Braddock, as Seen from The Phantom's Revenge

 My rule at the top of all the scariest Kennywood rides is to look for Braddock.  Is the rollercoaster nearing the top of the rise?  Is it going to plunge insanely fast into gut-wrenching depths?  Are you mind-bogglingly higher than you would ever allow yourself to go on roofs, or ladders, or under any sane circumstances?  Is everyone around you screaming like a madman?  Stay calm and scan the horizon for the grand old town of Braddock.

How do you know which one is Braddock?  It'll be the one with Pittsburgh's last steel mill, just across the Monongahela River.  Just look for the smoke.  The whole region used to look like this place.  All the riverfronts in the city were crowded with factories and train tracks and smokestacks, belching clouds of noxious gray poison.  A far better way to spend a late summer afternoon is in the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia.  Find those amazing photos by clicking here.  It's actually been a really great summer--despite the fact that Trump is still President--with far more trips than usual.  Photos from another Outer Banks adventure are here. 

A Night on Sugar Bay, Allegheny National Forest

You might not believe this, but I've never spent a night alone in the woods before.  Oh, sure, I mean I've camped in conventional campgrounds by myself, and at least one time at Ryerson Station, I was the only camper in the entire place.  I've also done a lot of backpacking with partners.  But I've never gone alone into the forest, found a spot, and said, "Here.  This is home for the night."  

It's kind of like a sex columnist admitting that he's a virgin, I suppose.  But I just never worked up the nerve to backpack alone...until yesterday.  We're at the Chautauqua Institution again--my wife loves it here--and I had to get away from all the lectures to seek the silence of the woods.  My sacred place isn't far from Chautauqua--the Allegheny National Forest--and so I went there.  The top photo is Sugar Bay in the Allegheny Reservoir--a very remote location that's traversed by the North Country Trail and the Tracy Ridge Trail System.  The second photo is my camp about 500 feet from the water's edge and a mile or two from the road.  I bushwhacked to this location; no trail comes near it, but I saw it on a map and loved the isolated look of it.

I hiked this section of the North Country Trail some years ago, in winter.  But I chose to come back with my backpack because it's one of the loneliest stretches of this great woods.  I found the most level bit of ground I could for my camp, then went down to the water's edge to set up my hammock.  This is the view from the hammock.  Fishing boats did linger in nearby waters from time to time, and the voices of fishers carried out over the water.  But all in all, the solitude was stupendous.

And it wasn't even a little bit spooky.  There were owls in the cool night, and I had a fire after the sun went down.  There was not another soul for miles and miles.  The moonlight was radiant out over the water.  Such an otherworldly beauty, especially at night.  And I saw not a sprig of poison ivy in my whole time up here!  Just before sunset, I bushwhacked to the top of a high hill behind my campsite in hopes of getting a text message off to my wife--just so she wouldn't worry.  I tried to send four different texts, and only one got through.  I didn't have cell service again until I was ten miles back inside New York State.

What's across the water over there, on the south side of Sugar Bay?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  I did a lot of map research before selecting this spot, and I hope to return here by kayak someday.  There's a boat ramp pretty close by, on PA 321.

There's no such thing as level ground in this part of the world, and though I slept like a baby, I was continuously sliding toward the lake.  Oh, how I miss the Allegheny National Forest!  I know it's being ravaged by the frackers, and to still live here would be to bear the pain of witnessing its rape.  But this part of it is still pristine, almost primeval.  In fact, there's some discussion of making the Allegheny National Recreation Area (the emptiest part of the forest, within the Tracy Ridge Trail System) into a federally designated wilderness area.  I hope it succeeds; that would protect at least this large part of the forest from the fossil fuelers.  And I need to know that this place is still here, still scented by ferns and hemlocks, still ringing with birdsong in the early morning, still waiting to redeem the sorrows that I bring to it, touching them gently and making of them new life.  

