Limestone Cemetery, Afterthougths

This is Ivan Lancelot, who lived only four days in 1890.  It's sad...but he did get one heck of a cool name.

I saw the most marvelous red-bellied woodpecker in this cemetery, but he was camera-shy.

It's not that I have much hope of our misguided leaders repenting of their faults...but it helps me to pray that they will.  After all, even George Wallace--the Alabama governor who said, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"--ended up repenting of his racism.  And it helps me to remember that they too are human beings and worthy of my best hopes for all humankind.

Limestone Cemetery, Warren County

On my way back from the short jaunt on the Tanbark Trail, I told myself I had enough time (and courage) to do one of two things, but not both: I could either explore a certain abandoned house that I've had my eye on, or I could take the long dirt lane marked "Limestone Cemetery."  I've noticed the lane many times, but it seems to wind out along the edge of private woods and fields, so I've hesitated to follow it.  I mean, what if it goes to a private family cemetery?  What if a local on a gator with an AR-16 asks what I'm doing in his hayfield?

It's true that I felt like I was on private property, but at the top of the lane, where it comes to the edge of the woods, there was indeed a small gravel parking area replete with a weathered handicap sign for the area nearest to the graves.  

I imagine there was probably a church up here at one time.  That's how most rural cemeteries got placed, in centuries past.  In the southern part of the state, and most notably in West Virginia, family cemeteries are usually located on family farms--and that was what I was hoping to avoid here.  

While I was on the remote hilltop, I took the opportunity to text my daughters, who are both upset about the needless attack on Iran.  One of my daughters is doing a semester in Jordan, and it's not clear yet how American aggression in the region will affect her.  Not that she's my only concern: I ache for all the innocent and those who stand in harm's way.  More needless violence, and all of it a ploy to distract us from real issues.

There's nothing like an old cemetery on a far-away hilltop to give you a sense of perspective about life...and vanity...and violence...and death...and eternity.  We all end up here, don't we?  We've all got a limited number of years to make good on these lives we've been given.  We will all be forgotten eventually.  Even those who remember us will follow after us and themselves be forgotten.  We can etch our names in marble and attach those names on glass-and-concrete towers; we can name things after ourselves and assume that we will be known and respected forever.  But we all come to this.  

I struggled with substance abuse at one time in my life.  In the cemetery today, I had reason to recall (with horror) some of the beastly things I did when I was "in my cups."  And there, for the first time, I was able to feel a degree of compassion for the author(s) of today's chaos and violence.  They're poisoned souls.  They've been intoxicated and enslaved, utterly owned by power, and money, and arrogance, and greed--just as I was once intoxicated and owned by another kind of poison.  They're in their cups.  And for the first time ever, I was able to honestly pray for their healing...

Tanbark Trail: An Adventure in OCD

So...I just had to complete the small segment of the Tanbark Trail that I didn't get to cover in my previous section hikes.  There was just a small stretch of trail that I missed, near the Hickory Creek Wilderness, maybe less than a mile in length.  The forest there is so pure, the trees so tall, and straight, and silent.  I believe this is within the bounds of the Hearts Content Scenic Area, so camping is not allowed.

So I parked at the trailhead for the Hickory Creek Wilderness and instead of going into the wilderness, I took the Tanbark toward the east branch of the actual stream for which the wilderness is named, Hickory Creek.  The hemlocks were angelic, even if the trail was very poorly blazed in places.  Maybe someday I'll volunteer to maintain and blaze the Tanbark as my gift to the trees and to everyone who loves them and finds their presence life-giving.

This hemlock was grand and ancient.  I had to stop and rub my hands over its bark... I'm not sure if that's an appropriate homage to a venerable hemlock, but it was all I knew to do.

This stretch of trail took longer than I expected because it passes through some slippery climbs among boulders and also because I occasionally lost the trail and had to look for it.  Clearly, we're assuming these days that everyone who comes out here has a hiking app to show them where the trail is.  I still resist trail apps because when I'm backpacking, that's not how I want to spend my phone's limited battery.  After all, I've got pictures to take for my blog.  But!  Mission accomplished.  Now I have hiked the entire 9-mile length of the Tanbark Trail.  It would have bugged me constantly to know that I did all but one mile of it...

