Wintering

As we waited for the school bus this morning on the cold front porch, my eleven year old daughter and I discussed the things we like about winter.  There are several: the way a blanket of snow muffles all noise; the way snow light glows as if it's coming from everywhere, even on an overcast day; the silence of the winter woods; the cozy feeling of "nesting" when the weather outside is cold.

I was inspired by the "nesting" theme.  And since I didn't have time today for a long trek, I decided to return to Raccoon Creek to look for places suitable for a homeless person to hide out for the winter--or nest.  Since I just told you that I have a front porch, naturally I'm not homeless.  But things are going to get weird in Trump's America.  The unthinkable is going to happen in more ways than one.  Besides, I've been making my homelessness plan for years.  Take a look at this nice little one-room cabin in a remote section of the park that remains snowbound much of the winter.

Of course, the editorial board at S&J in no way condones or promulgates any illegal activity like squatting.  But if you were really desperate and didn't want to be an urban homeless person, what about a sylvan alternative?  You might head out here in late November, after this whole section of the park has been closed down for the season, and you go nocturnal.  You move into this one-room cabin (about 20 feet by 12), and you sleep during the day.  Why?  In order to stay warm.  You spend the daylight hours all bundled up in your sleeping bag and whatever cocoon-like materials you can smuggle into the cabin, like a warm cardboard box the size of a coffin.  And at night?  At night you light a fire in the fireplace, and you cook, and read, and exercise, and eat, and write letters, and do origami... When the morning light touches the sky with the first hints of gray, you go back to bed.

This particular cabin wasn't built for winter weather.  Despite the nice fireplace and solid glass windows, the clapboard walls have no insulation or plaster.  It would get right cold indeed.  But you'd have a nice porch.  And it would be better than a park bench.  

That cabin is back in Group Camp # 3--which is an area that non-profit groups can rent in the summer.  In a less sequestered spot, there are cabins that are rented out to individuals and families.  Near the entrance to this "modern cabin rental area," there are two large, old cabins that have always caught my eye.  Their all-weather walls make them a better choice for wintering, and though they're in a heavily used, year-round area, the sit off by themselves.  The architectural style would suggest that they were built in 1930s by the CCC, which is how the park got started.  I've long been curious about them; they look grand and welcoming from the outside--set down a little embankment from the cabin loop road with broad, sloping lawns and back porches toward the forest.  

The first one I approached turned out to be a shell with nothing remaining inside.  Even the walls between the rooms had all been broken down.  But the second cabin (pictured in the above photo and all the below photos) had blinds pulled shut in all the windows, which made me think it was still in use.  The back door was unlocked, but the floor beneath it had buckled so badly that it was very hard to open.  This is what I found inside.  Some critter tore the stuffing out of this old recliner, the only bit of furniture left in the cabin.

There were two bedrooms, a large bathroom, a kitchen (below), and the living room with the fireplace and recliner.  The floors looked unreliable in some spots, and the whole place stank of mold.  Judging by the style of the light fixtures, the ceiling fans, and other accouterments, I'd say the place was still being rented out in the 1990s.  

It's a slightly creepier option for wintering, and a lot closer to the year-round modern cabins, so you're more likely to get caught.  But it would definitely hold heat better.  With a lot of broom work, it just might be sufficient shelter for a cold season in the woods.  Again, not advocating for any illegal activity, just a thought...

Grove Run Trail, Forbes State Forest

It was a perfect fall day for a long hike, temps in the 50s and that golden autumn sun coming in at a long angle from blue skies.  

The Grove Run Trail is a beautiful four-mile loop that starts at the Grove Run Picnic Area in the smallish Linn Run State Park but quickly moves out into the larger Forbes State Forest.

 In the summer, there may not be much to see but leaves and a few pleasant little waterfalls.  But in November, there are views out over the other peaks of the Laurel Highlands.

 It was one of those strange autumnal days when it feels as if the sun is about to set at noon, and you find yourself checking your day pack to see if you brought a flashlight.  This is the Quarry Trail that leads all the way down to the area near the footbridge over the PA Turnpike.  I might need to come back here with my backpack and do an overnight.

 But the sun doesn't set.  It streams through the remaining yellow leaves like a blessing from on high.

The trail is a little steep and rocky in places.  Rocks and fallen leaves can be a treacherous combination, too.

