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!

Links to Dolly Sods & Lower Counties Beach Trip

 This is a view from the road up to Jakes Rocks in the Allegheny National Forest. And here’s a link to a recent backpacking trip to DOLLY SODS, which was way too crowded, as well as the beach in THE LOWER COUNTIES, which sometimes fondly refer to themselves as “Delaware.”

Return to Rimrock and Jakes Rocks

As many times as I’ve been to Jakes Rocks and Rimrock, I always believed Rimrock to be the more beautiful—until I did them both in one trip with my elder daughter and youngest brother.  Now I’m pretty sure I like Jakes Rocks a lot better.  This is the vista from Jakes Rocks.  This area of the Allegheny National Forest is largely designated for mountain biking, so you have to be careful on the trails, which you share with fast-moving bicycles.

Jakes Rocks again.

Just over a bridge and across the valley you’ve got a sister peak to Jakes Rocks.  This is Rimrock, which is in an area of the national forest that’s much more developed for the casual visitor.  There’s a picnic area here and a long trail down to the swimming beach far below.  The trails here are better groomed than at Jakes Rocks, and there are cool stone steps between the boulders.  And yet, the view’s just not as good.  It’s is beautiful, but I think a little less beautiful than Jakes Rocks.

Rimrock also has a much larger viewing platform, also crafted out of stone

My youngest brother…you’d never guess we were brothers, despite some family resemblance.  He wanted to see my hunting camp (where I don’t hunt; I write).  He lives on a farm and raises chickens out in Ohio.  He works the night shift at a factory, and his two nights at my camp, away from his wife and four kids, were the longest he’d ever been apart from them.  He also said that he’d never seen a sight as beautiful as the view from Jakes Rocks—which both saddened and pleased me.  It pleased me because I love to share my forest with people, and I know that he really felt its beauty.  It saddened me because I’ve seen so many places much more beautiful than this—Switzerland, Colorado, Hawaii, Malawi.  There are so many ways to live a life, so many places to settle or get stuck, so many different directions two children of the same parents might go.  My brother showed my daughter and me how to shoot his several varieties of hunting rifles.  I’m actually a pretty good shot, as is she.  He wants to come back here and hunt turkey in the spring, which I would try.  I’m no hunter, but I might take aim at a turkey bird.  

A Summer Night in Pittsburgh

I’ve got an old college friend I only see every two or three years.  I like him a lot, and I actually feel like both of us talk pretty openly when we’re together.  There’s an immediate bond that the years and long silences haven’t eroded.  But we would never call or text each other just to check in, and we only ever get together if it’s convenient.  Probably we could have been much closer, but at this point I’m not sure our friendship would bear the weight of too much time together.  Now he looks me up when he’s in the Pittsburgh area, which is rarely, and I look him up when I’m in the Asheville area, which is occasionally.  Still, it’s always good to see him.  He has a keen memory, and he holds pieces of my story that I have lost.  He was my last college friend to get married—just five years ago at the age of fifty!  He rolled into town back in June with his wife and four-year-old son, and they stayed at this really great old mansion-hotel place on the Northside.  It’s called The Inn on the Mexican War Streets.

I love a nice deep porch with furniture and curtains—a porch that’s set up to function like an open-air room.  And this place has one heck of a porch.  My friend was here on a Sunday night and almost all the nearby restaurants were closed except a strange little bar that serves sandwiches and calls itself Leo. A Public House.  (I don’t know what the period in the bar’s name is about, and I don’t know if the A functions as an indefinite article or as an initial…) The public house was kind of seedy and kind of fun with a youngish urban clientele of the less fashionable variety, very much a genuine Pittsburgh hangout.  While I can’t recommend it for its fare, I can definitely vouch for its charming sort of devil-may-care atmosphere on the first floor of another old mansion.  We walked back to The Inn on the Mexican War Streets by way of the very Brooklynesque Beech Avenue, my favorite street in the city.

My friend’s wife had to take their son to bed, then he and I walked a bit around the city, which was cool and pleasant in the gathering dusk.  This friend and I used to hang out with each other whenever our closer friends were out on dates or whatever.  We would explore abandoned houses in the winter at night, or climb through the window onto the roof of the dorms, or go to the local community college and put No Smoking signs in the smoking lounges (this was the late 80s), and turn all the chairs to face the wrong direction in the classrooms.  After graduation we both went on to make a life for ourselves overseas, which is what adventurous 20-something’s were doing back in the 90s.  Now?  Now we get together for a few hours and talk about fatherhood, and marriage, and our philosophies of life, and our journeys thus far.  I should really make an effort to see him more often…and to spend more summer Sunday evenings walking around Pittsburgh.  