Chapman State Park & State Game Land 29

I hadn't been to Chapman State Park in many years, and I didn't intend to go there yesterday either.  But the vicissitudes of time being what they are, I found myself there again.

Chapman's a smallish but pretty park, surrounded on all sides by public lands: State Game Land 29 and the Allegheny National Forest. 

It's got pretty much anything you could want...a campground, a lake, a swimming beach, hiking trails, cabins, yurts, enclosed pavilions for winter use, and a big sled-riding hill that they light up on snowy nights--not photographed.  

My goal was to hike north along Allegheny National Forest Road # 536, which follows the West Branch of Tionesta Creek through State Game Land 29 all the way into the Chapman State Park--maybe 6 miles?  

But somehow, that didn't happen.  Instead, I ended up going straight to Chapman from its main (north) entrance and hiking south into SGL 29...pictured here.

The rock formations in the game land were fun.  Someone left a pair of boots at the top of this boulder, which is maybe 15 feet high.

I mean, it could be Big Bird...with a long stride like that, right?  What kind of bird walks with its feet in single file and its footfalls 24 inches apart?

It would be worth taking a day or two to explore SGL 29.  That's what I love about the North Country: No matter how much of your life you spend exploring it, there's always so much more to discover.  Strangely, I did actually meet 3 other solo hikers out in that far-flung place, plus one oil company employee on a weirdly silent "gator"...because, of course, the state game lands are exploited for maximum profit.

 

Tanbark Trail, Allegheny National Forest

Many times I've driven past this old house, standing alone in the woods.  It serves as a grange hall, a church, a community center, and it even has a free little library.  It seems to be an all-around gathering place for the sparse population of Watson Township.  My name is not Watson, but that was the name of one of my grandparents, and her people are from this area.  I suppose I've probably got an old blood connection to this dark, beautiful, slightly spooky corner of the world.  Funny how you've got four grandparents, and genetically, you're equal parts of all four.  But you only get one of the four names that you're entitled to.  Watson could be my last name because I've got as much Watson DNA as that of the grandfather whose name I did get...

This is apparently the church entrance, "Tidioute Creek Chapel."  Their website is defunct, but I found them on YouTube.  A bit low-church and conservative for my tastes, but, "you do you."  A few hundred yards down the road from the grange hall, there's a roadside spring where people come to collect water for their hunting camps--many of which don't have wells.  It's called "Sand Springs" on the National Geographic map.  Right beside that spring is where the Tanbark Trail crosses the road.  The Tanbark is a great option for people who want to hike the Allegheny National Forest, but who are not interested in camping in an ugly clearcut or next to a noisy oil well.  The Allegheny National Forest is highly industrialized, with ever-increased operations in logging, and conventional drilling, and fracking.  But the Tanbark traverses some of the few protected areas within the forest: The Allegheny National Recreation Area, the Heart's Content Recreation Area (which is not a full-on "national" recreation area), and a corner of the Hickory Creek Wilderness.  That's to say, the Tanbark Trail crosses some of the wilder areas of this otherwise over-exploited national forest.  In this part of the forest, you don't see old extraction machinery rusting among the trees, and the drillers are not forever building new roads to new well pads.  The Allegheny National Forest has been poked, and prodded, and scraped, and poisoned, and scarred by all the soulless industries that still own the mineral rights beneath the trees.  But this zone is pretty wild.

The forest here is mostly level and scenic enough, if unspectacular.  It's quiet and full of birds and other wildlife.  It was in this area that I recently spotted a black bear.  The land is somewhat protected, since some of it is designated a "national recreation area" and some of it is just a regular "recreation area" of the national forest.  Neither type of designation gets as much protection as a "national wilderness area" (like the adjacent Hickory Creek), but any protection is good in these parts.  

