Le Soleil d'Hiver

The Montour Trail is a last resort for me.  It's typically too crowded.  But if you pick a chilly gray December day, with the slightest dusting of snow on the ground, you probably won't run into anyone.  Besides, the stretch from US-22 northward to Imperial is---though postindustrial---somehow otherworldly...in a good way.  If not for a hint of seedy Appalachian neglect, the little settlements along the trail would have a toy-like quality, reminiscent of the miniature Christmas villages of a toy train set.

Mingo Creek Church

Another historic church, again Presbyterian, since the Scots-Irish were the only Europeans courageous or fatalistic enough to settle the Pennsylvania frontier.  There's still an active little church on this spot, though its current building isn't much to look at.  The original log structure--above--was a constant meeting place for the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion, and it's mentioned in many books of local history.

This is about three miles south of Finleyville, on the edge of the Monongahela Valley.  There is a lot of history around Finleyville, some enormous old houses and interesting ruins.  If I were a ghost-chaser (which I'm not), I'd definitely spend some more time in this area.  

Click to enlarge.  

Like many small rural congregations, Mingo Creek is currently served by a "lay pastor," who saw me poking around the property.  He was kind enough to miss a Steelers game in order to give me a tour.  Mingo Creek Church's cemetery has some of the oldest graves in this region.  John Hamilton--whose grave is here--was a prominent figure in the Rebellion.  

I like any cemetery with graves dating back to the 1700s.  

Mayview State Hospital

Mayview State Hospital is closed, and venturing onto the grounds will get you arrested.   But since this article was first published in November of 2011, it's received a lot of visits, and so I thought I would update it and add some more photos.  The demolition of all these buildings is now well underway.  

These pictures were taken in September of 2010.  The first time they were published online, I got a message from The History Channel asking permission to use them. 

Unfortunately, the West Coast lady who asked to use the photos was actually working on a documentary about another famous and now defunct mental hospital near Pittsburgh: Dixmont State Hospital. C'mon, Californians, who confuses Mayview with Dixmont?  

How many frantic adieus were said at this ominous portal?

Regionally, both Mayview and Dixmont have  evil reputations.  Dixmont might be a little more infamous because of the successful patient revolt that supposedly took place there.  But there's nothing left of Dixmont except a cemetery.  Mayview, though disused, is mostly still there.  It's currently being demolished, and it's guarded 24 hours.  I ended up on the grounds of Mayview accidentally--of course.  I was just walking down the railroad tracks when I crossed a bridge over Chartiers Creek (top photo) and stumbled onto the grounds.  I even picked apples in an abandoned yard as a few cars drove past me.  I guess I looked like I belonged there...

The sign at the door of All Faith Chapel reads "One More Year."  Is it the title of a sermon or a simple lamentation?  And shouldn't it be "All Faiths Chapel"?  Some of the oldest buildings were in very bad repair when I visited.  They had clearly been abandoned for a very long time.  I would have loved to get inside to see how mental illness was treated in the days before psychotropic meds: electric shock therapy, steam closets, water treatments....Click on any photo to enlarge it.  

Of course, once I realized that I must be on the grounds of the famed Mayview State Hospital, I looked for the quickest way out.  I mean, I'm a respected professional man; it wouldn't look good if I were caught trespassing on private property.  (S&J in no way condones or promotes trespassing.)  I did have to dodge a few security guards on my way out, hiding behind trees and in doorways.  And I ended up seeing a lot more of the campus than you would expect from a person who's just looking for the exit... 

Some of the old staff residences looked pretty interesting, too.  The farmhouse--second to the last photo--is the oldest building on the grounds, I think.  If my historical research is correct, it predates the institution, which was founded in 1893.  The City of Pittsburgh--which operated the hospital prior to its becoming a state institution--originally purchased the land from a struggling farm, and my guess is that the farmer occupied this house.  The sort-of stately brick homes were occupied by administrators and doctors.

McDonald Trestle

This is the the McDonald Trestle, a well known landmark along the Montour Trail.  

