A Restaurant with a View: Le Mont in Pittsburgh

We had an alumni event at Le Mont restaurant on Mt. Washington last evening. 

I hadn't been there in many years, but part of its charm is that it never changes.

Formative Books

Although it's off-topic and has little to do with the themes of this blog, I've been thinking a lot in recent years about the "formative books" that helped make me into the person I am today.  Do you have a few such books?  Books whose stories became your life's morality tales; books whose characters became your role models; books whose words became your vocabulary; books whose illustrations shaped your imagination...  I did not grow up in a house with a lot of books.  My parents wanted to be considered the kind of people who read books--but like many working class folks in those days, they secretly felt that reading was for the lazy and idle.  Free time was for mowing the lawn and washing the car.  They never once took any of their five children to the library.  If mom or dad were home, which wasn't altogether common, the TV was on.  The TV chattered away all day whether anyone was watching it or not.  It was only turned off at bedtime.  There were basically only three books in our home when I was small.  First, we had a big, formal King James Bible, which no one ever read, sitting in a prominent spot in the living room--holding court, presiding silently over everyone present.  No one was allowed to set anything on top of it, because it was deemed sacred, maybe even magical.  Second, we had an old book of fairly tales and nursery rhymes called "Young Years," published in 1971.  (I'm fortunate to have that very book in my possession still today.)  The third book was all mine.  Tucked away by my bunkbed, there was an old copy of Howard Pyle's "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood," which belonged to my uncle when he was a kid.  Technically, there were two other books in the house, both of which were strictly forbidden.  One was some medical book from my mother's days in nurse's training, and the other was a book of artistic masterpieces from my father's days at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.  Both were off limits because they had naked people in them.

# 1: YOUNG YEARS: Christmas, 1973, our parents gave us this book of nursery rhymes and fairytales to be shared by my brothers, sister, and me.  I don't remember that humble Christmas; I was only three years old.  But I was more attached to the book than the others were...maybe just because it was a book.  I loved books, and we had so few of them.  No one but my grandmother ever read to me as a child, but that was enough.  I learned to read, precociously, by sounding out the rhymes in this old book.  When my parents downsized, some years ago, I nabbed it.  I read "Young Years" to my own children when they were small, and now they're arguing over who should get it when they start to have kids of their own.  It's got all the old, brutal versions of the fairytales with borderline terrifying illustrations.  For example, in its early telling of the "Snow White" story, the evil queen is punished at the end by being fitted in red-hot iron boots and made to dance till she falls over dead.  

This is an illustration for "Puss in Boots."  Click on the photo to enlarge it.  See the dead rodents in little pouches dangling from the cat's belt...and the haunted-looking man bathing in a pond in the background?  Look at the wild glint in that cat's eyes.  The illustrations in this old book stay with me all these decades later, as they apparently do with my adult children.  Both of them remember with fondness sitting one on each knee while I read to them from my childhood book--I often skipped the grisly parts.  I never allowed them to read the book by themselves because I treasured it, I didn't want them to damage it, and the binding was so worn out.  I regret that now.  A child needs a book to herself sometimes, even if it contains questionable stories like "Jack the Giant Killer."  Since I can't give them both this single volume, I've ordered another used copy of "Young Years" online--same edition.   

# 2: THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD: As I started to outgrow nursery rhymes, I found this book in my grandma's attic.  It had belonged to my bachelor uncle, my mother's brother, who never lived anyplace but in the house where he was raised.  Grandma was happy to let me take it, and it set me on a lifelong quest to leave the world behind and to go off and live in the forest... The only caveat?  I didn't want a band of merry men.  I wanted to be Friar Tuck, living alone in a woodland hermitage, which Friar Tuck did until Robin came along and recruited him for his team.

My brothers ended up reading the book, too.  We tried to re-enact its scenes.  We'd shoot blunt-tipped arrows at each other with real bows---(stupid, stupid kids with no adult supervision, ever!)  We'd fight with long sticks that we called "staffs" or "staves" or "cudgels."  We used to mimic Pyle's intentionally archaic speech. "Hie thee hither, thou scurvy villain, and I'll crack thy nave's pate!"  