Now, let's talk about the Tanbark Trail.  It's a slightly overgrown and seldom-used linear trail that's easy to lose in places.  It's not very consistently blazed.  But the very fact that it's a bit neglected hints at a happier truth: You probably won't see another soul out there!  The Tanbark runs about 9 miles (northwest to southeast) from the banks of the Allegheny River at US Route 62.  It passes through protected and remote areas of the national forest and all the way to its terminus at the North Country Trail, near the legendary Forest Road 119.  A few months ago, I hiked the portion from the Allegheny River to Sand Springs, near Watson Township Grange Hall.  I apparently did not include that hike on this blog--though I could have sworn I did.  Which is to say, I've section-hiked almost all of this trail, but I have no blog post to document the first segment.  Starting at Sand Springs and heading southeast--away from the river--you come upon some really cool rock formations at about 2.2 miles.  Take a look at this massive boulder!  That is a full-sized hemlock tree growing out of the fissure near the top.  The hemlock tree itself must be 25 feet tall.  I'm coming back here to camp someday.

This is not a great photo of the birds in question, but when I got to the rock city pictured above, a pair of ravens objected noisily to my presence.  They made the most agitated squawking noise while circling above the treetops and following me.  It added to the surreal quality of this place with its tall boulders, gray skies, and bare trees.  I know it was my presence that upset the ravens because they started yelling when I arrived, followed me while I was among their rocks, and stopped objecting as soon as I left the area. 

Up among the rocks, there are views like this from the craggy perches high up in the boulders.  I can see why ravens would like such a spot and want to keep it hidden from human interlopers.  In fact, I can see how anyone would like this place, and that's exactly why I'm coming back...ravens be damned.

The skies grew grayer and angrier as the day progressed.  When I reached the East Branch of Hickory Creek, inside the Hearts Content Recreation Area, I turned back and made for the car--at Sand Springs.  I did stop along the way to run my hands over the rough bark of this exquisitely textured tree... Black cherry, I think.  It feels so good to touch a tree.  It's a tactile pleasure that I never take for granted.  We live such sensorily-deprived lives.  I did about 4.6 miles on the Tanbark that day, but it was an out-and-back, so I only covered 2.3 miles of trail. 

It was a cold and extremely windy night.  Back at the house, the electricity went out at about 7:00pm and stayed out till 4:30am.  With the furnace out, I heated one room with this weird little indoor fireplace that my hoarder-wife brought home.  It burns rubbing alcohol!  This was only an emergency solution for the short-term.  When I woke up the next morning, my sinuses were filled with soot.  I've got a rusty old Franklin wood-burning stove down in the basement, waiting for renovations to be completed so that I can install it for just such occasions.  It was kind of fun, too, lighting the place with candles from the local Dollar General--Saint Jude and Mother Mary prayer candles.  The woods and skies surrounding us were darker than a coal shaft.

And on the morrow, I decided to start at the south terminus of the Tanbark Trail and hike northward to the place where I turned around the day before.  I fell just about half a mile short of that goal, but still, it was a nice hike through hemlock forests on icy trails.  This is where the Tanbark crosses Forest Road 119 and briefly enters a section of the Hickory Creek Wilderness Area.

Oh, the hemlock forests all around!  I've been hearing for years that our hemlocks are endangered because of an invasive "hemlock wooly adelgid."  But the extremely cold temperatures help to beat back the adelgids' advances, so I'm grateful for the climate-change sub-zero temps we've had.  There are few things lovelier than a hemlock forest in the winter.  Hemlocks have fewer industrial uses than pines and hardwoods, so their bark was used for tanning leather...hence the name "Tanbark." 

I was off to a late start for my second consecutive day of hiking the Tanbark Trail.  And so, at the end of the hike, when I reached Hearts Content Road, near the parking area for Hickory Creek Wilderness, I decided to do an easy road-walk back to my car.  I did this in part because I didn't want to get stuck under the dark hemlocks in the falling night.  I also wanted to get a closer look at a few of the cool hunting camps that line the road from the wilderness area to the disappeared ghost town of Dunham Siding, where I'd parked.  I mean...just look at this place!  Looks like it might have started life as a farmhouse.  Someone clearly spends a lot of time here, maybe with extended family or some kind of large sportsmen's club.

This little one-room cabin is the kind of thing I originally had in mind when I went looking for property up in the North Country.  It has no electricity, no running water, no bathroom...just a wood-burning stove and an outhouse.  You collect your water at Sand Springs, about 2 miles away.

