Quebec Run, Sumey Road Area

This, my friends, is a nearly perfect hang.  As a hammock camper, I’m always striving to achieve the most perfect “hang” for my hammock tent.  Quebec Run Wild Area in the Forbes State Forest did not disappoint.  The trees are straight, tall, and evenly spaced.  My friend marveled at the enormous hemlocks, to which I said, “Dude, I gotta take you to Anders Run.”  Still, you couldn’t hang a hammock camp like this at Anders Run.  The tree trunks are too big and the land is crazy steep.  (It’s true that hammock camping is the only way to do it on steep terrain, but still…)

We met up at the trailhead after work on Halloween.  My backpacking buddy wanted to go in by way of Sumey Road, which he found on a map.  I had no idea what a long, narrow lane it would be.  Happily, I met no vehicles coming the other way because in places it’s little more than a gravel driveway.  But it does take you to a lesser-visited part of the wild area.  In fact, other than my companion, I only saw one other person on this whole 2-night trip—a mountain biker who hesitated to follow the trail through our camp.

It was a good trek.  Actually, I hiked the day after Halloween, playing my pan flute in the woods and stopping to re-read “Brideshead Revisited,” which I last read some 30 years ago.  My friend did not hike with me.  He fished.  But the water was low and stagnant from the drought.  It rained off and on all Halloween night, but not enough to make up for a 6-month drought.  Though it was certainly enough to get our gear good and wet.  I often say that I can make it rain by putting up a tent.  Should have done it sooner.

Quebec Run is good place, but for me it’s not all that special.  I wanted to go back to the Hickory Creek Wilderness on this trek, but the guy I hike with didn’t want to drive that far.  Up north?  That’s where the real woods are.  Plus, I wanted to make sure my camp was ready for the winter while I was up there.  

But honestly, I feel like everything I say on here is just idle chatter.  I can’t stop thinking about the fact that tomorrow is Election Day, and we face two possibilities: a victorious fascist regime or an insurrection prompted by a defeated fascist regime.  This is not good.  Where did we lose our way as a nation?  I remember believing that America was always the good guy….

 

Buzzard Swamp in October

During the pandemic, Buzzard Swamp was a regular haunt for me.  It’s a big bird sanctuary on the Allegheny National Forest, not far from the little woodland town of Marienville.  But it definitely has a remote feel.  The roads out to it are long and lonely, as are the trails that run around all the many ponds.  There are far more hunting camps than year-round homes in this area.  The roads are narrow and pass mostly through miles and miles of trees.  It’s so beautiful.

I regret the name “Buzzard Swamp” for such a lovely spot.  It’s really not a swamp at all, just a series of pools and ponds where birds shelter.  The area is broad and mainly level, grassy with woodland all around.  I used to come out here to camp alone just inside the woods near Pond # 1–which is the largest body of water, not the one pictured here.  The frogs would croak into the night, and deer would wander down to the water’s edge to graze.  This place is home to an abundance of birds: all manner of billed waterfowl and songbirds.  More than that, it’s a stopover for migrating birds whose range is wider, including snowy owls.  My last sighting of a snowy owl was near here, about 17 years ago.

The autumn season is well advanced up here in the North Country.  I always believed that fall in New England is pretty much the same as fall anywhere else in the Northeast, but a recent trip to Maine disproved that theory.  With the abundance of sugar maples, New England’s autumnal glory far outshines ours.  Still, the fall season is lovely here, if more than a little faded by late October.

Here’s the thing: I came here out of spite.  I was mad that I even had to come to Buzzard Swamp.  But I’m stuck with all the damn pets my family collected down through the years before going away and leaving the pets and me in our house in Pittsburgh.  Each time they wanted a new animal, I said, “No.  You won’t take care of it.  I’ll end up taking care of it, and I hate living with animals.”  “No, I’ll take care of it, I promise,” they always replied.  “Please!”  Now I’ve got my wife’s dog, my daughter’s dog, and my other daughter’s cat—none of which I wanted in the first place.  

So now when I go up to my hunting camp near the Allegheny National Forest, I have to take at least the younger of the two dogs with me.  And though I do like that dog, it’s no hiker.  Ah, but perhaps I’ve complained of this before…. In any case, on future trips up north, I’ll be leaving that dog with a nephew en route.  Judge me as you will, but I do not like sharing my life with an animal.  