Admittedly, a few pates did get cracked...though we were mercifully bad with the bow and arrow.  When I turned 14 or so, I started spending my summers working for the carnivals, which meant that I had some income to buy more books.  Soon enough, Robin Hood was replaced with J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings Trilogy."  But if you're old enough to spend the summer sleeping on the floor of a greasy cotton candy trailer and bathing in Lake Erie, then you're probably past the "formative" stage.  So I don't count "The Lord of the Rings" among my early, formative books.

# 3: THE HOLY BIBLE (King James Version of 1611) was displayed prominently in our home, even if we never read it together as a family.  It played a critical role in my early life because we belonged to an evangelical church that took the Bible literally, for the most part, and which only used the old King James Version--with its lofty-sounding Elizabethan language and its fanciful imagery.  In the King James, in a certain chapter in Isaiah, the word "ostriches" is mistranslated as "unicorns," for example.  "Jackals" is mistranslated as "dragons."  It's much more fun to have a biblical world of unicorns and dragons than one of ostriches and jackals.  Our borderline fundamentalist church(es) always insisted that we memorize great swaths of Scripture in Sunday school, but never anything about mythical creatures, just stuff about heaven, and hell, and salvation from sin.   

I would often flip through the big display-Bible at home because it was filled with these classic and grim illustrations by the French artist Gustave Doré.  For some reason, Doré loved to illustrate the darkest, most disturbing scenes from a book that is full of them: people drowning in Noah's Flood; Jonah and the Big Fish; Leviathan; the dismemberment of some poor woman in the book of Judges; the Slaughter of the Innocents; the crucifixion... David is depicted here, proudly displaying the head of his fallen enemy--Goliath--to the crowd, after killing and beheading him.  Let me ask you this: Why were serious books about art and anatomy off limits, but this stuff was considered sacrosanct and somehow acceptable for children?  Come to think of it, though, our book of fairytales was almost as gruesome and violent as the Bible.

Here's a nice enough scene, Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount.  

"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.  Are ye not much better than they?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."  

That's poetic.  It's comforting.  It's way better than a public beheading...  But it's also probably true that if Doré had only illustrated the pleasant scenes like this one, then the display-Bible in our living room would have gone completely untouched.  The horrors of the Bible are more compelling to small children.  Early on, my parents did buy a set of encyclopedias, "The New Book of Knowledge," 1973 edition.  They were kept in a glass case in one of our houses, on display almost as prominently as the Bible.  It was as if to say to visitors, "This family is godly and knowledgeable," though we weren't really either.  I was the only one who ever used those encyclopedias, and I did use them!  Ever after buying them, my father bemoaned the waste of money that they were.  But not for me.  I loved each and every one of them and read them cover-to-cover--skipping only the articles about science and math.  

My job traveling as a carnie allowed me enough income to dive deeper and deeper into the world of books.  We had to read "Great Expectations" in school, which caused me to buy a bunch of Dickens paperbacks.  Then I discovered poetry, and biography, and travel writing.  In an almost bookless home, three solitary books launched me on a lifelong quest of discovery and learning.  I wonder if everyone has a few books that got them started?  What early books made you into the person you are?  You don't need to tell me the answer...unless you want to.  But answer the question for yourself.  What relationship do you have today with the books that formed you?

Poor Little Purple Finch

This poor little fellow must have flown into the clear window of the newly-installed front door at my house in the North Country.  Or it might be the back door.  We're slowly remodeling and rebuilding in order to turn the house's back on the road out front.  There's some confusion about the new and seldom-used door that faces the road...formal front door...fire escape back door?   But it's not as confusing as calling this little friend "purple."  You'd sooner call him a "pink" finch or a "red" finch.  But it's nice that "purple" wins one.  I mean, think about it, a lot of purple things are called red: redbuds, red cabbage, and red onions.  I'm glad "purple" gets the finches...

Lake Erie Afterthoughts

It's not the ocean...but it's nice.  I can imagine what the sandy beaches are like in the summer with umbrellas and towels and screaming children.  Those stone barrier islands are meant to protect the shoreline from the waves.  I wonder how big the waves get?  There's no tide here, but it almost looks like the Atlantic on a calm day.  You can't see across to the other side; there's just a line where deep blue water meets pale blue sky.

See the gentle waves that lap against the stony shore.  It brings to mind one of the Bard's best sonnets.

Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore

so do our minutes hasten to their end,

each changing place with that which goes before.