 In the very center of this photo, you can see the distant peaks all misty and blue.

 The colors are subdued and rusty, but still lovely.  

 Of course, part of the trail follows Grove Run up to its headwaters in the high glens near the summit of the ridge.  There are more leaves clinging to their trees up in these hollows than in the windy valleys below.

You could usually do a four-mile trek in an hour and a half, but there was too much to stop and see along the way.  Also, it was slow going over the slippery rocks.

A good hike serves the same function as a good vacation: It makes you ready to be home...

Frankfort Presbyterian Church, 1790

This is Frankfort Presbyterian Church, on the edge of the village of Frankfort Springs, southern Beaver County.  From the road, it looked worthy of the October page in a wall calendar.  

A real photographer with a real camera could have taken some awesome shots of this old place, with its autumn trees and its old cemetery.  

 Fall has entered its second phase, when most of the leaves are off, and the ones that remain are largely brownish-yellow or burnt-orange--muted earth tones instead of the bold bright hues of October.  But little splashes of brighter color still cling to the top branches of the birch trees.

 The crazy hot weather has slowed autumn's passing, which is nice in a way.  But it still made my Wednesday trek sweaty and weird.  People say, "What a beautiful day!"  Beautiful?  Seventy-eight degrees in November just creeps me out.  The old term "Indian Summer" has entirely lost its meaning.

 And yet, I've got to admit that it was in fact a beautiful day.  I bushwhacked a little at Hillman before giving up and heading over to Raccoon Creek.  All in all, a forgettable trek, aside from the tick that I haven't been able to dig from my navel.  It's always unwise to bushwhack at Hillman--not to mention the fact that I forgot to wear orange, and hunters have returned to most of my hiking spots.

I knew the former parson of this old village church.  She remained at Frankfort Church for seven or eight years, then recently left to serve a bigger church in Ohio.  I used to run into her occasionally at Raccoon Creek State Park--which is very nearby--where she did the same loop trail with her dog once a week.

Of course, these old rural brick meeting houses never had steeples.  I think it's a recent addition, and the building somehow looks more natural in this photo where the add-on spire isn't showing.  This building is plain as an eggshell inside.  It dates from the 1800s, but the congregation has been here since 1790.

Alas, the sun is truly setting over America's rural houses of worship.  All the traditional institutions of old America are so quickly disappearing.  Orchestras, and museums, and playhouses, and dance troupes are all suffering the same fate as churches.  People don't have the time or patience for their subtlety anymore.  But it's worse than that.  Greed is killing off traditional culture, too.  There used to be a "Five and Dime" on the main street of many small towns, a place to buy clothes, and appliances, and toys.  There were places to work, and play, and pray, and be entertained.  Now the main streets are littered with empty storefronts, and there's a Wal-Mart twenty miles away on the outskirts of the county seat.  Big brands and corporations are spelling the end of the family-owned farm, the corner store, the village church.  These things are all fading from the scene.  That's how Trump is able to win the support of the rural poor, who ought to be the natural enemies of a New York tycoon.  Though he and others like him are the cause of their suffering, he plays on their fears.  He tells them that the only cure for their collapsing way of life is to turn back the clock. (I think the only solution to the crisis in rural America is to create incentives for small businesses and others to invest in small towns and rural communities.)  No matter what that orange-skinned narcissist says, there is not getting back to where we once were.  But I do understand the grief that makes people want to try.

"The Pennsylvanian" Amtrak Train

 One beautiful thing about living in Pittsburgh is that you can board a train here at 7:30am and arrive in New York City's Penn Station before 5:00pm.  There's no changing trains and no long stops in between, nothing but the Appalachian Mountains, and Amish Country, and all the gritty, fascinating old towns between here and there.  Yes, it's a nine-hour train ride...but the view from the windows is spectacular, especially if you go in October.

 Pictured here is the famous Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, a marvel of mid-eighteenth century engineering that is loved by railroad buffs all the world over.  I'm not exactly a railroad buff, but I sure did enjoy the long ride into Manhattan.  Passing through these low mountains in their fading autumn glory, the train would blow its mournful whistle every now and again, and the scene could not have been more perfect.