The brooding autumn skies lent themselves to introspection…or maybe just…brooding.  I did not want the little dog I had on the leash.  She’s too nervous and excitable for hiking.  She wants to chase birds and squirrels.  You can’t let her off the leash or she’d get lost.  But when she’s on the leash, she’s in such a hurry to sniff the ground ahead of her that she pulls you behind.  She’s either running or stubbornly standing still.  She can’t navigate real trails, so I had to take her to a place where the trails were essentially gravel lanes.  That’s why I came to Buzzard Swamp out of spite, or at least with spite in my heart.

And yet, it’s always lovely to be here.  I’ve been to this strange place in every season, and it never fails to enchant.  It’s never crowded.  You rarely meet another soul on the trails.  The open skies and the silence of the place have an almost Western feel, except the topography puts me in mind of the moorlands in parts of Great Britain.  Occasionally you’ll hear a distant, human-seeming voice that turns out to be a goose or a duck.

On this visit to Buzzard Swamp, I got back to my old autumnal habit of memorizing a poem while I hiked.

I’m not a birdwatcher yet, but I might be getting there.  My closest friend from college is already a birdwatcher, albeit not a very disciplined one, and also a cigar-smoker, which I will never be.  You can do the entire main loop around this place in a little over an hour, and there are additional trails aside from the main loop.

Click HERE for a photo dump of my early-October trip to Maine.  

 

More Photos of the Rainbow Family’s Big Meadow of 2010…in 2024

 

Return to Big Meadow: 2010 Rainbow Gathering Place...in 2024

This photo was taken 14 years ago.  Just yesterday I made a September journey back to the Big Meadow in the Allegheny National Forest where I first discovered the wonderful Rainbow Family all the way back in 2010.  In July of that year, this lonely clearing in the national forest was a temporary home to 12,000 visitors from all over the country, as the Rainbows came together to dance, and make music, and reunite, and ultimately, on Independence Day, to unite their spiritual energies envisioning peace on earth.  The first time I went to Big Meadow, the way was clear and well marked.  But that was long ago.  Most recently, it took me five attempts to finally re-find this hallowed ground, pictured above and below.  All I remembered was that you had to follow a gated lane that branched off Forest Road 119, opposite the Hickory Creek Wilderness.  On my first three attempts, I chose the wrong gated lane.  The fourth time, I found the right lane but had my daughter's miniature Schnauzer with me, and the poor little dog couldn't jump all the trees that had fallen over the faded path.  The fifth time?  The fifth time was yesterday, and it was glorious.  See below. 

This is what the Big Meadow looks like today.  My original post on the old blog estimates that it's three miles from Forest Road 119, which is indeed correct--though I did not have a pedometer back in those days!  But the old path out to Big Meadow is long since overgrown and beset with many a fallen tree.  It disappears altogether once you get into the valley of Queen Creek, where beavers have made the floodplain swampy.  The valley is abuzz with mosquitoes.  It was not easy to get here, but get here I did!  The water levels were low in 2010.  A drought had left the forest dry as dust.  There was a drought this year as well, but yesterday we had the long, gentle, soaking rain that we waited for all summer.  And yesterday was the day that the Sisters of Fate...or Holy Providence...or Dumb Luck had appointed for my much-anticipated return to Big Meadow.  I got saturated.  I slogged through the foot-deep water of Queen Creek, not worrying about wet feet.  On the far side, I struggled up the bank through the tall milkweeds and fading goldenrods.  But then I saw it, and I had to catch my breath.  There it was, as unmistakable as Eden.  It was the Big Meadow I'd last seen fourteen years prior, the same but different, now so silent and still.  I tell you, I only spent about an hour in this place on that dry July day so long ago, but when I rediscovered it yesterday in the autumn rain, I felt as if I'd just stepped inside a cathedral.  It felt hallowed, familiar but unknowable.  A holy hush fell over me.  It was awe-inspiring, magical.  See below:

There's something especially sacred about finding yourself alone in a place that you've only known as crowded.  But it's more than that.  The place did feel...sacred somehow.  Maybe it was the four failed attempts to get here and the difficult bushwhack on the fifth that gave it such an awe-inspiring vibe.  I don't know, but I felt like this was a place where beautiful things had happened, where wonderful potential lingered in the soil and in the trees.  Back in 2010, the trail led across the low heights that stand above the creek, so you ended up descending into the Big Meadow, as seen in the pic below.  I remembered yesterday that the old approach was from above, that you descended down into the large clearing.  But that path has been lost for over a decade.  This time, bushwhacking, I had given up on the heights and decided to follow the stream more closely.  The large glade was so alive with music and movement and dance on that long-ago day!  Even if the trail had not been clear (which it was) I could have followed my ears to find it.  The only people who come here now are hunters, fishers, maybe the rare backpacker who travels trackless forests by orienteering...and sentimental fools like me.  Look below at the way the trail went downward into the meadow.  Here's another photo from 2010, the descent: 

