Moraine State Park

Alas, the water tower that handily rebuffed my advances! It measures exactly sixty feet high, and on my two attempts to climb it, I got no higher than forty-five feet. Have I really grown so fearful in my middle age? I who used to scramble over boulders and up the ragged flanks of the Wichita Mountains so long ago? But these two decades later, a sixty foot long ladder gives me the willies. On a high summit near Lake Arthur--Moraine State Park--I'm sure the top of the tower commands the best view around. But its lofty crown remains inviolable...

The problem with Moraine is that it never really gives you a feeling of remoteness. The unmarked trail up to the water tower is the only exception that I know; at a certain point, you do get beyond earshot of all humanity when you're en route to the tower. Beyond the tower, the trail continues to a silent hay field that the farmer has very effectively blocked with great piles of woodland debris. He doesn't want hikers in his fields. (You can't trust a man who goes to the woods without a gun.)

A "moraine" is a deposit of stones and rocks left by a glacier. I don't know if this park comes by its name honestly, but I do know that much of this land used to be strip mines. One lakeside trail bypasses a private residence right on a distant stretch of beach. It's just a little redbrick farmhouse guarded by a seemingly deaf German Shepherd. In the second photo, you can see the gables rising out of the forest, with the lake in the distance. It would be a placid setting to fritter away your life.

Lake Arthur itself is beautiful, wide and serene. One of the nicer trails ends right here in the water. You've got to love a little-used path that ends at a hidden beach.

I didn't expect to find such lovely silence there at Moraine, since my last visit to the park, five years ago, was so disappointing. I've been avoiding the place ever since. But on the summit near the water tower, not a sound could be heard. No cars, no planes, no motorboats. Only flies, and plenty of them. And the breeze stirring the leaves. And the rich, melodic trilling of the birds. The forest echoed with thier songs. Nothing more. This place is overrun with poison ivy and jaggers.

Waterways

Cross Creek is not an altogether unpleasant place to spend a Sunday afternoon in a kayak. It's especially nice if you take the back entrance and paddle about a quarter mile down the little estuary that leads from the parking area to the lake. This little stream is deep and swampy, overgrown with reeds. It's strangely reminiscent of a Louisana swamp.

Also reminiscent of Louisana is the number of dead fishes bobbing on the surface of the water. I counted 19 in the first 20 minutes, then I stopped counting because it was ruining my so-called escape. The dead fish (in both Lousiana and Cross Creek) are thanks to the natural gas industry.

The first view is from the deck of the uncovered bridge mentioned below. The second shot is from the deck of Bobbie--the kayak, so named because it bobs on the surface of the water rather than gliding.

The Bridges of Washington County

It used to be a covered bridge. And there's only ever been one reason to cover a bridge: in order to protect the structure from the elements. But Washington County will do whatever it takes to make the gas companies happy, and the Marcellus shale frackers couldn't fit their beastly trucks over the covered bridge, so off came the roof. You can't afford to wax sentimental about "local color" or "regional identity" when Range Resources comes calling.

The result of uncovering the bridge is going to be twofold. First, the structure will rot and collapse because it wasn't built like modern bridges, which don't require roofs. Second, we're one covered bridge the poorer in the Commonwealth. Ah, but these problems aren't yours and mine. We'll allow another generation to sort out the mess.

This is the back way to "put-in" a kayak or canoe at Cross Creek Lake, in Washington County. Going west on PA50, at the village of Woodrow, take a left onto Old Ridge Road and follow it to a sharp leftward turn with a little park road to the right. The park road leads to this once-covered bridge. If you're going paddling, this is so much nicer than the main entrance to the park. It was the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, but I had the whole place to myself.

On the far side of the uncovered bridge, the road becomes a clay-dirt track the likes of which I haven't seen since my Africa years. It snakes through forest and uphill. Eventually, the little lane remains under deep canopy as the countryside off to the the left opens up dramatically beneath it. The road feels like a mezzanine in darkness, looking out over a vast auditorium, the ancient farmlands and the woodlots of southern Pennsylvania. It gave me the impression of standing in a high, dark balcony that overlooks a large, bright theater or sanctuary.


The tragedy of this place tears at my heart. The weary old countryside first settled in the last decades of the 18th century has seen so much heartache and bloodshed. It's been a place of accute injustice, where the rich in far-off cities have exploited the local poor shamelessly, and at least in recent years, the poor have been complicit in their own dehumanization. This land has been mined, and strip-mined, and farmed, and drilled, and in all of these ventures, poisoned. And yet, her quiet dignity and forlorn beauty are still her own.

The little road is topped with gravel as it reaches the summit, a broad, flat area. As the road draws near to a loud, heinously ugly fracker station, you'll see threatening signs warning that the place is off limits to all except hardhatted employees of Range Resources.