Cabins in the Woods, Forbes State Forest

This week's trek was one of my best...not in terms of natural beauty discovered, but in terms of plain old discoveries.  And adventure.  I came across a lot of privately owned cabins in the woods, all of them closed for the winter.  The one in this photo fell down a long time ago, but in the same general vicinity there is a small hamlet of hunting camps and summer homes.

 Of course, I would never vandalize or rob from places like this, but there is a certain tinge of adventure that comes of trespassing.  They're closed for the season with the assumption that the roads in to them will be impassable until spring.  (That assumption is antiquated; it was an eerie 64 degrees in the Laurel Highlands.)

This little cottage was my favorite one in the village, with its rustic porch pillars and shuttered windows.  I love a good porch where you can sit and watch the rain, preferably with the smell of wood smoke wafting from the chimney.

The owners of this cottage seemed to have a motion-activated hunting camera installed on the trunk of a nearby tree to get pictures of anyone who ventures here unbidden--like me.  Linn Run State Park must lease out the land that these cabins are built on.  But my goal wasn't to snoop on private property.  It was simply to follow the gated road that runs from the main thoroughfare through the park up to the Quarry Trail, and on to the adjacent Forbes State Forest.  This track is called Rock Run Road, and it becomes Weaver Road.  On my maps, it appeared to be an old dirt road, no longer passable to vehicles.  And boy, was that right!  In places, it's barely passable on foot.

Once past the little gaggle of cabins, the road heads southeast through sinister rocky forests, thick with jaggers.  At the summit of the ridge, this enormous rock city appeared off to the left.  It doesn't look very big in this photo, but it is an immense collection of tall boulders with craggy hollows and gullies in between.  I spent about twenty minutes exploring the place, and it was plenty spooky under gray skies with the climate-change-winds raging through the barren treetops.  It was nice that there was not so much as a speck of spray paint on these rocks, a sign that they're too remote for vandals!

 After wending and climbing and scrambling over fallen trees, the old road comes out on a marshy plateau and seems to run between old farms, long since reclaimed by the forest.  The track runs through some private land and past this little one-room cabin--which is much smaller and simpler than the ones I'd passed at the beginning of the trek.  The family name "Kalp" is painted on the goose's belly above the door.

I pressed my cellphone up against the glass just to get some idea of what the place was like inside.  What I wouldn't give just to have a one-room cabin deep in the forest!  There's not much room in there for anything but a fireplace, a table, a few chairs, and a bed.  But I wouldn't need anything more than that.  Except curtains!  I'd definitely want to close my curtains after it got dark in the forest all around.

I was tempted to turn back, but something called me just a little way further down the track.  A hunch, a nameless desire, a simple longing for more of all the things my Pittsburgh life lacks.  I don't know.  The road turns very soggy and passes through more woods and comes out again into an area of old fields.  What really caught my eye was this old corn crib sitting beside the muddy road...definite proof that this place was once a farm.  The street sign inside the corn crib says McMurray Rd.

 Turn the corner, and there it is.  A two-story cabin sitting on the edge of a pond.  I approached the place with a sense of trepidation, not knowing if it was completely abandoned or currently occupied by angry drunks with AK-47s and pit bulls.

 Much to my delight and surprise, neither thing was true.  This pleasant cabin with its pond and grounds belongs to the state forest service, and an inviting little sign encourages the public to make use of it!

Someone does seem to be making use of the place, unless the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania makes it a point to stock its cabins with oversize bottles of Cuervo.  Also on the mantel were pots for cooking, dishes, and matches. 

Sure, it could use a woman's touch, but I found the cabin incredibly welcoming, with a picnic table, a few chairs, small windows looking out over the nearby pond and into the silent trees.  I could spend a few days in a place like this.  In fact, whoever left the liquor here probably comes on a snowmobile and spends a few hours away from his life (or wife?) in the winter when no one else ventures out this far into the forest.

This is the downstairs room, looking away from the fireplace.  There are two lawnmowers and a snow shovel in the far corner.  The ladder leads up to an unfinished sleeping loft.  It would be spooky to spend a night out here alone.  I would probably bolt the two doors, sit by the fire till dark, drink the Cuervo, and go upstairs to pass out on top of the plywood door to the loft--using my body weight as a lock.  It would just be too spooky trying to sleep near the fire without anything covering the windows.  Any old soul could gawk in at you while you slept...

This is looking out the window at the pond, with the patio in the foreground.  I'm thinking I need to come back to this place and spend some time here.  This whole trek reminded me of a woodland discovery I made years ago, in the wintry Allegheny National Forest.  This was a good hike; I loved discovering all these cabins, especially the last two.  But I gotta say, things like this are a lot more fun when winter is cooperating and everything is snowbound.  Imagine coming across these places in the snow, with no footprints and a real feeling of snowy isolation.

Quarry and Powder Mill Trails, Forbes State Forest

Since Christmas, I've been taking my days off down at the Forbes State Forest near Linn Run State Park, in the Laurel Highlands.  It's a 65-mile haul, but definitely worth it.  The Quarry Trail begins at an old rock quarry across the road from the park office and wends south for a few miles all the way to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I-76.

At its southern terminus, you can hear the turnpike traffic screaming, probably half a mile distant.  But you've already got enough noise and speed in your life.  Don't go that way.  Instead, turn right (west) onto the Powder Mill Loop Trail, which takes you above a very deep valley and out into some truly remote woods with beautiful streams and pure silence...at least in the winter.  My cell phone camera cannot capture the bigness of this country--the depth of the wooded valley, the vast sweep of the mountains all around, the height of the trail above the streams below.

ATVs are not allowed on this trail, but that doesn't seem to stop them.  So...if there is any noise out here, it's probably those damnable machines.  Ah, but sometimes they come to fitting ends in the rocky hollows of the Forbes!  This bit of wreckage is probably invisible in the summer.  (As much as I gloat to see one taken off the trails, I do hope nobody got hurt.)

The Powder Mill Loop joins up with the old Felgar Road--which I've explored and talked about elsewhere on this blog.  The intersection is tricky, but when you come off the trail and onto a T at a dirt road, just make sure it's the one that runs parallel to the screaming turnpike, far below.  (Don't take the first dirt road to the left when you come up off the trail; it's a false lead.)  Ah, but take time for a quick detour!  Before following the loop to the left and downhill, first turn right on Felgar and go uphill for about a quarter mile to pay your respects at the Ritter Cemetery.

Almost all the graves here are 100 years old or older.  Most of them date back to the early 1900s, which means that it's not a very old cemetery, but interesting all the same.

I don't know if there used to be a church on this spot, but it's on public lands now, and it appears to be fairly well maintained.  Strange how a spot like this can be so remote and yet so close to all this traffic.

Go back downhill and follow the roadway that is shared by the Powder Mill Loop and Felgar Road.  Soon enough, the "road" gives way to this muddy track, completely beyond the capacities of most vehicles.  America's first superhighway is just to your right.

And there she blows.  The PA Turnpike as seen from the Powder Mill Loop.  It's an annoying incursion into the forest, but somehow it's fun to stand alongside all those hurrying people and know that you are unhurried.  You see them, but they do not see you.  You're standing outside the madness, with no place to go, gazing on with a mixture of superiority and envy.