Second Thoughts about the Town Hill Tract, Buchanan State Forest

This photo was taken somewhere along Spade Road, Fulton County, and the hill rising above the quaint little farm in the foreground is Town Hill--for which the Town Hill Tract of the Buchanan State Forest is named.  My guess is that there must have been a family by the name of Town living in this area, because God knows there's not a town to name the hill after.

My visit to this portion of the forest focused almost entirely on Rays Hill, pictured here, but I'm beginning to think that I should have thought bigger.  There are two small mountains within this large tract of public land.  Because I believed in the legend of Clair Winters Road (which turned out to be essentially nonexistent as you near the summit), I focused my excursion entirely on the smaller of the two--Rays Hill.  In doing that, I ended up ignoring the larger--Town Hill--which makes up the eastern wall of the valley of Brush Creek.

The little valley between the two hills has broad, grassy meadows with wildflowers, and butterflies, and many, many deer--as well as their malevolent passengers: ticks.  If you actually come here (which you won't), be sure to tuck your pant legs into your socks and spray yourself down with repellent.  But for all the trackless hassle of bushwhacking through this mess, it's kind of a pretty place, isn't it?  It's the remoteness of it that I can't stop thinking about.  You're guaranteed to have the whole big valley all to your lonesome...which I love.

Brush Creek itself isn't much.  It's small and slow, and unlike most runs, you can't even hear it babbling silently beneath the trees.  But it does have tiny fish darting about in its currents, and jumping across it from weedy bank to weedy bank proved a challenge.

As I said in my last posting about this nearly unknown place, there's nothing about the Town Hill Tract on the Internet.  Nobody comes here except hunters.  There's a lonely sign out by the entrance to this small parking area, and a neglected notice board at the edge of the trees.  There are no trail maps on the notice board because there are essentially no trails--aside from two old farm lanes, one of which is mowed by the forest service for hunters to use, and the other is the overgrown Clair Winters Road.  Ah, but the maps show another road petering out on Town Hill at the south end of the tract.  Despite my earlier claim that there's nothing in this neck of the woods but ticks, I think I've talked myself into coming back here.  And now!  Now the Internet has two blog postings about this supremely solitary place: this one and the one I wrote earlier today.

Town Hill Tract, Buchanan State Forest

When I decided to explore the Town Hill Tract of the Buchanan State Forest, I was surprised to find that there is absolutely nothing about the place online.  I mean truly, there's nothing out there, which is strange because it's a big place.  I don't know the acreage, but it's pretty much the southern end of the valley of Brush Creek (which is pretty accurately named), including the adjoining hillsides.  On a map, it looks like about four miles long and a mile wide.  I spent the better part of a day there, and I suspect that it hasn't had a visitor since the 2016 deer season.  The little road out to the place is narrow and grassy--little more than a driveway--with menacing "No Trespassing" signs on either side.  But before ducking into the deep bush, it passes through this beautiful countryside adjacent to I-70.  And of course, 70 then enters Maryland and goes screaming off to Baltimore.

For all its proximity to a major interstate, the Town Hill Tract is pretty far-flung. Getting there isn't hard, but it does require a bit of determination.  Just take Exit 151 off I-70, turn left onto Old 126, and take a right onto Spade Road--which becomes gradually narrower and less populated as you go.  By the time you reach the lonely sign indicating "Buchanan State Forest--Parking," the weeds growing up through the road will be scraping at the underbelly of your car, and you'll be hoping no one happens along in your direction.  It's definitely a one-lane road. The unassuming ridgeline that you see in this photo is the crest of Rays Hill.  Standing at a modest 1,800 feet, it forms the border between Bedford and Fulton counties.  I thought there might be good views from up there, so I made its summit my elusive goal.  Little did I know how hard it would be to achieve.  I hike with a walking stick in part because I heard once that if you plant your stick in sunny weeds before planting your foot, a snake will strike the stick first.  I also use my stick to break up spiderwebs that are stretched across the path.  Here at the Town Hill Tract, I needed two sticks: one for snakes and one for spiders.  It was almost entirely bushwhacking through tall weeds, and I kept walking into spiderwebs and their occupants, both living and dead...   

