North Country Trail, Moraine State Park, Part II

 I can't believe my good luck.  Yesterday was my day off, and I spent it hiking a section of the great North Country Trail through Moraine State Park, Butler County.  Today, my work took me to a very long, boring meeting at a conference center near Slippery Rock--also in Butler County.  

 After putting in a 3-hour appearance, it became pretty obvious that nobody would miss me for the rest of the meeting, so I skipped out early and went back to do the next segment of the North Country Trail: that part that runs between Alexander Ridge Road and PA 528.  

It's a beautiful hike that climbs up and down the sides of many small stream valleys, or "hollows."  There's an abundance of large, graceful beech trees in this part of the forest, with their smooth gray bark.  But the highlight along this portion of the NCT is Trout Cove, a quiet little inlet on Lake Arthur.  The water here is calm and murky with algae and lily pads.  

North Country Trail, Moraine State Park, Part I

          I hiked one segment of the North Country Trail through Moraine State Park last fall, and of course, I've hiked parts of the NCT on its long passage through the Allegheny National Forest.  Some autumn season, I'd like to backpack it from McConnell's Mill State Park all the way to the New York State line, but until that day, I'm confined to short segments at a time.

       Last year, I went from the NCT Adirondack shelters near Link Road all the way east to Mount Union Road.  Today, I began where I left off last time--at Mt. Union--and continued east into new territory all the way to Alexander Ridge Road.  I'm thinking my next trek will be from Alex Ridge to PA 528.  The Davis Hollow Marina--above--was pleasant on a Wednesday morning in late September.  I've heard that Lake Arthur was created out of strip mines and farms mainly to give Pittsburghers a place to go sailing.

       Davis Hollow Cabin is either a cut stone house with a log addition or a log house with a stone addition. The latter seems more likely, especially since the literature says that the older part of the house was constructed in the 1770s, prior to the American Revolution.  It belongs to the North Country Trail Association, and the place looks awfully cozy; it's definitely set up to welcome backpackers, though there was nobody there when I stopped by.

       I was under the impression that the house (it's not a cabin in the strictest sense) was the main headquarters of the NCT Association, but I might have been wrong about that.  It is surrounded by level areas for tents, cords of firewood, and places for people to lounge outside.  What would I give for a place like this?  Much.  Very much indeed.

       I don't know the name of the small pond that greeted me on the NCT just a few hundred feet east of the Mount Union Road trailhead, but it was a pleasant find.  It's always such a joy to happen upon a pond in the forest, especially in the fall when colorful trees reflect on calm water.  I think I'll just call it "Mount Union Pond."  The road seems to be named for a small cemetery with some pretty old headstones.  The cemetery, in turn, is probably named after some pioneer church (undoubtedly Presbyterian) that is no more.  The pond is pictured above and also in the top photo.

      I went too Raccoon Creek again this past Sunday, and so many trees were blighted with fungal infections that I decided to drive 55 minutes up to Moraine today.  It was worth the haul.  I always say the forests are taller, and straighter, and more confident upstate.

Swearingen Cemetery

 This lovely tree, which looks plenty ominous in the winter and early spring, is beautiful in early fall.  The narrow lane known as Nichol Road meanders beneath it, not even wide enough for most cars.  It's an equestrian's bridle path, for the most part.  Formerly a public thoroughfare.  I have a painter friend who could probably make a nice painting from this photo... I'd sure like to know what kind of tree this is.  My best guess is walnut, though there were no nuts on the ground beneath it.

 Nichol Road is a funny place.  In some spots, it's a nice gravel road that could still accommodate cars, but in other places it's little more than a footpath.  It runs through some scenic country--if you go at the right time of year.  I always think of it as a wintertime place with a slightly eerie feel about it, but that's just because my first visit there was in March when all the trees were dormant, and skies were gray.

The goldenrod is abuzz with bumble bees and other pollinators, though I didn't see any honeybees.  It was a chilly fall morning, and the forest had that sweet, memory-laden scent of rotting leaves.  On the Buckskin and Pinto trails, a lot of ugly blowdowns compromised the beauty of the early autumn forest.  Most of the damage looked recent.  

I'd always been curious about a public lane known as "Swearingen Road."  I used to wonder if it was so named because some kind of "swearing-in ceremony" once took place there.  But no, apparently there are (or have been) in this world people with the surname of "Swearingen."  (There is a village called "Schweringen," which sits halfway between Bremen and Hanover; I wonder if the Family name is an Anglicization?)  They were early settlers of this countryside, and the road is named for them.  Exploring the backroad named in their honor, I came across this curious marker standing at the roadside.  I did not see any headstones, only woods and fields.

It reads: "Swearingen Cemetery: Victims of the last Indian murder in Beaver County are buried here.  Samuel Swearingen settled here in 1785, and in 1790 near this site, his only daughter, Mary, wife of Jacob Colvin, and her infant child were scalped and killed.  They are buried here in the family plot."  

Ghosts of Summer

 It's an early autumn heatwave in Southwest Pennsylvania, though the leaves continue to fade into tints of yellow.  In the wild western marches of Raccoon Creek Park, where the Palomino Trail leaves Nichol Road, it plunges into the woods then skirts the edge of a pleasant hayfield.

