Four More State Parks for My Collection

Like you, O reader, most of my dreaming and scheming about outdoor destinations is done online.  Isn't that what brings you to my obscure and rarely-updated blog anyway?  The advantage to online research is that you can find photos, and websites, and Google reviews of a place before putting in the time to investigate it for yourself.  But one glitch is that reading about places online can cause you to build up false expectations about them.  I don't say this with any sort of disappointment, but I added four new state parks to my collection on this recent trip to central Pennsylvania, but none of them impressed me all that greatly.  Pictured here is Greenwood Furnace State Park, which has it all: a beach, hiking trails, a campground, several historical displays, a gift shop.  I liked it.  But I wouldn't have driven three hours just to be here.

I also visited the notoriously remote Penn Roosevelt State Park while I was here.  It can only be accessed by way of gravel lanes that wind through the Rothrock State Forest.  I'd always imagined it as a sort of outdoorsman's paradise.  There's nothing there but a pond, a small campground (with sites that cannot be reserved), and perhaps the most isolated public restrooms in the state.  No electricity, only tent-camping, no playgrounds, or ranger stations, or showers.  It's nice as car-campgrounds go, but it's mostly just that: a campground deep, deep in the woods.  There was nothing to film there except a few picnic tables under trees.  In fact, there was not a single occupied campsite on the day before July 4, though a friendly young ranger showed up and suggested sites 11 and 12.  There was nothing to photograph at Reeds Gap State Park either--which for some reason had an enormous number of parking lots and very little else.  At least its pleasant, woodsy little campground was filling up.  And at Whipple Dam, the fourth state park that I added to my collection, there was little besides a beach that closes at dusk.  Plenty of people.  Because the romantic myth of Penn Roosevelt's wilderness acclaim was a little dissipated by an actual visit to the place, I decided not to push on to discover the equally mystical Poe Valley and Poe Paddy state parks.  Some illusions are best when they're maintained.  However, I did go to the Outer Banks again last month--a place that I'm only just starting at last to appreciate.  Photos from the North Carolina coast can be found here and here.  Photos of various places around the state, including the mountains near Asheville, are here.  

Old Stone Church, Greenwood Furnace

Sacred architecture has always fascinated me.  And I've always been particularly intrigued by the old stone church at Greenwood Furnace State Park in central Pennsylvania.  It once functioned as a regular church, back when there was a village built around the old "furnace."  It then fell into a long season of disuse, and now it is used as a church again but only in the summertime, when campers can attend services.  It's run by the local Methodist ministerial association--or whatever.

The stark simplicity seen in these photos has a whole different feel when you're actually standing inside the church.  In pictures, it looks a little dull, homespun, uninspired and uninspiring.  But in real life, there's a real peace and tranquility to this place--which surely used to ring loud with the Methodist revivalism of the 19th century.  There were musty Methodist hymnals in the pews and paraphrased versions of the Bible.

Click on this photo to enlarge it.  I loved the scene with the two pianos, the bottle of water on a stool, the meadow just outside the window.  It's a still life of rural American spirituality.  On the piano bench, unseen, one of the old red hymnals was laid open on its face to a pair of hymns I had never heard of.

It's the attempt to differentiate the sacred from the secular that I regard as admirable in so many rural churches.  They're clearly simple places with down-to-earth people, unpretentious, perhaps less educated.  But they still go to the effort of rounding the top of this window into a gentle arch, just to remind you that this place is not your kitchen, or your barn, or even your fancy parlor.  This place is sacred.  It's a church, a place set aside from daily life, a place whose presence in the community is meant to remind us of the best ideals of humankind, a place pointing toward goodness, truth, and beauty.  Of course, churches are fallible human institutions, and especially in the age of Trump, their moral authority is more than a little tattered.  But at least their physical presence aspires to represent better things, the noblest elements of humankind.  

All church mice are poor, but none poorer than the ones at Greenwood Furnace Church where they're desperate enough to eat paper.  (I was known as The Snowbelt Parson in years past.  For a reference to eating books, see Ezekiel 3:1 and Revelation 10:10.)

I lingered long in this place.  It has a welcoming, comforting feel to it--despite the cold whiteness of the walls and pews.  I doubt I'd want to hear anything coming from a rural Methodist pulpit.  Their denomination has recently come out strongly homophobic, and they're conducting witch hunts to purge their ranks of gay and gay-friendly clergy.  But it was a nice place to be alone for awhile.  

Standing Stone Trail: Section 8

 With my entire family out of the country, I fled to the hills and did my first-ever overnight on the Standing Stone Trail.  Arriving at about 6:30pm on Tuesday and heading home at about 12:30pm on Thursday, Independence Day.

 The evening views out over the wide farming valleys of central Pennsylvania were well worth a three-hour drive from Pittsburgh.  This is looking east toward the tidy, quaint little borough of Belleville, where all the houses are stately and as big as high schools, and there are nearly as many Amish buggies as there are pickup trucks.

