Hillman State Park--Again

Hillman State Park is an oddity.  It's technically a "state park," but the name is a little ambitious.  Most state parks in Pennsylvania are pretty cool places with camping, hiking, swimming, and at least passingly unspoiled scenery.  Hillman is nothing of the sort.  This is a vast area of sloppily reclaimed strip mines, and so it's really too strange and barren to qualify as a real state park equal to the others.  It's also known as the "Bavington Game Lands," which seems more fitting.  Most game lands in the state are second-rate places where the land has been scarred a little too badly to rate state park status.

Hillman is really more of a neglected annex to Raccoon Creek State Park.  It's got a token website, but no facilities at all.  And it's managed by Raccoon Creek's rangers, who probably have no time for it.  I've never once seen any of them patrolling the place.  It's got no development of any kind--no parking lots, no restrooms, no water supplies, no picnic areas, beaches, or recreation areas.  All it has is an airfield for model airplanes and a tangled labyrinth of unmapped, unmarked trails that wend through a strangely diverse mix of meadows, forests, hills, and hollows.

My tendency in the woods is always to seek high ground in hopes of seeing out over the surrounding countryside.  This appears to be one of Hillman's only overlooks.  There's a little campsite set up here (though camping is not legal), and a very modest view out over the undulating grasslands and woods.  Hillman is usually where I go when I'm bored with Raccoon and don't have the time to drive all the way to the Laurel Highlands.  It's only about 35 minutes from the southwest suburbs of Pittsburgh.

I used to get lost every time I came to this place, and I started calling it the Blair Witch Forest.  But most of it isn't very forested.  The land is largely open, like the moors of western England.  The scraggly trees shed their leaves early in the season.  This is all due to the fact that the soil is thin and shallow from strip mining.

And yet, it can be a fun place to explore.  There are a few places where tall, fragrant evergreens would make you think you were deep in ancient woodlands.  One nice thing about the trails at Hillman is that--though they're unmarked, and confusing, and lead through a lot of scrubby countryside--there is always more to be discovered.  I can always count on finding something new out here.  I've come across at least four ponds, some old farm sites, some nice forestland, and a lot of strange, weedy meadowlands, all crisscrossed by trails for mountainbikers and horseback riders.  The trek photographed here is just off Haul Road in the northermost area of the park.

A Harmless Northern Water Snake?

September is a nearly perfect month.  Apples are ripening on the trees.  Vegetable gardens are still producing.  There's a hint of fall in the chilly mornings and evenings, but afternoons still feel like August.  Look at the sunlight and clouds dancing over this beautiful field, with its goldenrod in the foreground and a lone oak tree spreading its broad limbs out among the corn.  It was a good day to be off work and free to roam the world.

People often ask me, "Why do you always take a walking stick with you when you hike?"  Here's one good reason: Pharaoh's magicians frequently drop their walking sticks in my path.  (That's an obscure reference to the Book of Exodus--that you may remember from the 1956 classic movie, The Ten Commandments, with Charlton Heston.)  This big fellow was just stretching out in the middle of the road near a pond at Hillman State Park, blocking my way.  He was easily four and a half feet long.  Now, I didn't want to harm the snake, but nor did I feel like stepping over him.  I wasn't sure if he was a poisonous "water moccasin" or a harmless water snake.  I tossed a few pebbles in his direction, hoping to scare him off, but he was imperturbable.  So at last I nudged him with the tip of my walking stick, and he slithered off...silent as death.

Shawnee State Park

On my way home from Blue Knob--where we sometimes spend Labor Day weekend--I decided to swing south and check out Shawnee State Park.  I'd always seen it on maps, and dork that I am, I wanted to add another PA state park to my collection.  Apparently there's a Shawnee State Park in Ohio, too.  The Shawnees moved around even more than most other Native American tribes in the 1700s.  They fled white encroachment in the Potomac Valley, sojourned a while here in the area of this park in South Central Pennsylvania, drifted out into the Midwest, and then were eventually forced into "Indian Territory" in Oklahoma.

