More Thoughts about Kayaking Chartiers Creek

 The cool thing about kayaking is that it gives you someplace to escape to when you're stuck doing things you don't love.  Whether I'm working at my desk, moderating some fruitless argument about administrative details, absently pondering my reply to some email, or forcing myself to be creative and productive on a deadline, I can always slip away--in my mind--to some recent cruise down the Chartiers.  You might think I'm all ears, that you have my undivided attention, but in reality, I'm gliding over rocks, choosing my channel between shallow rapids, drifting in the shade of sycamores.  That's the only reason I keep a blog anyway: to revisit my adventures.  (I'm not narcissistic enough to believe that anyone out there is waiting for me to update my blog.) 

Actually, I've been doing a lot of research about Chartiers Creek online.  There's a faithful handful of people who care about it and who work to mitigate the industrial damage that's been done to it.  Water quality is a big issue for a stream like this one, whose headwaters are up in the coalfields and frackfields, and whose mouth opens into the Ohio after passing through old milltowns with their dead and dying factories and their woefully outdated infrastructures--including their methods of sewage treatment and discharge.  The efforts of these conservationists have gone a long way toward restoring a waterway that used to run orange with industrial waste.  But there's a lot of room for improvement.

In places, the Chartiers looks like the Los Angeles River: canalized and enclosed by concrete pylons and ugly cement walls.  In other places, quite nearby, the same stream could almost pass for some little-known waterway deep in the wilderness.  I'm also thinking about tackling the Raccoon Creek, out in Beaver County--not the lake inside the state park, but the actual stream that the park is named for, which only touches the park's easternmost edge.  It's apparently navigable into June, and after a good rain.  The Raccoon is supposedly wilder than the Chartiers but also a little less accessible and often obstructed by fallen trees.  I know a good put-in spot near Kramer Road at Hillman State Park.

I like using the definite article before the name of a creek or stream: "the Raccoon," "the Chartiers."  It sounds vaguely knowledgeable, as if I'm an old riverhand.  Anybody out there ever kayak Raccoon Creek?  Not the lake at Raccoon Creek State Park, but the creek itself?

Kayaking Chartiers Creek: The Heidelberg to Carnegie Oxbow

This is Chartiers Creek, where it separates Heidelberg (on the far side of the bridge) from Carnegie.  The trouble with kayaking on moving water is that you don't end up where you started, so you need someone to taxi you--and your boat--back to your car.  But the water levels were good today, and I couldn't resist the river's call.  

I far prefer moving water to flat water.  And so, last year while poring over maps, I came up with a way to travel the moving water of Chartiers Creek without calling on anyone to transport me.  It was a pretty ingenious plan that I finally enacted today.  Despite the fact that this part of the creek runs through densely populated and industrialized areas, it's a beautiful ride, scenic and serene.  The urban sprawl isn't visible from the water.  In fact, for the first quarter of the ride, you'd think you were out in the country.  The early summer air is sweet with honeysuckle, and privets, and the mossy smell of fresh water.  It smelled exactly like a Pennsylvania childhood in the 1970s, the adventure, the discovery, the freedom of the water.

There's an "oxbow" in the stream as it runs between Heidelberg and Carnegie, and there's a railroad track that traverses the narrow neck of land between the two ends of the oxbow.  You start off at the great "put-in" spot in Heidelberg, beneath the bridge in the top photo.  You use a bicycle chain to secure your kayak someplace near the bridge, then you leave the boat there and drive into Carnegie with all your gear.

Park your car in the PNC Bank parking lot (metered parking, but not often checked).  You'll be pulling your boat out of the water under the Mansfield Blvd Bridge, just adjacent to this parking lot.

Get your paddle, life jacket, and all your gear--especially the key to your bicycle chain--and then walk along the railroad tracks back into Heidelberg to board your kayak.  The walk's not as long as you think, and the time you'll get on the water is way more than you'd expect.

When I was a kid on a Sunday afternoon in early summer, the creek and railroad tracks would have been crawling with kids--troublemakers, swimmers, rock-throwers, smokers, bike-riders, drinkers.  Where are all the kids nowadays?  They must be in their bedrooms playing on their wiis.