This older camp used to be a Watson Township schoolhouse.  

This newer camp puts me in mind of places I've seen in Northern New England and the Pacific Northwest.

Back to Forest Road 116, also known as Mayburg Road.  It forks here with the legendary Forest Road 119, which goes on to form the south border of the Hickory Creek Wilderness.  Both roads were sheets of ice and very difficult to navigate with a regular Honda CRV.  The second day's hike was only about 6 miles.  

“The Angels Watch O’er You”: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

After all the passion and desire, the anger, and the boredom, and life’s transient, ephemeral joys…after all the many needs that drive you—and the demands of the ego that feel like needs—when it all draws silently to its dreaded, long-awaited close…this is enough.  Just this.  Come to rest beneath the spruce trees in a quiet, snowy place. 

Those mute wooded hills that observed so much of your living will hold you still when you return to the earth from which your substance is drawn.  Winds pass above.  Rivers freeze and thaw.  Birds seek the radiance of a Guatemalan jungle only for a season.  They’ll return well before the sun and warmth because this is where they want to be.  With all their avian hearts, they long for the hemlock and the maple and the oak.  They pine for the pine—white pine, red pine.  Though they fly away far, their mysterious birdling hearts bring them back to this place in the end.

“When the busy world is hushed, when the fever of life is o’er,” I think we return to the eternal consciousness that rests forever over the world’s silent places, like these.  Frozen streams, snowy hills, bare trees—needing nothing, desiring nothing, regretting nothing, accepting all things.  Just being.  Peacefully, wordlessly, passionlessly being.  Do we remember the turbulent, noisy, crowded, egotistical lives we left behind—with all their grasping and clinging?  I don’t know.  Maybe.  Probably.  Do we long for them like the birds long for hemlocks?  I think not.  I don’t know, but probably not… Isn’t this what we longed for all along, the freedom just to be?

Fading Glory of Oil City, Part 2: Houses

Are they "mansions," or are they just big houses?  I guess for me, a "mansion" has servants' quarters on the third floor and a back staircase down to the kitchen.  Maybe more than one living room.  Whatever they are, Oil City is full of them.  My father always said that they're evidence of the days when poor farmers would strike it rich in the oil boom and move into town to build the most ostentatious homes thy could imagine.  He claims that, despite their venerable age, these are the McMansions of the poor who tastelessly flaunted their newfound and unaccustomed wealth.  I'm not sure I agree... They're hardly ostentatious.

Farming the dense clay soil of the region didn't make many people rich.  But a lot of farmers got oil leases back in the late 1800s, and they moved into town and built grand homes.  My father, again, claims that some of these houses include fanciful features that were just for show: grand central staircases that wind in a semicircle and end at the ceiling, going nowhere; ornate double doors that open onto brick walls; fake gold chandeliers; secret passageways behind bookshelves... The point was to impress visitors with their grandeur.  I don't know...they look like normal Victorians to me.  Also, I believe that people around here prefer to downplay their wealth rather than displaying it.  If anything, all those German and Scotch-Irish farm-folk tended to frown on too much ostentation, surely even after striking it rich.  

Down in Pittsburgh, it's still fashionable to buy a decaying old mansion on the Northside or in Regent Square, set up camp in the kitchen, and slowly refurbish it.  Will that kind of thing ever happen here?  Is it currently happening?  Affordable housing is a real issue, and so a lot of these old single-family homes are now bizarrely sectioned off into dark, labyrinthine little apartments.  If you were into the old house thing, this would be a pretty affordable location to buy one and fix it up.  On one hand, there are a lot of neglected or abandoned properties around here.  On the other hand, you don't really see many houses for sale.

Someone did this place up right--juxtaposing modern features onto a traditional canvas.  The grounds are interesting, too, though I didn't want to be too conspicuous about photographing them. 