In sequent toil, all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,

crooked eclipses 'gainst its glory fight,

and time, which gave, doth now its gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth

and delves the parallels in beauty's brow,

feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,

and nothing stands but for time's scythe to mow...

The sonnet goes on to say things that I will not here recite.  It's a sad one.

On the bayside of Presque Isle, and in the boggy interior, these strange mists come rolling over the land and taking over very quickly, then disappearing.  See the clouds encroaching on the horizon?  They dissipated as fast as they appeared. 

This is a bad photo, taken while driving.  But it shows the strange mists that overtake Presque Isle at 3:00 in the afternoon.  

"And nothing stands but for Time's scythe to mow..."

Presque Isle State Park and Lake Erie

It was a pretty significant departure from my modus operandi to head into Erie to explore Presque Isle State Park and the Lake Erie beaches...which comprise the state's only coastline. 

The words "Presque Isle" in French mean "Almost Island." It's a pretty common French place name for a peninsula.  And as an "almost island," the trails at Presque isle are none too impressive.

But woods and trails are not primarily what this park is about.  It's about beaches, miles of beaches along a freshwater inland sea.  The Great Lakes have a distinctive smell that I recall from childhood: light, fresh, pleasant and, well, lake-like. 

Lake Erie is the shallowest and the most turbulent of the Great Lakes.  There might be as many as 2,000 ships beneath these waters, where mists and storms rise quickly.  Some of those shipwrecks date back to the War of 1812.

Ring-billed gulls... I saw plenty of birds at Presque Isle but nothing rare or new to me.  Lots of red-winged blackbirds.

It's a pleasant enough park, but very heavily used by joggers, and cyclists, and fishers, and in the summer, beach-goers.  Presque Isle is just outside the city limits of Erie--the fifth biggest city in the Commonwealth--a rough-and-tumble place in a liminal space between the Midwest and the East.  Presque Isle actually feels to me like a really big city park with swimming beaches.

You've got the lakeside portion of the park, with all the beaches, and then you've got the bayside portion of the park, which looks across the water to the city.  There are also lots of lagoons and estuaries that the fishers and birders frequent.

Someone told me a few weeks ago that Erie, Pennsylvania, has the poorest zip code in the nation.  I didn't believe it.  But a little digging revealed that in 2021, at least, the 16501 zip code for central Erie had the lowest median income in the country--about $10,000 per household.  

This is the monument to Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry.  "Commodore Perry" was in his early 30s when he led the U.S. Navy to victory in sea battle against the British during the War of 1812--when they attempted to retake their former American colonies.  "Don't Give Up the Ship" was the banner flying over his boat, which was sunk in battle.   

All in all, a pleasant trip in an unlikely destination.  I had to take a check to the Amishman who's adding some bedrooms to my house up north.  I intended to hike after dropping off the check, but the novelty of Lake Erie called to me.  

Hickory Creek Wilderness: Hiking an Old Railbed from Forest Road 119 to the Forks

Maybe you've noticed that I get on "kicks" and then abandon them as quickly as I started them.  I went on an Oil Creek State Park "kick" recently, where I spent all my free time exploring Oil Creek and blog-posting about it.  Years ago, it was the Standing Stone Trail or the Roaring Plains Wilderness.  But this is the painfully underrated Hickory Creek Wilderness in the Allegheny National Forest, and it's my current obsession.  Who knew you could find clear, open views like this at Hickory Creek?

You have to go off-trail in order to find the good stuff in Pennsylvania's only true "wilderness area," and going off-trail is no easy task in a place like this.  (We have areas that are actually wilder and more remote than Hickory Creek, but none that are federally designated.)  It's swampy, and there are soooooo many streams and tributaries that simply following a watercourse--in the absence of trails--can be tricky.  Pictured here is Camp Run, which is just deep enough to make crossing it a hassle.  Plus, when you arrive from some directions, you might assume it's East Branch Hickory Creek or Middle Branch or some tributary.  Follow the wrong stream and you can get very lost in these 13.5 square miles of wilderness.

Camp Run again... There are just so many beautiful and confusing streams here.  Going off-trail is further complicated by the fact that there are lots of blown-down trees.  They seem to fall like dominoes up here on the Big Level--the plateau on which the ANF finds itself.  I take comfort in the suggestion that such has always been the case up in these parts; high winds come tearing over the plateau and take down hemlocks, which lack a tap root.  