 A little gravel lane known as Sipp Drive runs past a few farms and ends at the park boundary; once inside the park, the old roadbed becomes the Palomino Trail.  It's a strange juncture in the forest, near the edge of a hayfield: a pleasant place in the sunny late morning, but I imagine that it becomes eerie as nightfall encroaches.  

I recently discovered another blog that explores the Keystone State, but it differs from S&J in two significant ways: the other blogger covers a much wider territory than I do, and he is especially (though not exclusively) interested in the creepy and unexplainable.  Looking over his blog made me particularly sensitive to any eerieness that might be lurking out there in the woods...even though I came across precious little.

~~

Pennsylvania is apparently perceived by outsiders as a slightly spooky place.  I've recently discovered the fiction of John Gardner, a New Yorker who ended up living (and dying young) in the Northern Tier of our state.  His books were popular in the 70s and early 80s.  I first read his novel October Light, which was set in my all-time favorite state, Vermont.  He captures the essence of the place beautifully.  Then I read his novel Nickel Mountain, which is set in Upstate New York.  That place, too, he describes with perfect precision.  Currently, I'm reading Mickelsson's Ghosts, his novel set in Pennsylvania.  While I admit that he depicts the place accurately--right down to the local accent--he adds a touch of ghostliness that makes me think, "Oh, yeah, he's right about that, isn't he?"

 I did indeed return to the unmapped trail system that I discovered last week and followed the trail that runs alongside Little Service Run.  The bugs were almost unbearable, and the path disappeared in many spots.  But that's the advantage to following a creek; you can never get lost.

And it was a rewarding trek.  It led me to a place on the stream where little bronze fishes darted nervously in the sunlight-dappled water.  The sugar maple at the edge of the water is in a hurry for the fall.  By the time October arrives, it will already be fast asleep.  

Paths of Destiny

 Someone once said, "Pick a career that you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life."  I don't think it's true.  You might enjoy many--even most--aspects of your job, but you'll still have deadlines, and time constraints, and personnel issues, and difficult personalities to cope with, and unimaginable stresses.  I truly do love my work, but I find myself up to the neck in work-related politics that I despise.  They make me want to take up residence in a hollow tree deep in the forest.  

The French folklorist, Jean de la Fontaine, said: "Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it."  I selected my career, at least in small part, because it looked like a quiet way to live out my years.  In the same way, I chose to live in suburban Pittsburgh--in part--to escape the horrors of fracking.  Some things cannot be escaped.  My job, if done faithfully and well, puts me at the forefront of political battles.  And the location of my home requires me to become even more invested in the struggle against fracking.  Even the hollow trees and the forests are in danger, and so I feel compelled to remain engaged in the activism and the very politics that I most hate.  When a young George Washington ran his imperial errands on this land in the fall of 1753, all was silent.  All was still.  All was water, and wood, and light.  But even then, politics was afoot.  The many were vying for their piece of the woodland pie, the Virginians against the Pennsylvanians, the French Empire against the British Empire, the Delaware Tribe against the Iroquois Federation.  Even then, this as-yet-unpolluted land was already under the curse of diplomacy and subterfuge.  

The Beaver Meadow

 Sometimes the person you sleep beside every night will show you an unfamiliar side of herself (or himself)--a whole hidden dimension--that you never knew was there.  One of life's great joys is discovering new possibilities in the same old places where you thought you knew it all.  It's true in relationships, and it's especially true in the forest.  Today's was a trek much like the others.  With an early autumn chill in the air, I struck off to Raccoon Creek with a map, a stick, and a bottle of water.  

 Maybe it was the way the sun was angled.  Maybe it was the way I had to watch for muddy spots caused by horse hooves along the Palomino Trail--in the remote western half of the park.  Whatever the reason, as I walked along, I glanced into the side brush in a relatively familiar spot and noticed an unmarked, barely perceptible spur trail leading down into a hollow.  I decided to scrap my hiking plans and follow the unknown way.  It was as if a once-invisible gate had suddenly revealed itself, opening up a whole new segment of woodlands to discover.  Perhaps, like Brigadoon, the portal into this sylvan zone only appears when all the cosmic factors are in alignment?  

The unmarked path led into a vast quadrant of the forest that I'd never before explored.  At first, it seemed as if the narrow track would peter out in the weeds, but it kept going lower and lower, following the bed of a dry run down the side of the hill.  Soon, instead of fading out, the nameless trail became broader and led me to a dark, spacious part of the forest--in an area that the maps show to be trackless.  It led through scenic woods, tall trees, lots of maples, all the way down to an old beaver meadow along a body of water that I took to be Little Service Run.  

When you first spy the meadow through the trees--middle photo--you slow your pace, assuming that you've stumbled out of the park and into private pastureland.  I began to sneak toward the clearing because I didn't want some farmer's dog to attack me.  But no, this is still public land: a grassy glade in a creek valley with an old, disused beaver lodge.  Yet another unmapped trail breaks off from this one, just as it opens onto the meadow.  This second mystery trail seems to follow Little Service Run toward its confluence with Traverse Creek.  Alas, I had to save it for a future trek.  I suspect that a single person on a horse is responsible for the existence of these trails; they're clearly equestrian paths, narrow and peppered with little landmines for hikers.  Note to future self: the barely noticeable trail that seems to follow the creek begins just to the right of the spot where a thorny branch blocks the road.