 I took a little gravel lane out of the hamlet of Allensville and up onto the mountaintop to meet the trail. But the trouble with Stone Mountain is that, though it's state forest land, and you’re allowed to camp almost anywhere on its ridge line, the pitch is so steep and rocky that there aren’t many places you could pitch a tent.  I did manage to find a level area with a fire ring just north and downhill from a rock feature known as The Wall—which commands a nice view westward and is a good place to watch the sunset.

 An even better westward panorama can be found at Sausser’s Pile, the enormous heap of boulders pictured here.  As evening came on, both nights, a number of wood thrushes and one distant owl sang their benediction over the dark.  The evensong of the forest.  No night in the woods is completely satisfying without it.  Otherwise the woods up there on the mountaintop was hushed, almost reverent.  It got quieter the later it grew.  The many flies and mosquitoes seemed to go to bed early.  There was none of the usual weirdness about sleeping out in the forest alone.  You know, the nighttime thoughts that solitude brings on--is there a bear nearby; is someone watching me from behind a tree?  This place has a profound peace to it.

Even though I was here over July 4, and the nearby state parks seemed to have attracted crowds (with the exception of Penn Roosevelt, to be mentioned in a future post), I met not another soul on the Standing Stone Trail.  I do not go to the woods to meet people, and it was glorious to have this magnificent place all to myself.  But it made me wonder a bit.  Where are all the people?  Shouldn't there be more than a single hiker out on the 4th of July weekend?

Again, this is the view from Sausser's Pile, which might have been my favorite spot on that stretch of trail.  I loved the way the clouds cast shadows over the canopy of the forests in the valley below.  It was hot, crazy hot, though far less hot up on the summit.  The clouds didn't seem to move at all.  They just hung there like formless sculptures in the sky.

I did break a backcountry rule by spending two nights in one spot, since camp sites are so hard to come by on this steep and rocky terrain.  I want so badly to do the whole trail, but I'm afraid.  Even just two nights out there were pretty grueling in the kind of heat we're having.  I wanted a brook-bath so badly both nights, but had to use disposable bath wipes for the absence of any streams.  (Those little wipe-things couldn't begin to wash away the dirt and smell!)  And because water is so scarce on ridges, I had to pack it in, which added a lot of weight to my pack.  I was shocked and dismayed to learn that it's only two miles from Allensville Road to the Little Vista (first photo).  It truly felt more like five miles to me.  It's not just age.  I'm only 49.  It's an old family banshee that I'll just call "the palsy," eating away at me more rapidly than I'd expected.  I wonder if I'll ever do this whole trail.

The Beauty of Forgotten Things: Hillman State Park

 It’s been a good long while since I’ve taken my deep thirst for the outdoors, my never-ending quest for beauty and adventure, to the old reclaimed strip mines at Hillman.  The poison ivy, the deer ticks, the thin forests with brittle canopies.  It’s just not the land of hemlocks and ferns that I love.  Instead of deep shade and trickling trout streams, Hillman has broad grassy meadows, piercing sunlight, spooky groves all in tatters.  Ah, but I’m glad I went there this past Sunday.  It seemed to be as quiet and as beautiful a place as I could desire.

One nice thing about visiting a park rarely is that you forget what you once learned about it, and you get to rediscover it—which I probably say every time I go to Hillman.  It’s even closer to my house than Raccoon Creek, and I didn’t have much time, so I made it my destination of choice.  It was lovely in the light of early evening, with the summer all fresh and green, the trees as-yet-unplagued by wilt, or drought, or disease.  Someone has begun to name the trails in this park and even mark them with signs, which is at once a help and a sorrow.  It’s a help for obvious reasons.  It’s a sorrow because the place no longer has the dangerous character it had back when it was easier to get lost there.  The Wetlands Trail wends between at least five scenic ponds that were devoid of all fishers on a Pirates home game day.  The only fisher here was an elegant blue heron.  Imagine this place just before sunset, when the wood thrush makes his evensong.  

West End Overlook, Pittsburgh

This much-neglected blog is evidence of my too-busy life.  Even if I do still get an excursion out into the woods or the world every week or so, I no longer take the time to document it.  And yet, on my way home from my therapist's--what?  Therapists don't really have "offices," do they?  Is it a den?  A parlor?  It has the feel of a room in a quiet European movie: urban, with lots of big windows, books, and plants, and the refined paraphernalia of an educated and privileged life...a framed Chaucer quote, strange little statues of dancing women, far corners filled with shelves and doors as inaccessible as Jerry Seinfeld's bedroom.  (Remember, all you ever saw was the hallway to it.)  In any case, on my way back from my therapist's cinematic chambers in Shadyside, I got the urge to stop by a place that I haven't seen since I was in college.  The West End Overlook!

Another factor contributing to my neglect of this blog is that I now see my therapist on my days off, which gives me less time to get all my work done around the house.  By the end of the day, if I was lucky enough to get a hike in, it was almost always someplace nearby, a place that bores me too much to talk about.  I hope to start doing weekly exploration once again, but I'm not sure when.  The West End Overlook is nice.  It definitely has better views than Mt. Washington.  