It's especially disconcerting because many of the fallen trees are not old and dead; they've still got lush green needles on their branches.  They were living and seemingly healthy trees that succumbed to the fierce climate change winds of spring.  Hikers and campers know to avoid dead or dying trees--known as "widow-makers"--but what if you can't even trust the healthy ones not to fall on you?  I did not take any photos of the fallen trees because they depress me, and the purpose of this blog is to lift my spirits by revisiting moments like these...moments of discovery, usually (but not always) in the forest.  Pictured here is Middle Branch, flowing west and south toward the Forks.  More about that below.

Ah, but Gentle Reader!  Hickory Creek Wilderness delivered once again.  What it lacks in grand, sweeping vistas it makes up for in streamside beauty and deep, unvisited woods.  I found a place on the map where the East Branch and the Middle Branch of Hickory Creek meet.  I dubbed this place "The Forks," but I don't know if anyone else out there in the world calls it that.  Someone seems to have claimed the Forks with one of those annoying campsites where they stash a lot of personal belongings, seen here with pans and spatulas hanging from trees and a rock with their initials painted on it.  (I first got called "Gentle Reader" by the narrator in Howard Pyle's Merry Adventures of Robin Hood when I was 7 or 8, so I thought I'd pass it along...)

This is the same campsite as seen when I approached it from the stream--which I'd crossed at a shallow spot in fishing boots.  Oddly, there was only just this one campsite there.  

In most places, the creek is deep and wide just below the Forks, with the united force of the East and Middle branches.

At the Forks, there are big streamside meadows like this one.  I suspect these glades are tick-laden and difficult to traverse in high summer, when the grasses stand tall and thick.  Or maybe not.  I'll have to come back to see.  Okay, so see that low wooded ridge on the horizon in this photo?  It's up there that the 13-mile Hickory Creek Trail makes its undramatic loop.  It's nice enough...lots of trees and a few brook-crossings.  No views up there, but plenty of water for camping, even if there are only a few scenic creeks or runs.  The terrain along that trail is mostly gentle and...unglamorous.  

What's that famous quote about meeting your destiny in the very paths you took to avoid it?  Both the month of April and Hickory Creek Wilderness have been trying to kill me for years--with their own individual vendettas.  But on one occasion, they ganged up on me.  Back in April of 2017, the Hickory Creek Wilderness punished a friend and me badly for going off trail.  We were using an ancient guidebook that spoke of an alternative trail down into the valley of the East Branch, little knowing that said trail had gone out of existence when this area was declared a "wilderness."  It was an almost-harrowing experience--getting drenched in the marshlands along the creek, falling into the stream on several crossings, hearing very strange noises at night, and getting slapped in the face by springy beech saplings as we hunted for a path.  We finally used a compass to go crawling back repentantly to the established loop trail up on the plateau.  But yesterday, as the beech saplings reached up to slap me in the face, I couldn't help but imagine what they were saying to each other in their mysterious tree talk:

"Hey beeches!  Look who's back!  It's this Bozo.  What, you're back for more, are you?  You didn't learn your lesson last time you came down here?  Sure, we got more to give ya.  Take that!  (Thwack!)  And that!  (Choff!)"  

The forest had a clean fresh scent today--a fragrance of evergreens, and cold water, and wet earth.  So, at the risk of leading hikers to a campsite that someone clearly treats as their own private property, I'm gonna tell you how I got to the Forks at Hickory Creek Wilderness.

Entering Forest Road 119 from the west, just after the big creek crossing where fishers like to camp, there's a parking area on the left with a clear trail going off to the right and parallel to Hickory Creek.  This is an old railroad bed, and it runs a clear (if overgrown) course 1.6 miles northeast to the Forks.  I think this early water crossing, seen here, tends to thin the crowds--which are already small to begin with.

So, what lays eggs that look like jellyfish in stagnant ponds?

I was out there just to discover the area, but also to do some research for a backpacking trip later this spring.  This trek began in the southwest corner of this map at the yellow area labeled "West Entrance" and it followed the yellow railroad bed to the confluence of the two creeks, which is circled and labeled in pink as "The Confluence."  (That was my name for this area before I started calling it "The Forks," which is more poetic, I think.)  I've actually gotten lost at Hickory Creek on a few occasions.  I got lost in this area again not too long ago because one of the unnamed tributaries tricked me into thinking it was Hickory Creek, and it led me far from where I expected to be.  This place is strange...dark.  It's very wet and appeals mostly to fishers.  But it reveals its costly and subtle charms to those who persist.  

