Hillman State Park, Kramer Road

Another beautiful fall afternoon for spending in the forest.  Last Sunday was warmer and sunnier, but there were fewer people on the trails today, which I liked.  Or it could be that I chose a less popular route.  I didn't encounter another soul until I crossed into the strange little airport for model planes.

To reach this part of Hillman State Park, you follow Kramer Road over the covered Lyle Bridge (photo 1). The road reaches some nice heights, nearing the airport.  There's a kind of vista through the trees (photo 2). The beech trees are still a brilliant golden hue, with copper tones toward the outer edges (photo 3) The fourth photo looks strangely like a painting to me...

I'm really loving Hillman State Park these days.  It's divided into four main segments, and I'm in that strange part of my relationship with the park where it's all still exciting and mysterious, but I'm beginning to grasp the lay of the land.  Connections are coming together.  "Ah, so this is where that road comes out.  Hmm, so this is the same stream I saw two weeks ago in a different zone..." I'm starting to see how much smaller the park is than it seems at first, and how much less confusing.  In one way, it's disappointing because when this terrain is no longer virgin territory to me, it's less exhilarating. In another way, this is a very gratifying point where a sense of ownership and accomplishment develops.

My hiking life here in the Pittsburgh area can't be the promiscuous thing it was up North.  I can't explore new terrain each time I go out.  I need to have a more or less committed relationship with the several good hiking spots that are within my reach, more like a marriage... I guess I'm settling down.

Witherspoon Road

This is the closed bridge, where Witherspoon Road crosses Raccoon Creek, near Hillman State Park. 

It's true that you wouldn't want to drive a car over it, but it works just fine as a footbridge.  

Raccoon Creek is quiet and deep at this point, and the road is abandoned due to the impassable bridge.  It's a corner worth visiting.  

The turnoff from Kramer Road onto Witherspoon is easy to miss.  It's only marked with a little stone obelisk-style marker, like the ones used in the more southerly reaches of Washington County.  But the marker is overgrown with dead ivy and hard to read. 

October

Tomorrow they will be gone.

Their beauty lasts three days, a week.  

Their most glorious aria is just an interlude in a much longer  pageant of days and nights of green or white.  

Bavington Game Lands

I'm always taken aback whenever I come across other people in the forest.  Hillman State Park is much-loved by mountain bikers.  They know it simply as "Bavington," and most of the unmapped trails there are a zigzagging labyrinth of  their creation.  In fact, if you hike Bavington, there's a real risk of getting seriously lost because the trails are circuitous, unblazed, and they don't meet the standards of hiker logic.  They seek out the heights in order to plunge into the depths.  They follow the most up-and-down terrain.  But if you're careful not to lose your way, the bike trails make for a nice hike.  I've rarely encountered anybody out on those trails until yesterday.  

Yesterday was the most beautiful fall day, the gold-tinted sunlight filtering through the red and yellow cathedral windows of the forest.  Since I rarely see other vehicles parked in the area I frequent, I supposed that not many people knew about the Hillman.  Unlike other state parks, it doesn't have a website or a park office. It's rustic and undeveloped.  That's one thing to love about it.  So when I had hiked a good distance in, it was a shock to hear someone nearby yelling, "Hyuh! What's a matter 'ith you?" It was a creepy voice that went unanswered.  Otherwise, the woods was silent.  No bike tires coursing over fallen leaves.  No footfalls.  It was spooky, and the plaintive commands grew closer.  "C'mon, boy, this way!"  

My first instinct at times like those is always to conceal myself.  I imagined right wing survivalists marching some hapless captive through the furthest reaches of the park, bound for some dismal trailer on the edge of an old strip mine, where the victim would be tortured and kept tied to a toilet. But before I knew it, they were upon me, two equestrians on unruly horses.

And the woods were full of other Sunday revelers, too.  Cyclists mostly.  Trails that I imagined to be obscure and little trod turned out to be known to more than a dozen people.  It's a little disappointing to discover that Bavington is public knowledge.  But it didn't ruin the golden splendor of a crisp autumn day in the forest.  The maples--though less common this far south--are still brilliant.  Most of the remaining color is from the varied kinds of oaks: deep crimson and orangish-copper.  It's no Vermont, but it will do for now.  Rarely have I had a more restorative day in the forest. 

Colors and Light

Somehow the colors of October are never as bright in real life as they appear in bank-issued calendars and in the lens of memory.  Yellows, mostly.  Some burnt shades of orange.  Some rare reds.  But mostly they're russets and browns, which are nice in their own right.  But they're not the brilliant colors that I always expect.  

I haven't been to the woods in so long.  Life keeps getting in the way.  We spent the second week of October in Arizona, which is a beautiful place--far more striking than this place--but it felt like such a waste of a good October week to spend it outside the Northeast.  

I'm missing the woods bad.  But I'll tell you what's almost as good as a hike: being home alone in the middle of the day, with the October world all gray and gold outside the old windows, sad Renaissance lute music playing on Pandora, a cup of strong coffee, and a well written book--one of those prose books that sings like pure poetry.  

Autumn Valley

 

At Hillman, the woods gives way periodically to these strange valleys, broad and treeless.  I'm pretty sure they were strip mines in their day.  There's a melancholy beauty to them, especially in the blustery days of early autumn, when the skies are moody, the earth is pungent with decaying leaves, and a hint of winter is on the air.  

It was definitely a trek on the "road less traveled" to discover this far flung spot.  But the grass was springy and rich.  The whole great clearing was surrounded by lovely gray birches, the likes of which you rarely see this far south into Pennsylvania.  It was a quiet place and serene.  Now that October is upon us, I'll be sharing these sylvan scenes with hunters.