still private property.