Pennsylvania from Above

I had a TERRIBLE time getting home from France earlier this week.  (Photos of the France adventure appear on my mysterious and shadowy other blog, the S&J Online Annex; click HERE.)  Weather events turned a one-day trip into a three-day trip of, quite literally, planes, trains, and automobiles--and a whole lot of walking.  Flight cancelations meant that I spent a very uncomfortable night in the Miami airport, of all places, and then caught a commuter train 65 miles to West Palm Beach, spent a night there, and flew to Philadelphia to change planes for Pittsburgh.  That flight, too, was three hours delayed.  But I got a window seat for one of my favorite views: crossing the entire state from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.  This is the Delaware River at the New Jersey border.

And this is the majestic City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia--founded in 1682.  How the skyline has grown since the Rocky movies were filmed here!  The population of Philly has actually been growing in the last 15 or 20 years, and it's back up to a million and a half people living inside the city proper.  Newcomers have largely hailed from Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia.  We'll see how Trump's policies of intolerance and hate curtail the city's growth.  I like Philly, and there was a time when I planned to live there.  It's a loud, rude, crowded, lively place with a lot of diversity and local pride.  Like all "world class cities," which is to say cities of more than one million people, it hums with that distinct urban energy.  The juxtaposition of old and new is a big part of its charm.

A lot of people aren't aware that Pennsylvania has a deep sea port.  In fact, some misguided folks call us a Midwestern state because we don't have a coastline.  Delaware was our coastline, but it seceded during the Revolutionary War when the good people of Philadelphia had their minds on other things.  Delaware: three miserable counties...two at high tide.  Don't get me started on Delaware.  Vermont doesn't have a coastline either.  Is it a Midwestern state?  

Since the naval shipyard closed down in 1996, Philly's port has ceased to be among the busiest on the East Coast.  No cruise lines run out of here either--something about gambling laws.  The cruise lines have opted for Baltimore, which is nice; the shrinking city of Baltimore ought to have...something.  But the Port of Philadelphia is said to be among the fastest growing ports in the US, whatever it means for a port to grow.  It looked plenty busy when I flew over it...

Once the plane leaves the densely populated counties in Southeastern PA, low wooded mountains begin to appear far below.  Some of those mountains have rocky ridges, which means that climbing to the summit will afford you clear views out over the countryside.  That's one of the problems with East Coast hiking: even in the mountains, trees often obstruct the views.

See how these strange mountains run like stationary waves in sequence all the way to the horizon?  This is the "Ridge and Valley Province" of the Appalachian range.  You see these formations in Virginia and West Virginia, too--where the ridges are much higher.

Pangea separated these ancient hills from the Scottish Highlands and the Atlas Mountains of Morocco--where my daughter is now living.  It's fun to think that, eons ago, they were all a single mountain range.  

Early pioneers found the mountains of Pennsylvania easier to cross than the ones to the north or south of us.  Because the Appalachians are lower here in Pennsylvania than in neighboring states, and the greatest number of immigrants arrived just east of them--in New York and Philly--many westbound settlers did a sojourn here.  This spread our so-called Mid-Atlantic accent across the northern US and all the way to the West Coast, making our accent into the standard one used in radio and television.  I learned this fun fact in one of my favorite college courses, "History of the English Language."  

Look at the long, snaking configuration of these two mountains in Bedford County.  The Mid-State Trail wends its crooked course along one of those summits, 300-some miles from Maryland to New York.  Maybe someday I'll tackle it.

It was interesting to see how the clear, sunny eastern half of the state gave way to clouds and snow as the plane traveled west.  These mountains are not lofty, but they do trap weather patterns and hold them.  

Never have I been so happy to see Pittsburgh from the window of a plane--after three very hard days of travel.  Here's the Allegheny River--the river of my life--with Highland Park, and East Liberty, and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and so much more.  You can tell what part of the city this is by the big reservoir near the river in the actual park that--like the neighborhood--bears the name of "Highland Park."  Part of Oakland is visible here, too, where my other daughter lives.  I was on the wrong side of the plane to get a view of downtown, but I'm not gonna complain.  The whole 43-minute trip was quite a show.