Rurex in Greene and Washington Counties

So much is being lost in rural America.  I don't even pretend to know the real economic and social factors that lead to the decline of rural places, but I do observe the fact that there was once a pride, an identity, and even an intellectual heritage to small towns and far-flung places.  They had their stories, their own mythologies, their artisans, and traditions, and their local intelligentsia.  Small towns had their theater troupes, and their musicians, and their noteworthy judges, and business-owners, and clergy.  Now?  So much is being lost, and I'm not sure exactly why.  Small town colleges, and seminaries, and centers of thought were a real thing.  Now a town is considered successful when it's got a Dollar General, a Subway, and an elementary school.  The windows of this quaint old farmhouse are boarded up from the inside, leaving the glass vulnerable.

Driving those familiar roads down through Washington and Greene counties, I was astonished by all the historic homes that have either disappeared or been abandoned since my last visit.  The countryside is still hauntingly pretty, gentle and luminous with its snowy hills beneath moody skies.

But Trumpism seems to be the only current of thought down here these days.  The signs and flags are everywhere.  I do not way that Trumpism destroyed the fabric of rural life in America.  It's as much a symptom as an illness.  But it's a symptom that has made the disease all the more dangerous.  See the lovely old farmhouse sitting on the summit of this snowy hill in Greene County.  It's been abandoned for years.  You may have to click on the picture and enlarge it in order to see.

Even this lovely little church now sits boarded up.  It was quite a cinematographic site with its red roof and doors surrounded by snow.  The pandemic has been hard on small churches, but why must the beautiful die?

McConnell’s Mill in the Snow

I remember coming to this place since childhood--which is not to say that I've lived my whole life in this area.  I'm actually a returned native who's lived in New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and five years in the obscure West African nation of Cameroon.  While McConnell's Mill is unchanging, I don't think I've ever seen it in the snow.

While it is picturesque, the sense of wilderness here is a bit misleading.  The park is actually long and narrow with farm land and industrial sites just through the trees.  That's why I don't come here much anymore: it's not wild enough.  Ah, but this lovely winter is beginning to wind down, and who knows when we'll get another one quite so perfect?  

Deep Winter at Raccoon Creek

It's just snow and bare trees, gray skies and colorless branches, and temperatures below freezing.  We've been having the most wonderful winter this year.  For the past decade, winters in this area have mainly consisted of Thanksgiving weather: 40 degrees and overcast.  But the 2020 / 2021 season has been a rare delight, reminiscent of the winters I recall from decades past.  This is one of the two campgrounds along the backpacking loop at Raccoon Creek State Park.  See the lonesome fire ring standing sentinel in a snowy field.  I could see making this place home for a night.  Winter is the only time I'd want to backpack at Raccoon; the park is too crowded the rest of the year.  

Of course, I spent half the 1990s in West Africa, so that amounted to one very long summer.  Five years without autumn leaves, or spring daffodils, or winter snow.  But those wintry days of the 1970s and 80s are very clear in my memory: snow forts, snowball fights, ice football, sledding.  As a kid in those days, you couldn't let the winter keep you inside.  You just had to go out and enjoy the season because it was going to linger for a good long while.  I learned to drive on snowy roads.  I broke my collar bone playing football with neighborhood kids on a frozen parking lot.  When I was in Africa, I sometimes missed the winters back home.  I longed for the cold December air of home on my first Christmas in Africa, when I tried so hard to approximate an American Yuletide that I got overheated cooking on an open fire in the hot tropical kitchen house with its tin roof...  I had to spend the holiday in bed with heatstroke.  This year, I've welcomed the winter's long return--and with no respite in sight!  

Some folks really know how to embrace winter!  Raccoon Creek keeps one small campground open year round for car camping and trailers.  They call it the Sioux Campground, for some strange reason, and it only has three primitive campsites, a water pump, and an outhouse.  I've never seen it full in the winter, but there's usually some hardy soul out there making the best of things.  This tent reminds me of that old sitcom MASH.  It looks like a mobile hospital unit from the Korean War, right down to the stovepipe coming out of the roof.  Ah, but the woods were a lovely place to meditate today, to read a chapter of a Nigerian novel, to let my mind drift back across winters past.  All the seasons of the year are beautiful.  I'm sure that all the seasons of a person's life have their beauty, too.  This return to full-on winter has been such a joy so far.

Downtown Pittsburgh on a February Night

I so rarely make it downtown these days, and certainly not at night.  Although I'm not a Boy Scout, I had reason to be at Flag Plaza--near where the old Civic Arena used to stand--on a wintry night recently.  The view was worthwhile.

Minister Creek Overlook Revisited, ANF

I hadn't been to Minister Creek in about twelve years.  I only went there once when we lived up that direction, and it was so overrun with people that I scratched it off my list--even though it was pretty.  I go to the forest for solitude, silence, and unpopulated adventures.  But in late January, I was pretty sure it would be worth a revisit.  And it was.  

This is the valley of Minister Creek, deep in the Allegheny National Forest.  In fact, Minister Creek Campground and trailhead are on the north side of state route 666.  How do these places get their names?  

And even though there was a pair of hardy campers down at the campground, I had the trails all to myself.  This view is nice in the summer, but it is best in winter when no leaves obscure it and the contours of the hills are all aglow beneath their vast surplice of white.  (I mean, it is "Minister" Creek.)