From the parking area, there is a single trail, which probably used to be a farm lane.  It passes through a young forest of beeches and oaks, which probably used to be the farm's pastures or fields.  It's a dense forest of springy saplings.  The trail comes into a big meadow and continues as a much smaller track until it peters out altogether.  I did bushwhack from that trail down to Brush Creek, only to discover that it's barely even a brooklet with tiny fishes darting in the dappled shadows.  On seeing the size of the stream and the denseness of the sapling forest, I decided to scrap my plans to camp on the Town Hill Tract.  There were no good sites to put the tent, and the stream was too small to wash in.  Nevertheless, I saw on my map that a certain Clair Winters Road--on the far side of the stream--ascended to the summit of Rays Hill.  I decided to cross over and bushwhack uphill in search of the road and the summit.  I did find the "road," such as it is--here in the third photo.  In places it was a little-traveled pathway like this.  But the higher you go, the harder it is to make out.  It eventually disappeared out from under me, just as a long slow rain began to soak me through and through.  Rays Hill turned me back, and I don't really plan on a rematch.  We, the editors at Snow and Jaggers, specialize in emptiness.  You know that, right?  We love nothing more than words that end in "tion," words like "ruination," "desolation," "isolation," "destruction."  And so, when we say that there is nothing at the Town Hill Tract of the Buchanan State Forest (except ticks the size of sparrows)...just trust us. 

PS: Okay, so there were some nice meadows along the partially-existent Clair Winters Road, and the forest was nice on that side of the stream--older and deeper.  Also, I loved all the sycamores that lined the bottomlands around the brook.  And I really want to know what the summit is like.  Are there views out over the ridges and valleys to the east and west?  If I go back someday, I know right where to start; I wouldn't lose half the day striking off in the wrong direction again.  And the isolation of the spot was almost magical.  I didn't hear another vehicle the whole time I was there.  It might just be worth another visit.... Just one.

PPS: Looking at the map again, I see that the entire summit of Town Hill (another hill) is well within the Town Hill Tract, too.  And whereas I made my approach to Rays Hill from the north, there's another little road leading onto Town Hill from the south.  Oh, I'm definitely going back there...

Return to the Old Log Church, Schellsburg

I had intended to spend the night in the Town Hill Tract of the Buchanan State Forest, but there was just something a little off-putting about the place.  So...Plan B was to spend the night at Shawnee State Park and hurry back to Pittsburgh in time for work today.

I couldn't spend a night at Shawnee without revisiting the Old Log Church that sits along the Lincoln Highway just west of Schellsburg.  There are actually many, many old and interesting buildings along this road--not least of which the Jean Bonnet Tavern.

The simple beauty of this little church is haunting.  It keeps me coming back--even if it could use a good cleaning.  There might be nearly as many dead flies on this windowsill as there are dead people buried just outside the window.

I'm grateful that they leave the place open for passersby and history buffs to come inside.  It's a nice place to just sit in a painfully uncomfortable straight-backed pew and catch up with the thoughts that you're usually so busy avoiding.  (You know the ones: questions about mortality; your ongoing quest for meaning; the memories that need sorted through.)  I tried to do just that, but another couple of visitors showed up and interrupted me.  The little guest book inside the church seems to indicate that they get a pretty steady stream of traffic--even if the place is never crowded.

 Or, if you're not quite ready yet to catch up with all the stuff you're not thinking about, then you could just sit there and think nothing.  Or think how this serene spot has been a place of worship since 1808.  When the trees that make up this old church were felled, Thomas Jefferson was President.  There were only fifteen stars on Old Glory.  The British still had designs on retaking the continent.

This is the first time I ever camped at Shawnee State Park, though I've hiked there a lot.  And though it stung a little not to be spending the night in the Town Hill Tract, I have to admit that it was really nice to have a hot shower (and a long check for ticks) at the end of the day.  The campground seemed pretty empty, which was nice for me but not so nice for the park.  My only complaint is that you can hear the turnpike screaming and whining nearby.