 

Riverrun Books…in Greensboro, PA

This is Riverrun Books in Greensboro, Pennsylvania. Not only does this bookstore have one heck of an odd business model, it’s also located in a surprising (but somehow beautifully appropriate) setting. Never heard of Greensboro?  I hadn’t either.

Greensboro is in Greene County and almost to the Mason Dixon Line. The shop’s owner said that this building had long ago been the factory and showroom for a once-famous brand of blue pottery.  After that it became a general store. Now it’s a bookstore, of course, what else?  The shady back porch of the bookstore is bedecked in potted plants and overlooks a green lawn descending right onto the Monongahela River. What a beautiful place.  

The quaint street where the bookstore is located dead ends in the river. There’s really not much in Greensboro except houses. Even the churches seemed to be out of business. This is a place of confederate flags and Trump banners and angry hand painted signs saying such things as, “Stand against all foes foreign and Demo-Rat.”  And yet, here’s Riverrun Books, an oasis of beauty and calm amid the illiterate chaos of Trumpdom. Of course, I know nothing of the political leanings of the owners; I only know that they love books….so maybe make a guess?

The book shop is only open on weekends between the beginning of September and the end of April.  The owners spend the rest of the year running a more lucrative store near Virginia Beach.

So I caught it on the very last day it would be open for the season—the last Sunday in April—though I’m not posting about it till June.

I could have spent hours here, digging through the disorderly stacks.  In fact, I did spend hours, but could have spent more.  The only other customers in my, say, 2.5 hours here were a young couple who didn’t stay long, sort of “emo” looking.  I sidled up to them and asked, “So…how did you guys hear about this place?”  They seemed surprised.  They said, “We’re from Morgantown, so this is one of the few bookstores in the area.”

It wasn’t a cheap place either….

But you pay for the atmosphere and the sense of discovery, I suppose. 

I did come across some unexpected finds out here.  But it makes me sad to think of this lovely spot sitting empty and quiet until the fall.  

And here’s the back porch, overlooking the river.  Since making this discovery, I’ve also done a 60-mile pilgrimage in Scotland and England.  To see photos of that experience, click HERE.

 

Point Hill, Franklin, PA

Despite some hardscrabble neighborhoods, Franklin is a quaintly scenic little town.  It’s got a busy Main Street with no empty storefronts and more than just the usual Subway and Dollar General.  There’s a decent independent coffee shop, a few good restaurants, a few tobacco shops, and a curious museum of musical instruments.  There’s a nice downtown park and ornate street lamps, too.  It resembles Bedford Falls from “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  Franklin is the seat of the once opulently rich Venango County, so the public buildings are impressive.  Here’s the county courthouse with the jail behind it, wearing a red tile roof.  But the thing that interests me more than the town itself is the hill that you see in the background.  

That’s the sensibly-named Point Hill, which stands some 500 feet above the town.  French Creek and the Allegheny River converge in the valley at the mountain’s foot.  A Scotsman had a trading post here as early as 1740, and by 1753 the French had built Fort Machault near the confluence of the two bodies of water.  That’s when a 21-year-old George Washington arrived in Franklin unsuccessfully trying to warn the French out of the Allegheny River valley, which was claimed by Virginia and the British Crown.

It’s hard to believe that two of the world’s greatest empires were willing to fight over this place.  It’s a pleasant hike up to the summit of Point Hill, and there are a few modest views.  We were having an Easter get-together at my in-laws’ house, but my daughters and I had a few spare moments to bag a humble peak while the others were lying around the house, gossiping about people we don’t know. An unfriendly pit bull accosted us on the upward climb.

So many towns in this region have a low, wooded mountain or two in the background.  It’s fun to climb them and see what’s up there, see the whole place from an alternative perspective.  I’ve been passing though Franklin all my life, and I’ve finally explored the hill that stands as the backdrop to scenes I know all too well.  Funny how long it takes for some things to happen.  Point Hill is only 1,420 feet, but as I keep telling this blog, anything over 1,000 feet is considered a mountain. 2nd Avenue becomes a narrow gravel lane, which runs all the way to the towers up top. There seems to be a network of trails up there, too, but perhaps another day.