We did a really quick family trip into New York to take the kids to a Broadway show: two days aboard the train and one whole day in the City.  There were stops in Greensburg, Latrobe, Johnstown, Altoona, Huntingdon, Harrisburg, Elizabethtown, Lancaster, Paoli, Philadelphia, Trenton, and Newark.  I failed to film the most beautiful stretches of the ride, like where the train runs along the Susquehanna River near Duncanon or through the quaint farmlands of Lancaster County, with their huge stone barns adorned with carefully painted hexes.  I'm not a great fan of Broadway, and New York is an old familiar enemy, but the train ride was so worth the hassle.   

Of course, no town looks good from the tracks.  Railroads run through the seediest parts of any community, rural or urban.  Or maybe it's just that railroads are industrial and move mainly through industrial or post-industrial zones.  There's always so much decay and debris visible from a train.  Still, it was a joy to see Philadelphia through the streaked windows of the Amtrak train.  Looks like Philly's got yet another new skyscraper going up, too.

An Indian Summer Trek

It was my idea of heaven: seven straight hours in the October woods with nothing but a stick, a bottle of water, and the collected poems of A.E. Housman.  Take a look at the tree in this photograph, so imposing, such a powerful presence looming over Nichol Road at Raccoon Creek.  I went more than a mile out of my way just to see this grand old tree in its autumn glory.  

 It was a hot Indian summer day in Pennsylvania, nothing less than glorious, with blue skies and fall colors at their peak of brightness.  I'd hoped to make it down the the Laurel Highlands, but for a variety of reasons ended up staying closer to home.  And yet, I was not disappointed.

 Funny how quickly it all becomes commonplace, the lovely colors, the cooler air, the rich smells of the decaying leaves on the forest floor.  You begin to hurry past all of it, then it's gone.  Like all things, the glorious day lives out its little span of beauty and boredom.  It grows old.  Its charms wear off.  Then it passes.

 Or at least it usually does.  Ah, but the wonder of it all never grew old to me yesterday.  I truly believe that I savored nearly every last second of the long woodland day.  I went hiking into the Pioneer backcountry campground from the parking lot an hour away.  I was testing out the trek, thinking I might want to do it as an overnight with a few friends in November.  Very doable.

 Even an overly-familiar place gives itself to you anew when you visit in a different season.  Old well-known trails seemed completely fresh in the hues of October.

 Why can't we store these times away in amber like insects?  Isn't that exactly what I'm trying to do by keeping a blog that nobody reads but me?  I'm trying to preserve all my travels so that I can flip back through them on those grim occasions when life traps me beneath fluorescent lights.  Just look at this sugar maple!

 Over the summer, on the porch of that big old wooden hotel at Chautauqua, I read an outstanding book about the afterlife.  I know what you're thinking.  But it wasn't some pious, superstitious feel-good drivel like "Heaven Is for Real."  It was an academic work written by a skeptical New Testament scholar who specializes in studies of the historical Jesus.  (He believes that Jesus was a failed millenarian prophet who expected to usher in the end of time.)  

 The book looks at a wide array of beliefs about the afterlife found in many different cultures, both ancient and modern.  One thing he discovered is that the saying, "My life flashed before my eyes" is based in an actual phenomenon that is well-documented in the moments of death.  The meaningful events of people's lives really do come flooding back to them like an intimate movie just as the brain is closing up shop.  When people have near-death experiences, there really is a moment of utter release when all the significant moments and encounters of our lives recur to us almost simultaneously, but with a reliving of all the emotions and almost total understanding of feelings that, at the time, may have confounded us.

Call it the final judgment.  It's as if we get a life review just at the end, a closing argument, a bird's eye view in perfect perspective.  This phenomenon has been attested in many different times and places.

Of course, it's too bad we can't have perfect perspective on our lives before we die.  But days like this one in the autumn woods help me to gain some semblance of it.

I'm beginning to believe that all "country" is Trump Country.  All cities are Clinton territory.  The suburbs are a mix.  But it is alarming to get just outside town and see all the widespread support for this self-serving demagogue, Donald Trump.  He's the brick that rural America is throwing through the window of the economic establishment--the very one that has impoverished them.  I get that.  It's just so unsettling to see so many hundreds of Trump signs out there amid the October splendor.  "Every prospect pleases, and man alone is vile," as the old hymn says.

Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail, Northern Terminus

The northern end of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail offers some good views out over the valley of the Conemaugh River.  Unfortunately, it's a noisy valley, and so the first three miles of the trek are accompanied by an urban soundtrack of screaming automobiles, and trains, and construction vehicles, and heavy duty trucks going in reverse.  Of course, the LHHT stretches 70 miles along a ridge from Ohiopyle to this place, near Johnstown.  In fact, if you click on this photo you'll see Johnstown in the distance.  A friend and I did the long, uphill climb from the northern trailhead parking lot all the way to the first campground on the trail--just under six miles.  The hike took about three hours and a half. It was a scenic fall hike, with most of the leaves still green, and a beautiful night to sleep in the forest, where a barred owl serenaded us from very nearby until about midnight.

Fort Necessity National Battlefield

Instead of saying that Fort Necessity National Battlefield is a yawn, let me say that it's one of only a handful of national parks or monuments in the state...and way more interesting than the Johnstown Flood National Memorial--which also belongs to the National Park Service.  There's a much-neglected picnic area way off in the woods at this park; my kids and I had it entirely to ourselves.  In the mists of the day and the seemingly total abandon, the picnic area was a little creepy.  Here is a careful replica of the fort that the French burned down upon defeating George Washington at the Battle of Great Meadows in the summer of 1754.  This part of the park is plenty crowded.

The French were retaliating for Washington's murder of a young French officer and ten or more soldiers at a "gloomy glen" on the craggy summit of Chestnut Ridge.  Actually, it seems that Washington blamed the Seneca chief "Half King" for the murder, but to this day, the events at "Jumonville Glen" lay shrouded in mystery...which is only fair, for Jumonville Glen itself was shrouded in fog on the afternoon of our visit, bottom photo.

Click on this photo to enlarge it, as with any photo on this blog.  Here is a tiny remnant of the road that General Edward Braddock hacked through virgin forest in his failed venture in 1755 to liberate "The Forks of the Ohio," from the French.  "The Forks" are now known as Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh.  Is it strange to think that George Washington worked on behalf of the British Crown when he started the "Seven Years War," perhaps earth's first true "World War"?

Of course, here in America, we ignore the fact that the Seven Years War was a worldwide conflict.  Here, we just call it "The French and Indian War."  This is a better shot of the true Braddock's Road from Virginia to the Monongahela--which was largely developed into U.S. Highway 40, or "The National Road," in the 1800s.

It's certainly not as early as the Battle of Great Meadows, but the old inn on the grounds of the "national monument" is worth a visit.  It received many a pioneer on the westward trek into the Ohio Country in the early 1800s.  To my understanding, a "national monument" is the same thing as a national park, except smaller.

Click on this photo.  Here again is that replica of the doomed old fort that a 20-something Washington threw together in haste when he realized that the French would come to avenge the cowardly murder of an officer and some of his men in a time of peace.  It's called "Great Meadows" because the fort was erected in a large natural clearing, while everything around it was forest.  In fact the French easily captured the fort because they were able to hide in the nearby woods and launch their attack from all sides.

From Fort Necessity, with its visitors' center and tour buses, it's a seven-mile drive to the remote spot on the summit of Chestnut Ridge where the actual murders took place.  This, too, is part of the national monument.  In contrast to the areas around the fort, which were crowded and developed, the area called "Jumonville Glen" is lonely and far-flung.  We spent about 45 minutes there on an October Saturday, and in that time we had the whole place entirely to ourselves.  Click on this photo to read the plaque's inscription.  The events that transpired here are sometimes called "The Battle of Jumonville Glen," but a battle it was not.  Whereas the French were careful to maintain a respect for human life and a desire for peaceful resolution at the later Battle of Great Meadows, what happened at Jumonville Glen was an ambush a slaughter.

This is Jumonville Glen as seen from the spot of the French encampment, so named for the commanding officer of the French soldiers, Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, who was murdered here.  Washington and his men appeared atop the rocks that you see and started shooting into the band of soldiers as they wakened at 7am.  One fellow named Monceau was taking a piss and happened to escape.  He ran to the Monogahela River and paddled all the way back to the French fort at Pittsburgh to inform them of the British ambush.  Washington claimed that he tried to parlay with Jumonville and that his allied Seneca chief, named "Half King," walked up to Jumonville and opened his head with a tomahawk.  No one knows what's true, but Washington and his men left their French victims' bodies to the wolves and buzzards.  He was young, it's true, but the events at Jumonville Glen do cast a few shadows over the character of George Washington.