This is where the less groomed Panhandle Trail passes under the Montour Trail.
The Panhandle Trail doesn't get as much traffic or maintenance, but I like the fact that it's an interstate trail, leading well into the West Virginia Panhandle.  

The Montour Trail, by comparison, does a semicircle around the Pittsburgh urban area from Clairton, on the Monongahela, to Coraopolis, on the Ohio.  

Both are "rail trails," old coal railroads that pass through the grittier areas of small towns, old mining villages, and industrial complexes.  

And yet, they pass through open countryside, too, some of it pleasant.  The bleak November landscape is a companion on the journey.   

The Power of Suggestion

November at Hillman State Park, aka Bavington Game Lands: my constant retreat.

At a dinner party last evening, an acquaintance asked me where I do most of my hiking.  I told him that lately I've been pretty much restricted to the little-known Hillman State Park.  He asked, a little incredulously, "Do you go out there alone?"  When I told him that I do, he said, "The woods is kind of spooky out there, isn't it?"  My reply was dismissive.  "Oh, poorly reclaimed strip mines are always kind of spooky.  It's a beautiful place."  He wasn't convinced.  Then my acquaintance proceeded to tell me about a friend of his who won't ride his mountain bike at Hillman anymore because the last time he was there by himself, he got the distinct and frightening impression that he was being chased by someone he couldn't see.  

Of course, I explore "eerie" places just for fun.  If you're frightened by bleak countryside and rundown buildings, then Southwest Pennsylvania is no place for you.  You'd have to stick to a few brightly lit suburban shopping centers and upscale neighborhoods, but these too are beleaguered islands in a sea of old towns, old factories, old countryside.  Some of it's scenic--even lovely--but especially from November through April, much of this region is a little ghostly.  And so, as I explored a new area of Hillman today, I couldn't help but find it just a little bit spookier than usual.  I guess it's just the power of suggestion.  

It always sounds as if there's someone following you in the woods in late autumn.  Leaves fall.  Animals rattle the dry vegetation on the ground.  The wind blows.  I only chanced across three cyclists on the trails today, despite the fine weather.  It was a little creepy, but I enjoyed the "exposed" feel of crossing large, grassy clearings and leafless gray woods.  Every season has its beauty, and every place does, too...if your eyes are open to it.   

The Rev. Dr. John Anderson, Absentminded Scotsman

Here we are again at the famed Service Church in Beaver County.   Notice how the cemetery rises steeply up the hillside beyond.  The two little outbuildings on the right are indeed outhouses.

Since my last posting, I've learned a bit more about the history of this place--which was founded in 1790, just one year before the start of the Whiskey Rebellion.  The current structure (aside from the ugly white addition) was built in 1800.  From 1790 until 1800, the congregation and seminary met in log structures.

The Rev. Dr. John Anderson came over from Scotland with his aging mother, who died crossing the ocean and was buried at sea.  Anderson tried to land himself a parish in the Philadelphia area, but despite the lack of clergy in those days, he couldn't get hired.  Folks didn't like him.  He was a small, scholarly man with a high-pitched voice.  Most found him too otherworldly.

And so he made for the furthest frontier, where he eventually got a position at the fledgling Service United Presbyterian Church.  Since he was such an academic type, his superiors asked him to teach classes for clergy in training.  (Up to this point, clergy training had been done under the apprenticeship model.) And so he lectured four hours a day in addition to his parish duties.

It's said that he was an absentminded professor.  Once, while riding on horseback to an ecclesiastical convention, he was engrossed in a book, and he allowed the horse to simply follow the road in front of it.  As the sun began to set, he looked up and realized that he was lost.  He hurried to the door of the nearest house and knocked.  His wife opened the door; it was his house at Service Church.  Left directionless, the horse had walked in circles for hours and never taken the dithering Scotsman far from home.

Service Church, 1790

This is the historic Service United Presbyterian Church, founded in 1790.  Service Church is located in southern Beaver County.  In 1794, a Presbyterian seminary was created at Service Church, under the auspices of a scholarly-but-socially-awkward Scotsman, the Rev. Dr. John Anderson...who is buried in the adjacent cemetery.  The institution that Dr. Anderson founded is still in existence on Highland Avenue in Pittsburgh.  Don't tell Princeton, but Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is the oldest Presbyterian divinity school in the United States, and arguably the third oldest seminary of any denomination on the continent (outside Mexico).  

