The snow was melting away as we trekked into the northernmost reaches of the Allegheny National Forest in the area of Willow Bay and Tracy Ridge in order to mark my 50th birthday there in my sacred place. The warmth was eerie and surely a harbinger of ills to come. But the place was lovely as always, and so wild in these brief blue and gray days of late January.
I've never been much of one too celebrate my birthdays. I don't mind getting older, and I don't judge anyone who does make a big deal of their own birthdays. But I just don't like a lot of attention called to myself. But 50? Fifty is a big one. Let's not say that I "celebrated" it. Let's say instead that I "held a half-century birthday observance." Now at last I begin to feel old, my friends. Since my wife was going to be out of the country anyway, and I was free to celebrate however I pleased, I decided to do a winter overnight in one of the remoter parts of the ANF.
I'd wanted to go back to the Standing Stone Trail, but massive amounts of rain were in the forecast. In fact, the only place within a 2.5 hour drive of Pittsburgh that did not call for rain was Bradford, Pennsylvania--which is 16 miles due east of Willow Bay Campground, one of the few campgrounds in the ANF that's open all winter and which just happens to have cabins for rent year round. I booked a cabin just as a weather contingency, hoping I wouldn't have to use it, then headed north into uncertain weather. And guess what? It rained...and rained, and rained. This interesting cairn was probably erected by boaters who camp along the remote shoreline in summer.
The muddy trail made travel slow. Our ambitious goal was to take the North Country Trail out of Willow Bay and head south as far as the Handsome Lake Campground--a primitive and remote little camp right on the banks of the reservoir; it can only be reached on foot or by boat. When we got as far as Tracy Run (what, four miles?), we found that little body of water so swollen with snowmelt and rainfall that we couldn't get across without getting soaked, which would not be a wise thing to do in the winter chill, so far from the car.
We did not turn back, but instead set up camp on the banks of the Kinzua Reservoir near Tracy Run. I say "we" because I was not alone on this trek. A talkative old college friend came up from Oklahoma City to join me. He thought the ANF was beautiful, and he never believed that there was so much open land in an eastern state.
The guy in this picture isn't me; it's my hiking companion. Even at the end of a sopping wet day, my sometimes-annoying friend was able to start a roaring fire with the saturated twigs and branches we collected off the muddy ground. It was an immense amount of work to coax fire from such wet tinder, but he knew exactly how to get the job done. I must say, I was impressed.
A beautiful fire it was, and very nice to have on that warmish evening where the silence and the solitude were so deep. It burned late into the wee hours, keeping us warm despite the constant drizzle and the chilling breezes of the night. By "wee hours" I mean by hikers' standards, 10:00 or 10:30pm.
During the night, I thought I heard the soft, uncertain sound of snow touching down on the roof of the tent, gentle, furtive, as if uncertain of the welcome it would receive. The night temps dipped low into the 20s. And so, I awoke on the morning of my 50th birthday to the kind of winter's day we had when I was young. See how the forest is transfigured by the snow. Getting out of the sleeping bag was an act of courage, cold and daunting, but also invigorating and somehow joyful.
I miss winter, real winter. I miss the days when the snow came around Christmastime and lingered until late March. I miss the days when there was a "January thaw" that rose above freezing for two or three days, maybe up into the high 30s, but never enough to challenge winter's sure domain. The endless rain is not right. The 70-degree days in January are not right. America's greed-driven refusal to address the issue is not right. The biggest, wealthiest polluters have purchased state and federal governments so that they can continue to rake in the cash and poison the planet. Capitalism has at last undermined the very democracy that gave it life. The greed of the 1% is unbridled, and it cannot be stopped, not anymore. They will continue to render the planet unlivable in order to engorge themselves with far, far more riches than anyone needs--leaving the poor ever poorer. And worse, they dupe the poor into supporting their cause with such red herrings as the the old abortion debate, and xenophobia, and a racism disguised as opposition to the "welfare state."
My heart aches for this forest, for my love of it, for my anxiety about its future--and all future. My heart aches for the world we're handing to our children. But the winter forest gave me a gift for my half-century observance: assurance. The gentle snowfall, the frozen lake, my water bottles gathering ice. Yes, I found assurance in the forest, as I so often have. After all, this is my sacred place. Come what will, all will be well--or well enough. We pass one by one into the silent mystery that created us, that creates us still, that claims us and all things in the end. We go beyond worries and cares into the silence of the winter woods, where there is neither greed, nor time, nor frigid toes. And whether the transience of life be in its mere extinction--its passing into oblivion--or in some other life beyond, it does not matter. We come. We do our part. We live for things that matter. We die and pass again, like these primordial water molecules that cover the earth, into something else. There is no fear in it. Waking to a sight like this is good for the soul.
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