Magic Bus Day

In the biographical book Into the Wild, the author quotes the diaries of Christopher McCandless, a young man who escapes human society by hitchhiking to Alaska and trekking as far out into the wilderness as he can.  He's hard pressed to find shelter, but upon arriving at a remote spot near a river, he chances upon an old school bus that hunters once used as a camp.  In his journal he declares, "Magic bus day!"  Of course, months later, his malnourished body is discovered inside said bus...

Yesterday was my magic bus day on one of the lesser-traveled paths through Hillman State Park.  Hillman has trails running every which direction, like veins through your arm: some major, some minor, some tiny capillaries leading nowhere.  Select tracks are traveled by mountain bikers and hunters.  Others are much neglected and slightly overgrown.  The more heavily used trails always have bike tracks on them.  They tend to run alongside the old forest roads, and they wend unnecessarily up and down, over and around, just to make the bike ride more fun.  If you follow the lesser-used trails, you discover more sights.  These paths are straighter, more overgrown.  They're the old farm lanes and mining roads that aren't much fun for bikers, but they lead to some interesting discoveries.

One lesser-used trail runs through meadows of goldenrod, swarming with honeybees, goes through some nice gallery forest, descends to the only stream in the park. (It's a strangely waterless place for Southwest Pennsylvania).  This tiny creek is known as Dilloe Run, a marshy, slow-moving body of sluggish water.  On the other side of the stream valley, the track ascends a hillside into beautiful evergreen forests--very old--and comes out at an old oil camp.  The oil camp reminds me of the North Country.  Not far beyond it is this Magic Bus.  I wonder how it got there?  Some people might call it a little creepy.  Actually, yeah, it is a little creepy.

Yellow September

   

Yellow September with your changeful moods and your misty sunrises.  If I sat here very still, very quiet, unflinching in the face of impending nightfall and coyote song, how long would it take for the outside world to discover me?  How long till I gave up and went scrambling through the early dark of the autumn scented forest, searching for my car?  At last, at long last, my soul is quiet.  September the golden, seven years ago you did your best to kill me, and now you bring me life?

When I first moved south to the Pittsburgh region, I decided to claim for my weekly treks the little-known and much neglected Hillman State Park, an undeveloped area visited mainly by mountain bike enthusiasts and hunters.  It's administered as a tag-on to the much more popular Raccoon Creek State Park, which is just a few miles to the north of it.  However, I tried hiking there and quickly became disenchanted.  It wasn't the vast woodland that I'd had further north. Although there's a good mix of forest and open fields, most of the park is very old mining country, just trying to recover.  It's been sitting fallow since the 1950s, so those who don't know the telltale signs of old strip mines would never know that this isn't just some scrubby but geologically unique terrain. In any case, I wasn't satisfied with it.  I was used to wilder country.  But when I went back yesterday--after nearly one year away--I loved it.  Vast, diverse, crisscrossed by old roads and unmapped trails.  It's a fantastic place to hike, and only half an hour away.  It's amazing how much you can enjoy life if you lower your expectations...

Buffalo Valley

As often happens in my now-suburban life, I get called away by so many preoccupations that I end up neglecting the things that nourish my spirit.  It's the middle of September, and my first trek of the month was this past Wednesday.  My life is lived in triage mode, a place of dire urgency and consequences, a place of unending obligations and duties.  And yet, the valley of Buffalo Creek (in the places where they haven't yet fracked it) is beautiful and restorative.  

As a child, you lie under swaying oak trees and dream of growing up: shaving, driving a car.  As an adult, you sit at a computer screen under enormous pressure to produce.  In your haste to get out the door, you've missed a spot shaving, and on the way to work, you nearly plowed into another car because you were in such a panicked hurry.  And there you sit at your computer, doing your best to write something creative and meaningful.  But creativity and meaning come from someplace other than where you spend the bulk of your time.  And instead of "producing," you end up dreaming of being a kid, lying under a swaying oak and staring up at the dark green tangle of leaves.  So lush.  So dense.  Touched by the very stuff of legend, of Robin Hood, and the Green Man of yore, and the Knights of the Round Table.  Escape is the new goal...just as it was the old one.  But when even your so-called escapes are planned like another quick obligation to fulfill, you cannot blame them for not producing the desired results.  It's like never sleeping except to take occasional catnaps; you cannot expect to function normally.  

Ah, but this stream valley is lovely.  A farmer has cultivated the state game lands here.  Looks like beans.  The land must be leased, like the rest of the public lands in our whorish so-called "Commonwealth."  The stream in places is very deep with good swimming holes.  It's got rocky cliffs and shallow spots for wading. 

I went to the anti-frack conference in Philadelphia earlier this month.  The flooding on the way back nearly left me stranded.