What I did not know when I bought an old house is that people who buy old houses spend all their time working on them.  I've got other hobbies; I do not want to spend my free time installing weird wallpaper and painting all this old-fashioned wooden gingerbread froo-froo.  I mean, look at this thing.  It's beautiful, but you'd have to repaint it every 10 years or so.  Vinyl siding would be out of the question.  And you couldn't install efficient windows because the old ones add so much to its aesthetic appeal.  But look, I count three upstairs porches...two on the second floor and one on the third.  And there may be more in the back.  

In Oil City, a lot of relatively plain houses, like this one, still sport a jaunty hat like the ones worn by the Kaiser's soldiers in the Great War...

Now let's journey to the Northside of Oil City--the less posh side of town.  This house sits just across the street from the one my family used to own.  As a kid, it always made me think of that Gothic children's novel, The House with the Clock in Its Walls.  All my life, it was lovingly maintained.  Today, someone still mows the lawn and leaves a light on inside, but it's pretty clearly not lived in anymore, and deferred maintenance is piling up.

This was our house, a big old place with six bedrooms, but far from mansionesque.  The front porch used to wrap around the side.  As you can see, it's rotted off.  I lived alone here when I first got back from five years in Africa.  It was still in the family, but no one wanted to live in Oil City...much less in this decaying place.  My father bought it in the mid-60s from the wife of the man who built it in the year 1900.  He owned a tavern downtown, and so there's a wine cellar beneath the basement.  I sometimes drive past just to see if there's anyone living here again, and there's typically not.

Fading Glory of Oil City, Part 1: Churches & Public Buildings

My hometown, Oil City. Take a good look at the skyline.  When you approach the town from afar, the first thing you see is St. Joe's double spires. They look just a little sinister.  Many Western Pennsylvania towns have a redbrick Catholic church presiding over them from the upper reaches of some hillside.  They're called "Mother Hens." New Bethlehem--where my other grandparents lived--had St. Charles presiding with only one tower, but in the same redbrick German style. 

Of course, the majority of the population in these old industrial towns was always Catholic--mostly Italian, Polish, Irish, and South-German.  Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were enticed to this area and fed like so much fodder to its factories and the industrial plants.  St. Joseph's Church was the original Catholic parish in Oil City, and it's located on the more working class North Side of town--which is where I'm from. 

Back in the 1970s, The Rolling Stone reported on 3 suicides in Oil City--all were young men who belonged to St. Joseph's Church, and all died within a month of each other. They all three were seeing the same therapist, too.  (This is an odd detail in the story because mental health therapy was not yet normalized in these industrial towns in the 70s--especially not for men.)  I'd hate to be the priest who had to do all three of those funerals. But back in those days, St. Joe's still had a convent attached to the church and probably had three or four priests...

And this?  This was St. Stephen's Catholic Church, on the wealthier Southside.  It got closed down in 2020, and all of its members were sent to St. Joe's.  Neither church has any parking at all, and St. Joe's is set back in a rundown residential neighborhood.  Sucks to be a Catholic in Oil City--or anyone living on one of the steep, narrow streets where all those Catholics park on Sundays.  25 years ago, a man in a long brown hooded robe, with a staff, asked me how to get to St. Stephen's.  He was making a pilgrimage to this now-abandoned church.  Why?

The Episcopalians have a tidy little Anglophilic church on the more-fashionable Southside, of course.  Their only weekly service is at 9:30 on Sundays, which makes me wonder if they're reduced to sharing a clergyperson with another parish... I've never been inside this building, but I think it would be worth a visit.  I like Episcopalianism--with its glorious Book of Common Prayer--but they will try to make you think that they're the only alternative for progressive Christians. 

This is 2nd Presbyterian Church, also on the Southside.  It was always a church for the wealthy, when I was young.  I know their current pastor and like him pretty well.  I mean, we're all inveterate dorks, you know that, right?

Prominent men in the history of the town and region--including the Seneca Chief Cornplanter.

Oil City's central post office is a pathetic little garage-like structure.  The old post office is now the Venango County Museum, pictured here.  It's got its own understated grandeur... I've never been inside!

And this?  This is the public library.  I went inside today to get a library card.  I had not been inside this building since I was about 15, when I decided that I wanted to remain a Christian but did not want to be an evangelical anymore.  I borrowed three books: one about Episcopalianism, one about Lutheranism, and one about Presbyterianism.