It was noticeably hotter here than at Blue Knob, which is at a higher elevation.  I guess a part of me never assumed that I'd much care for Shawnee because it sits so close to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  And yet, you can't really hear the traffic screaming in most parts of the park.  And it's a pleasant place with a lake beach, nice hiking trails, and lots of meadows and woods to discover.  The ridges in the distance aren't lofty peaks, but they are part of the "Ridge and Valley Province" of the Appalachian Mountains.  I scouted out the large campground and found a few sites that are secluded enough to make this place a potential destination for us--maybe next Labor Day.

From one point on the Field Trail, you can bushwhack into the trees to see out over the quaintish old village of Schellsburg.  It's a pretty little town with big stone or brick houses, a nice little coffee shop on the main street, idyllic old churches, and some old fashioned storefronts that have long since been converted to antique stores.  This is that transitional area where the gentle Pennsylvania Dutch countryside begins to blend with a grittier post-industrial influence that wafts in from the Western part of the state.  Much to my alarm, there were Trump campaign signs in a lot of front yards around here.  But there's much history here, too, including the old church in the post just below, and lots of historic markers along the old Lincoln Highway.  The Lincoln Highway roughly follows the path that General Forbes cut through the wilderness from Philadelphia in the 1750s when he took Fort Duquesne from the French and founded Pittsburgh.

Old Log Church, Schellsburg, PA

On Labor Day, as I was driving home from Blue Knob State Park, I happened across this lovely old church, built in 1808 and surrounded by a very old cemetery.

Known as the "Old Log Church," this place has a website and a Facebook page, neither of which is updated very frequently.  But I'd come across it several times in my Internet surfing.  It was a real surprise to see it sitting serenely amid its many graves, just west of Schellsburg on US Highway 30, also known as the Old Lincoln Highway.

 There are some interesting things to notice in the architecture of this wonderful old building.  First is the wineglass pulpit.  This building was shared by two congregations; one was German Lutheran and the other German Reformed (basically Presbyterian).  In the early 19th century, neither of these religious groups approved of unnecessary adornment in their churches.  But the fanciful wineglass pulpit served two functions: it made preaching central to the psychological space of the church, and it suggested the sacrament by its chalice-like shape.  In a way, the pulpit and the spoken Word become the Holy Grail.

 It must have been a powerful moment for the faithful of old when the minister, all dressed in black, in his powdered wig and preaching bands, mounted the stairs to the high pulpit.  Silence would fall as he opened the sacred text, the clear light of day illuminating him from behind.

And of course, the language would have been German.  Everything in this part of Pennsylvania is German.  The farms are tidy and meticulously kept--all very Teutonic.  The towns all have German names, as do most of the residents.

This is the view from that wineglass pulpit, looking down to the main floor--or nave--of the church.  Notice the stairs up to the gallery.

 Life on the frontier was hard and its luxuries few.  Can you imagine spending two hours of a Sunday morning on these straight-backed benches, and then coming back for another hour or so on Sunday evening?  Faith must have provided enough comfort in our ancestors' lives to make up for the stark discomfort of their churches.

 The view from the gallery, or balcony.  This is where servants, hired hands, and poorer folk would have sat--and the benches are even more torturous than the ones in the nave.  (Of course, there were no slaves in Pennsylvania by 1808.)  All told, you could squeeze a lot of people into this place, but the fire marshal would not be happy.

Some literature about this church makes the mistaken claim that it was the first Protestant church west of the Susquehanna River.  This is patently false.  We know of many churches in Washington County that were founded in the 1700s; Chartiers Hill Presbyterian dates back to 1776, but some are even older.  In Allegheny County, Old St. Luke's was founded in 1765.  Service Presbyterian Church, in Beaver County, goes back as far as 1790.  And First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh dates back to the establishment of Fort Pitt in 1758.  Ah, but erroneous claims to primacy notwithstanding, the Old Log Church is a beautiful spot, stately and serene.  And its cemetery could be worth many hours of discovery, if you have hours to give it--which I did not.