The trek down the tracks from the bridge in downtown Carnegie to the Heidelberg bridge is exactly 20 minutes at a moderate pace.  It's not a scenic stroll, but not unpleasant at all.  Mostly just back yards planted in old fashioned vegetable gardens, with aluminum pie plates dangling over the plants to keep the birds and rabbits away. 

Once you get back to your boat in Heidelberg, you take it under the bridge and push out into the deep.  Let the currents carry you downstream to Carnegie and your car.  The creek forms a wide C between Heidelberg and Carnegie, but the railroad tracks cut a straight line between the two towns, running directly from one end of the C to the other.  

For that reason, your 20-minute walk down the tracks affords you a full 50 minutes on the water!  Near the beginning of your downstream paddle, the riverbanks appear wild, wooded, and silent.  You can't see the neighborhoods and streets at the top of the valley wall--if there are any.  There are geese, and ducks, and an occasional blue heron.  What sounds like a waterfall just around the bend turns out to be passing traffic on I-79, which comes pretty near to the creek at times, though you never have to see it.  In places, the current is choppy--which I love--and in other spots it's deep and gentle.  But the pull is always strong, even in those places where the water appears placid.

There are gravelly shallows where you might have to get out of the boat and walk for a few feet, but they're surprisingly few.  I only had to get out once.  For the most part, the creek is nicely navigable.  As you draw nearer to Carnegie--a more heavily industrialized community--old factories raise their heads on the riverbanks.  The abandoned factory in the fourth photo might be worth checking out someday--though the feeling of remoteness is an illusion.  There are houses all around.  Most of these homes are humble, but some have great views and access onto the creek.  You cross under more antique railroad bridges, too.  The stream becomes deep and wide as it passes through the center of town.

In Carnegie, this old hotel looms over the water like a vengeful math tutor.  Not to denigrate Carnegie, I think it's a great old town with lots of character and easy charm, but the creek in this town has a pretty distinct odor of sewage.  You have to slow down and get into the left channel as you pass under Carnegie's Main Street Bridge, the first bridge in town-proper.  Plan to stop under the second bridge, because that's where your car is parked.  Besides, there's better space for putting in and taking out a boat down there.  Be careful not to dash yourself on the rocks.

All in all, the whole adventure took me about an hour and ten minutes--including the railroad track walk.  If I include travel time to and from the Heidelberg / Carnegie area, then it took less than two hours.  Sounds like something I could do early in the morning when all the world's asleep...

Ira D. Sankey?

Shadowy 19th century evangelists aren't interesting to most people.  In fact, since its long slide into politics and judgment, I find modern American evangelicalism pretty despicable. But I'm always interested in the history of social movements and philosophies.  Plus, I had a fiery fundamentalist Methodist grandmother who used to drag us off to Cherry Run Camp Meeting every summer.  So the phenomenon of religious revivalism in rural America intrigues me.   

Apparently a man named "Ira D. Sankey" wrote many of the rollicking old gospel songs that lilted up and down the valleys of the American frontier in that great shiver of evangelical fervor that followed the Civil War.  As I said, I'm not a fan of that kind of faith.  The modern variation of it has been the Billy Graham movement--which is fast fading away--and all the televangelists and megachurches of the religious right.  And yet, I have very fond memories of my grandmother going about her housework while singing these cloyingly sweet 19th century tunes with their pious words.  A little Internet research reveals that I have only the vaguest recollection of one of Sankey's songs, "I Will Sing the Wondrous Story." 

While traveling backroads in Lawrence County, I came across this historical marker in the village of Edinburg, which is apparently the birthplace of Ira Sankey.  Edinburg is in the darkling borderlands between Youngstown and New Castle, a farming area with a penchant for decaying industry; it's a zone that I've always considered a little spooky.  Click on the picture to enlarge it.  "Ira" is a great name.  If the Universe had granted me a son, I really would have liked to name him Ira, or maybe Malcolm, but I'm sure my wife would have objected to both.  Alas, no matter now.