The cemetery at Service Church is a favorite with ghost chasers.  Some of the graves here date back to the last decade of the 1700s.  Veterans of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War are buried here, as are some fairly well known figures in Western Pennsylvania religious history.  Modern lovers of the "paranormal" claim to experience every kind of ghost and mysterious presence here: absurd animals, hooded figures, a silent "watcher in the woods."  

I don't mean to sound judgmental, but I suspect that anyone who senses a ghostly presence in this place is merely a noisome soul who doesn't know what to make of silence.  There's a deep and sacred hush here, and many people don't know how to interpret an absence of busyness and clamor.  Far from the eeriness described by many lovers of the paranormal, I felt an intense peace in this place, almost a reverent calm that spoke of holy things.  It was similar to the feeling I've experienced on old battlefields and in the cathedrals of Europe.  Early in the 20th century, Rudolph Otto studied the phenomenon of "daemonic dread," and he called it the most primitive precursor of religious feeling.  Now, it's true that some religious feeling can be downright creepy.  The trances, the glossolalia, the ecstatic utterances of the mystic or Pentecostal.  These religious states can be found on the outer fringes of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.  But I suspect the seeming creepiness at Service Church is merely the "daemonic dread" that descends on noisy souls who find themselves in a profoundly silent place. 

The Orb

I'm a rationalist.  I don't believe in miracles.  I don't believe in ghosts, or apparitions, or specters.  I don't believe in phantoms, or revenants.  That's not to say that I'm a pure empiricist.  I value mystery and uncertainty.  "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."  But I remain skeptical of the supernatural.

Here's my problem.  I live in a 150 year old farmhouse in Allegheny County.  Ugly, poorly constructed subdivisions have grown up around the place.  But we have nearly a full private acre, which we treat like a miniature farm.  The whole compound is separated from suburbia by an old privet hedge.  And inside, we've got a large garden, clotheslines, huge composting works, a few outbuildings.  I have my den in a little back bedroom, the only room in the house with only one window.  The panes of glass are old and rippled; they refract light unevenly like the surface of a pond--except without motion.  I walked into my den this evening.  All was dark, but I refrained from turning on the light because I noticed a strange square of light on the ceiling.  The square was about two feet by two feet, and it stood in a place where I had never seen light before.  It was rippled, as well, just like the light that passes through the old window.  I thought, "Hmm, the moonlight is reflecting off something on the ground outside, through the window, and onto the ceiling.  Strange."

I stood in the dark beneath the square of light, and I waved my hand between the light and the window, but my hand didn't cast a shadow.  As I puzzled, unable to find the source of the light, I started to grow uneasy.  I muttered something like, "This is a little creepy."  No sooner had I spoken than the square of light began to roll away.  That's to say, the westernmost end of the square receded into the easternmost end, as if a door were closing it out.  In a minor state of alarm, I fumbled for the light switch, but before turning on the overhead light, I noticed that there was indeed light entering the window and hitting the wall behind me in a much larger, dimmer square.  Very unlike the light I'd seen on the ceiling.

Twice this evening I've returned to the den to see if the square of light was back on the ceiling.  It wasn't.  Now I'm at a loss.  I want to find a logical, scientific explanation, and I refuse to be frightened in my own den.  At all cost, I have to love this place.  I'm locked into a mortgage the likes of which I never expected, and lord knows no fool would ever buy this old barn with its crumbling bricks and sagging floors.  There have been strange things here before: an occasional thumping noise, a tightly closed door that I know I left open; an electric light left on in a room where I know all was dark.  My wife and kids have never noticed these things.  I live with them and simply say, jokingly, "Okay, Hickmans!  I know you're still here!"  But these lights are too weird.  

No one really much reads this blog.  I don't keep the blog for its readership.  An occasional reader stumbles across it, not more than three or four per month.  The blog is mostly just a personal record of my excursions.  But does anyone out there want to tell me what the weird light's about?

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.  

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.