South Airport Trail at Hillman State Park

A cold, bright Wednesday beckoned me out again to Hillman State Park--which is truly one of the least of the Commonwealth's many great parks.  But it's close by, and I couldn't spend the whole day in the woods.  It was a surprisingly pleasant drive down country lanes in the full light of the winter sun.  It's been so, so rainy and gray that even melancholy souls like me are so happy for a little light.

Streaming as it does through the pine needles at Hillman, I don't know how I ever tired of it.  But I do recall a drought when I muttered profanities about "All that goddamn light, it's enough to make a parson curse."  (Quite truly.)  But the forest floor was soft with years of pine needles.  The forest was cold and fragrant.  And my spirit sang to have just a few hours alone among the trees.

Hillman is mainly a series of shoddily reclaimed strip mines.  That's why mountain bikers love the place; it's got twists and curves and crazy descents like this one.  What would you do if you broke yourself out here on a hill like that?  I've seen mountain bikers out here alone many times.  They surely couldn't get an ambulance back in here.  Ah, but people get broken in far more remote places than this, I suppose.

I don't often think of coming here because I wrote this place off as a brier patch years ago, a spooky place with strangling vines and poison ivy and labyrinthine trails where you might get lost for hours.  And it is definitely all of those things.  I hated this place because I moved down here from the Allegheny National Forest, and "Comparison is the thief of joy."  But today, I left here contented.

Just as a historical footnote, I named this blog "Snow and Jaggers" because when I had an earlier blog up in the Great North Woods.  It was called "The Allegheny Journal," and it explored public lands in and around the national forest.  But when I tried to hike down here in the Pittsburgh area, all I ever saw was snow and jaggers (thorns).  Now, in these days of rainy winters, I ought to just call the blog "Jaggers."  But that's no fun.

This pleasant path among the evergreens bears the unfortunate name of "Airport Trail."  That's because it runs around a little "airport" for model airplanes.  The road to the airport is closed for the season, but I walked out there just to see if everything was much the same as the last time I was there.  And it was.  It's not worth photographing.

These pleasant little red pines in their grassy meadow are appealing in the winter.  In summer, this place would be filthy with biting ants, and poison ivy, and ticks.  I must remember that I like this place better in the winter.

It was a joy just to see the sunlight glinting off the rippling waters of a little brook.  It's been such a dark time here--literally dark, but metaphorically dark, too.  It's all of a piece.  We get these endless rains because of climate change, and climate change is due to the same human greed that rules these times.  Darkness begets darkness.

"To each their own," I guess.  Not sure why anyone would want to fly a toy airplane when there are trees to walk amongst.  In any case, I can see that someone is putting some effort into making Hillman a more user-friendly kind of place.  Many of the trails now have names, and some are blazed.  It's still a strange place though.  It's both things: a park with no facilities and a state game land with stuff like an airport for toy planes and mountain biking trails.  At 3,000+ acres, it's worth exploring.

Forbes State Forest

With all the snow melted and the rain finally letting up (for a time), I headed off to the lovely ridge just east of Uniontown where the westernmost of the mountains begins.  Its actual name is Chestnut Ridge, and it is there in its shadowy hollows that a young George Washington ambushed a French military unit in a move that would probably be deemed a war crime by the Geneva Convention.

But I did not go to Jumonville Glen to listen for the ghosts of Frenchmen being murdered in their sleep.  Leaving the National Road, US 40, at the very crest of the ridgeline, I headed south on the smaller road that runs all the way to the Mason Dixon Line, passing through the Forbes State Forest en route.  I thought I'd turn onto the small forest road that leads to the rocky overlook that commands a view westward over Uniontown and environs. 

The little forest road was open, but too muddy for my car to travel on.  So I walked until I turned off onto an even smaller road, pictured here.  This is all in the state forest and entirely open to camping.  However, I'm not sure I'd want to do it.  Empty beer cans and bottles told me that kids ride their ATVs out here and get drunk. 

I decided to explore the more easterly flanks of the ridge, where I came upon this old furnace.

As well as this little cabin with a "for sale" sign out front.  Nine acres, $50,000.  It's a dream place, though the nearest neighbors are a little too close.  It looks like there's no sewage, no running water, and no electricity--entirely off the grid.  That would be fine, fun even.  But I don't see a stovepipe either, which tells me that the place is only used in summer and probably not very well insulated.

Ah, but how happy I would be to have a little place like this all to myself.

The forest map shows an area called "Hull Cemetery."  As far as I can tell there's only one person buried here, one Jacob Hull, a 49-year old veteran of the Civil War who died in the 1880s.  You do see the rebel flag in some parts of rural Pennsylvania--which offends and angers me to no end.  Young Pennsylvanians were sent off to give their lives in opposition to that flag, which is a symbol of bigotry, hatred, and oppression.  Thank God they knew not to put one on this fellow's grave.