Oh, I don't know what I believe about the Jungian concept of meaningful coincidence, or "synchronicity."  But I tried five times to reach the Big Meadow, which is three miles from the nearest dirt road.  Even on this most recent (successful) attempt, I entered Forest Road 119 from the south and found an enormous fallen tree blocking the roadway about one mile in.  I had to drive the car in reverse for a quarter mile till I found a spot in the road that was wide enough to turn around.  I then had to drive all the way around the Hickory Creek Wilderness to arrive at the north end of Forest Road 119, making my approach from the north.  And just as I turned onto Forest Road 119, I looked at the clock on the dash of my car, and it said 1:19.  I know it's just a coincidence, I really do know that.  But it felt like more than a coincidence at the time.  It felt like a declaration: This, at last, is the moment destined for my return.  I know it sounds superstitious, which I am not.  But my persistent quest for Big Meadow was also part of another quest...  A lot has changed in the world since 2010.  Things don't feel as safe as they did.  A lot has changed in my life, too.  I need hope amid the current political climate of hate and fear.  Maybe I'm just getting old.  I need help believing in all that the Rainbow People stand for.  "Lord, help my unbelief."

See how the once-clear path is now obstructed with young branches and fallen trees!  No miniature Schnauzer is going to to do six miles on an obstacle course like this....

I found three thumbtacks still stuck into the sides of trees.  These were the only visible trace of the Rainbow Family's 2010 gathering here.  These tacks surely once held signs to mark the way, or to point out a latrine or a shared-campfire.  There were also colorful signs reading "One Love" and "Welcome Home" and "Welcome to Eternal Life."  You would never know now that any of this had been here.

This, I think, was the swimming hole all those years ago.  Queen Creek is a pretty little brook, and good for wild brook trout, but there are not many places deep enough to swim or bathe.  I suspect they had to dam it.  It was especially dry that year.  

What are we looking for in places like Big Meadow--whether it's our first time here or our last, whether we travel here with the throngs or find it overgrown and silent, whether we stumble here accidentally or seek it out at five attempts?  Oh, I don't know.  It was just a September journey for me--in the September of my life.  The first time I came here, it was still high summer in more sense than one.  When I first struck out to find the Rainbows, I was a young minister serving a parish near the Allegheny National Forest.  I loved this forest and kept a popular blog about it.  My articles were republished in a local travel and tourism magazine.  I didn't think of 40 as young back then, but in retrospect I know that it was the summertime of my life.  Not to sound maudlin...but my wife was still with me, my little girls still got excited when I came home from work...I was still known as an ecclesiastical rock star.  (C'mon, every world is small.)  Now?  Things are good now, too, but not like they were.  Now my daughters are in college.  My wife is gone.  I've lived for many years in a city far from the forest I love.  And my career?  Well, I won't say I'm mediocre, but I'm no rock star.  When I returned recently to find the great glade where the Rainbows gathered all those years ago, I came as a man in the September of his life.  There's still time for a picnic or two.  The lawn furniture is still out on the deck.  It's not nearly time to batten the hatches.  But there's a hint of winter in the air.  The trees are tired and ready to rest.  Even the goldenrod has begun to fade.  I feel old, that's all.  Just an old man alone in the woods, looking for something that happened a long time ago.  

But we live for hope, do we not?  Hope that our lives have meaning hidden in their half-forgotten depths.  Hope that our memories contain unseen truths that will someday be revealed.  Hope that time itself will be redeemed and proven an illusion.  Hope that even after five attempts we might finally find what we're looking for.  Hope that the places made sacred by prayer are still out there, though sitting silent for years, still waiting to heal our spirits.  We live for hope that the world can be better than it is, and that none of us is destined for sorrow in the end.  The Rainbow People are wonderful folks, and I'd love it if they'd come back to my part of the woods.  But I doubt they will.  Locals were largely hostile to them, and suspicious, and the woods here is dense with disease-ridden ticks.  (Though I only found one on myself after trekking through all the weeds.)  