Mid State Trail, State Game Land 97

The wife had a presentation to make to a group gathered in Schellsburg, two hours east of Pittsburgh.  She was amazed that I wanted to ride along with her instead of staying home and sleeping in on a Saturday.  "Dear," I said, "you clearly do not know the glories of Schellsburg!"  She and I rarely get a chance to sit and talk for two hours anymore, and so the car ride was nice...till the harping started, just ten miles shy of our destination.  But I dropped her off at her seminar at 9:00 and had till 3:00 before I had to pick her up.  Where to go?  Shawnee State Park?  Blue Knob?  Back to the Town Hill tract of the Buchanan State Forest?  I finally settled on this place because I realized that the views would be better in the early spring, before the leaves return to the trees.  The drive to the trailhead is only 30 minutes from Schellsburg.

See the orange blaze painted onto the skinny tree in the middle of this photo?  That marks the Mid State Trail--which I've mentioned on this blog before.  It's a 327-mile long trail that runs from the Mason-Dixon Line (Maryland border) north and east to the New York State Line.  It's said to be one of the wildest trails in the state.  The views from the trail are magnificent because it wends along the razorback ridgelines of a few long mountains.  On this trail, you're pretty much always looking down on the Ridge-and-Valley Province both to the east and west.  Look at this picture.  This is the very crest of Tussey Mountain, and you can see how the land falls away sharply to the east and west of the pinnacle.  It's got about the same pitch as most residential roofs.  That pile of stones at the top of the roof is the trail.  You have to pick your footing very carefully on rocks like that.  And though it's windy and cold up here in March, there are copperheads sunning on these rocks in the summer.

Aside from venomous snakes, what's the other drawback of hiking this trail in the summer?  An almost total absence of water!  There's never water up here on these ridgelines, where the cataclysms of eons past forced rocks to stand on end like sentinels, and the topsoil is thin.  Of course, if you hiked this trail in the winter--or even now in the very early spring--you could always collect snow and use it for cooking and drinking.  But in the summer, you might have to go down the mountain every now and again to seek out a brook or a stream.  Click on this photo to enlarge it (as any photo on this blog).  In the middle of this shot, you see a dark lower peak running many miles to the south.  That's Warrior Ridge, and it's not even half as tall as Tussey Mountain.  Between the two pinnacles sits Black Valley--where you can see several farm fields.  I did not photograph them, but the birds of prey soaring above the valley floor were awe-inspiring and majestic.  It always feels so strange to look down at birds in flight.  I think I saw an eagle. 

This was a marvelous hike.  The wind blew hard and cold on the west side of the ridge.  But on the east side, it was windless and the big rocks emanated a welcoming heat.  The difference in temperature and comfort from one side of those rocks to the other was amazing.  

I've neglected this blog in part because I haven't been keeping up with my life, and my hikes have become less frequent, closer to home, and less worth recording.  Also, I'm just too tired to put the photos up and write about them.  And yet, I've got lots of treks to post, and I'm way behind.  I did have a frigidly cold backpacking adventure out in the Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas last month.  I gotta put that up, too.  

Standing Stone Trail: Monument Rock

This is the Monument Rock, which the Standing Stone Trail is named for.  Out west, it would be just another rock.  But around here, it's a pretty unusual thing.  It's unphotographable, surrounded as it is with branches and sitting at the jagged top of a boulder field.  Also, it's smaller than you might expect, maybe only 15 feet high.  It was nice to discover that no one had ever spray-painted it.  The kind of people who spray paint rocks are not the kind that walk a mile and a half uphill through the woods, so this stone is safe from vandals.

 Speaking of boulder fields, this place has them!  It's hard to tell, but the one pictured here is probably two acres in size.  I took the Turnpike to Fort Littleton, where I followed Sinoquipe Road, looking for Ramsey Path, a spur trail that leads up to the Standing Stone Trail and Monument Rock.  The Ramsey Trail was not easy to find, and there wasn't really any parking area to speak of.  But it was a pleasant jaunt across a patch of private ground and through the state gamelands where Monument Rock is located.

 The views along this stretch of the Standing Stone were modest, pretty but not breathtaking.  Actually, all the views on today's trek were along the other little spur trail that leads out to the rock, which is maybe a quarter mile from the main trail that bears its name.  With forty pounds on your back, and night setting in, and the urgency to find water or a campsite before dark, you could just skip this little side trip to the rock. It's less spectacular than all that.  But if you've got time and nothing on your back but a day pack, definitely make the trek.

 I haven't been maintaining this blog, even though I've continued to hike whenever possible.  I've got a lot of summer treks to post on here, and I wonder if I'll do it.  The summer has been overwhelming, and I couldn't wait to fall exhausted into the arms of my old friend October.  But I fear this is going to be another of those Octobers like we had least year: 80-degree temps until the trees fade from a dull green to bare branches with no colors in between.  Look at these photos.  It's October 6, and there's still barely any hint that it's fall.

 A few splashes of color lined the trail.  Here, the leaves nearly match the trail blaze.

I did do an overnight in the Allegheny National Forest back in July.  And a West Coast trip with a solitary overnight in the Olympia National Forest--near the Pacific Ocean.  Plus, a fantastic backpacking adventure in the Adirondacks. I may or may not post those on this blog or its out-of-state appendix.  I'm not just getting lazy; I'm also getting very tired.