It is a nasty drop of some 30 to 50 feet, made all the more treacherous by the snow.

This might be my favorite shot.

Apparently this spot has a sort of spiritual significance to some folks.  There were several mementoes to the dead here.  In fact, I googled this poor young man and discovered that he died in a car accident the day after this most recent Christmas.  But he was from all the way down in Westmoreland County.  God rest his soul, only 17 years old.  If I'm not mistaken, he died driving a used car that a family member gave him for Christmas.  If that's the case, then my heart aches for her as well.

How lovely the hills are when they're lit from beneath the trees.

I must have spent an hour here, just gazing out at the forest that healed me, lo these many years ago.

I'll create some links to my recent wanderings in West Virginia here....

For a sad autumnal bit of navel-gazing in the Northern Panhandle, go HERE.

For a beautiful fall overnight at Otter Creek Wilderness, go HERE.

For the beautiful and popular Seneca Rocks, go HERE.

For the old Sites Family Homestead, this is your SPOT.

You'll find a late November love song to Dolly Sods HERE.

And because I like sacred architecture, I put a few mountain churches HERE.

A post-Thanksgiving solo trek to the least crowded part of Dolly Sods is HERE.

For a trip to Cheat Summit Fort, where Gen. Lee lost a battle, this is your SPOT.

Tionesta Creek in Winter

It was such a rare pleasure to escape into the sentimental arms of a real winter season in late January.  This was my birthday excursion to a place that is very near to my heart.  It's true that I've discovered new destinations out-of-state, but it was here in the Allegheny National Forest that I first found my sanity and health.

Many of the forest roads were so snowed over that travel was questionable.  I actually got stuck on the Mayburg Road.  Fortunately, a band of six snowmobilers happened along and pulled me out!

See how the stream flows with chunks of ice and the edges of the banks stand frozen.  I've missed winter.  Real winter--like this.  It's a pensive time, a time to be cherished.  I love the way the snow reflects the daylight into windowed rooms when the sun is hid behind clouds.  I call that the snowlight.  O the beauty of this place in January!

The Tidioute Overlook in Winter

There are two scenic overlooks in the Allegheny National Forest near the river town of Tidioute.  There's the "Town Overlook" and the "River Overlook."  The River Overlook is by far the lovelier.

It was a rare return to real winter up there in the national forest, where it's frequently as much as 10 degrees colder than in Pittsburgh.  See how the snowy fields lead down to the water with the Allegheny River wending its narrow course between wooded hills.  The little island in the river is part of the so-called Allegheny Islands Wilderness.

My grandfather used to say that Tidioute was so named because a fur trader once lived here with a Seneca wife who went about topless.

The truth is a lot less colorful.  Apparently it's just an old Seneca word for "crooked stream."

Christmas Camping at Quebec Run and Bear Run

The pandemic has been isolating, and impoverishing, and deadly.  I do not mean to minimize the pain that it has caused for millions of people around the world.  But two things 2020 delivered on in a big and beautiful way: 1) an end to the Trump cabal, and 2) a WHITE CHRISTMAS in Pennsylvania.  2020 also gave me the great majority of my weekends free to go backpacking.  A friend and I did a snowy overnight at Quebec Run in the Forbes State Forest just a few days after Christmas Day--but still well within the season of Christmastime.  

The wintry forest was hushed and bright.  There is nothing to equal the silence of the woods under a fresh carpet of snow.  Not a bug, not a bird, not a gust of wind.  My friend has a 4-season tent, but my 3-season worked nicely with a borrowed double-down sleeping bag.  We laid waste to all the dead and fallen wood in the environs of our campsite and built for ourselves a great blazing fire at the edge of the scenic Quebec Run.  This is a land of rhododendrons, and hemlocks, and oversized rocks.  Because all the snow insulated the fire from spreading, I didn't feel the need to smother it when I went to bed.  The next morning, it still smoldered.  It is indeed a joy to waken on a chilly winter's day to a fire ready made. 

My second backpacking trip of Christmastide was yet another solo trek.  This time I returned to the Bear Run Nature Reserve, which is the first place I ever backpacked (in this very same tent) nearly ten years ago.  

Camping here is free, but you have to reserve your spot online.  The campsites are very dispersed and you never have any neighbors.  I claimed site #4 because it sits at the end of its own little dead end trail.

Bear Run Nature Preserve is on the estate of Fallingwater, which also belongs to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.  There's nothing especially great about Bear Run; it's just woods.  But it made a quick and easy destination for a single night away from Pittsburgh.

The Fleeting Fall

The beauty of that season is in its swift passing--which is perhaps true of all seasons.  They are made sweet to us in their impermanence.  I've neglected my blogs terribly, and I'm finally trying to catch up on my day off.  Nobody reads them; their sole purpose is to give me a record of my travels.  This is a pleasant spot known as the Miller Woods Nature Center, owned by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

Staying Sane

It was an October day, my day off, rainy and perfect for coffee and a book.  Instead, I spent it at a place where I've been coming all my life.  No exaggeration.  Despite having lived in Oklahoma City, Cameroon, and suburban New York City, the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh have been a constant in my life.  I came here on school field trips as a child.  Came again when I moved to Pittsburgh to pursue a master's degree.  And now I come whenever I want.

I love the changing exhibits, but I take a special, strange comfort in the ones that do not change, like the Hall of Architecture and the all the taxidermied animals...