A Mountain Named “Wolf Benchmark”

Wolf Benchmark is a mountain just inside Pennsylvania, near the New York border.  The ascent to the summit begins on public land--the Allegheny National Forest--but passes onto unmarked private property without warning.  The summit, standing at 2,205 feet, is definitely on private property because I found a dilapidated old hunting camp up there.  (More about that below.)  This ferny meadow is the tippy-top.  There are no views.

I parked about 2.5 miles away and walked the entire length of quiet old Forest Road 174.  It's a gated gravel lane, so there was no traffic--not that there would have been traffic without the gates.  This segment of the national forest has been heavily exploited for timber.  Also, the trees are so tattered and bedraggled by the near-drought conditions that affect much of the country this summer, not to mention the extreme heat, which finally began to relent yesterday and today.  The raspberries were fruiting.

It was such a joy to walk an old forest road back here in my beloved Allegheny National Forest.  When I finally get a new phone, it will have a camera worthy of this lovely scene: about half a dozen butterflies of different colors and patterns, on a patch of purple thistles.  The forest was perfect today, 74 degrees and not at all humid.  

So.  Who gave the order to put a stop sign here at the end of an unmarked, unmapped forest road where it intersects with a gated forest road in the middle of...the forest?  

This modest view is brought to you by recent tree-harvests on this segment of the national forest.  I've been wondering how a mountain gets a name like "Wolf Benchmark."  What kind of benchmark does a wolf need?  Maybe even a wolf needs standards by which to measure its lupine progress.  But I googled it and found that there are a lot of mountains called "benchmark."  The summit must have been used as some sort of navigational landmark in earlier times.

Speaking of views, this is about the only view you get on Wolf Benchmark, and it's not at the summit.  This is taken from a harvested section of the forest on the flanks of Wolf Benchmark.  Pictured near the center of this photograph is Tuscarora Mountain in New York State.  Why is it that the peaks get suddenly taller, and sharper, and more inspiring as soon as you get inside New York?  I mean really, right at the border, things become instantly more dramatic.  There's a reason.  Let's talk about it.

Look at this screenshot from my peak-bagging club's app.  The orange mountain in centerfield is Wolf Benchmark.  The blue circle is me, approaching the summit.  The horizontal line that crosses the photo is the New York / Pennsylvania border.  Notice something strange?  There are about 30 peaks just across the border on the New York side and only one peak on the Pennsylvania side.  At first I thought this was just another example of living in New York's shadow--which New Jersey and Pennsylvania have done for centuries.  I thought maybe people had reported the peaks in the Empire State but didn't even bother with the Keystone State.  Not so.  There really ARE more peaks right up to New York's southernmost border.  And they really do become infrequent the moment you cross the border southward.  Here's how it all went down:

In eons past, the glaciers were depositing low mountains all over southwestern New York State, long before anyone had a name for the place.  They reached that place that would someday become the Pennsylvania state line, and one glacier said to another, "You goin' in there?"  The second glacier said, "I'm not goin' in there.  Are YOU goin' in there?"  The first glacier said, "Ima stop right here."  A third glacier spoke up and said, "C'mon guys.  It's safe for now.  Gettysburg and the 2016 election are still a long way off.  Things aren't gonna get spooky and weird down there till white people evolve out of the primordial ooze and then devolve into swing-state voters."  The first glacier held his ground, quite literally.  "I'm boycotting that place on principle.  Ima stay right here and melt.  Them backward sumnabitches can go unglaciated.  They won't even notice."  And they didn't...until The-Blogger-Formerly-Known-as-the-Snowbelt-Parson returned to the snowbelt and uncovered their ancient scheme. 

Here's the derelict hunting camp at the summit of Wolf Benchmark, just beyond the ferny meadow that's shown in the first pic, above.  It's kind of a nice little place.

I took the liberty of stepping inside.

Someone put a fair amount of work into slapping this shack together.  They installed a woodburning stove and insulation and glass windows.  It's sad to see it so disused.  

Looks like this really was an off-the-grid place where guys came to get away from their wives.

Ah yes, the carved glass ashtray.  This really is a beautiful object--solid, heavy, time-worn.  I'm not sure who needs to tap their cigarette ash daintily into an ashtray when the whole shack looks like a dirty ashtray.  I liked this ashtray a lot.  But you know the rules of urbex and rurex--which is to say, exploring abandoned buildings, urban or rural: Leave nothing, take nothing, break noting.  Even if the owner never returns, this ashtray does not belong to me. 

Beware of dog? It oughta say, “Beware of Wolf,” because this is Wolf Benchmark!