Greene County

March is an awful month in so many ways. The snow goes away, revealing all the litter that the long winter has deposited along the roadways. Trees are bare; skies are gray. The world looks ragged and threadbare. To make matters worse, it's typically the busiest month of the year in my line of work. March is an indeterminate time when winter's no longer convinced of itself, and spring just keeps hitting the snooze button.

But it had been so long since I'd done a real trek, the kind I used to do in the old days, when I lived up North. And so I couldn't resist the urge to make the long drive down to Greene County to tramp among the hills at Ryerson Station State Park.

Greene County is the poorest in the state. It's been a coalfield for centuries, with all the attendant bleakness. And yet, it does have charms. Some magazine connected to Martha Stewart claims that Greene County is one of the ten best places in the country to view autumn colors. And when you're not passing along the edge of a vast strip mine, or in the shadow of a ghostly industrial complex, the countryside is beautiful: undulating, hilly, interspersed with scenic farms, and churches, covered bridges, and an uncanny number of old one-room schoolhouses.

Ryerson Station State Park had been off my radar screen because it's just a little further than I like to drive for a trek. Also, it's a lot smaller than the nearby Raccoon Creek. And yet, there's some great back country to discover down there. I hiked the ominously named "Pine Box Trail" which led--appropriately enough--to an old cemetery.

Long-time followers of my shadowy career know that my favorite cemeteries have headstones from the 1790s or earlier. The oldest markers in this otherwise very cool graveyard were from the 1830s. It's known as "The Chess Cemetery," although there were also a goodly number of markers bearing the surnames Grim and Parsons. A quieter, more pensive spot you will not find.

Unfortunately, the lake at Ryerson Station has been destroyed by its irresponsible neighbor, Consol Energy--a huge mining corporation that insists on paying ungodly amounts to name sports arenas after themselves but cannot afford to repair a lovely-if-little-used body of water whose dam was wrecked by literal undermining. That's another reason I hesitated to go to Greene County for a trek; it's just so corruptly ruled by the mineral extraction industries. I expected to find gas wells, and oil derricks, and loud trucks all over the place. (I begrudgingly admit that I did not find those things everywhere, though they were common enough.)

And yet, I must say, this was the most restorative excursion I've had since moving to the Pittsburgh area. I'll take abandoned buildings if that's all life offers, but I much prefer trees and cemeteries. Old ones.