The Wonders of Winter

 My driveway is almost 100 feet long.  This past Saturday, I required my almost-43-year-old elbows to shovel 4 inches of snow off that driveway, and I was hurting by the time I finished the chore.  Back when said elbows were 18, their biggest task was to sit defiantly on tables while I practiced looking fashionably bored.  The elbows participated in creating a whole persona of the trendily angst-laden adolescent with Depeche Mode on the Walkman.  Ah, but that's just another injustice of life: increased responsibilities come at the same time as decreased capacities, like failing joints.  I'm just grateful for the winter, and if it means shoveling snow, so be it.  

Last winter was a disappointment.  Soggy, gray, snowless, chilly, but never really cold.  It was like 90 bleak days of late November, whose beauty grows old after about three weeks.  This time around, it looks as if a good, respectable winter will be with us for the foreseeable future.  And I'll begin the New Year with an early morning trek.  There are few things better than the woods under snow.

The Fifth Day

I hope you're not done celebrating Christmas already.  Today's just the Fifth Day, which we spent at yet another extended family celebration up North, in a spot that--in the winter--seems only slightly less bleak than Yakutsk.  

1846 Spring House, Raccoon Creek

Before Lincoln was assassinated....

 Before the Battle of Gettysburg...

 Before slavery was abolished in the southern states...

 While the potato famine ravaged Ireland...

Someone laid the stones of this old spring house, now located in Raccoon Creek State Park.  This thing was constructed in 1846, the year the Mexican-American War started.  And here it sits.  It's well off the trail, but visible through the trees when the leaves are gone.  Imagine the labor and expertise that goes into erecting a structure like this.  The old forest road near here is also lined with very good stonework, which makes me think there must have been a grand farm on this spot.  

Christmas in the 70s

 "Where's Merlin, where did he go?"  He's in a toy museum...in Rochester, New York.  I found him under the Christmas tree, circa 1978.  It was a little disconcerting to rediscover him in a museum in 2012.  Has the apple really dropped so many times since those days?  

 At one time, America was completely fixated with (and traumatized by) the big, campy shark...so much so that Saturday Night Live lampooned the fixation with a skit about a land shark.  I discovered this guy beneath the tree one year, too.  And I've been catching glimpses of him in swimming pools, and lakes, and bathtubs, and hot tubs ever since...

To this day, one of the best Christmas gifts I've ever received was a Green Machine.  It's steered with levers instead of a wheel.  Way cooler than a Big Wheel!  I used to ride mine in the parking lot of the church next door.  I loved to take corners at top speed and skid off the pavement.  But alas, here it is behind glass...

A White Christmas in North Appalachia

 It was nice to get away from the city and up into the North Woods for Christmas.  This is my wife's family's old homestead in Venango County.  The field in the distance has been strip mined twice, and the family is trying to get a lease with the damned frackers, too.  The land's been jabbed, and poked, and ripped apart, poisoned, laid bare, and pushed back together so many times, but they're still not ready to let it rest.  

 Rural Venango County is definitely Appalachia, and my father-in-law has the guns and yard debris to prove it.  My wife's people are deeply rooted to this locality, as unappealing as it is to the outsider.  I call these level-to-rolling stretches of scrubby ground "The Sadlands."  Things get prettier to the north and east.

 In Pittsburgh, our snow all melted off several days ago, but there's still plenty up north.  When my kids go swimming in grandpa's above-ground pool, I mockingly call it "Appalachia Beach."  

People make do with what they've got in the strip-mined lands alongside I-80.  The grandchildren's swing set doubles as a rack for butchering deer.  And hell, just leave the carcass out there for the coyotes to clean up... It'll be gone before the kids go back out to play on the swing in May.

Dude, I think that was Rudolph!  

Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad Station

 Our second great railroad station is located just across the Smithfield Street Bridge from downtown.  Unlike Penn Station, the subject of a previous post, trains no longer stop at this place.  Nevertheless, it is home to a very good restaurant and some upscale office space.  

I didn't get an interior shot, but they're not too hard to find on the Net.

Negley Cemetery

 In an out-of-the-way corner of Highland Park, in Pittsburgh, behind the uppermost reaches of the zoo, there's a monument that marks the site of an old cemetery for settlers.  It's essentially fifty unmarked graves sharing a single headstone on which only the two most prominent personages are named.  On side of the monument reads:

 "Sacred to the memory of those noble Christian pioneers who moulded the character of this community in its struggling and formative period.  This monument marks the center of a burial ground located on the former homestead of Alexander Negley, where are interred about fifty early settlers of the East Liberty Valley." 

It seems strange to refer to East Liberty as a valley, when it is one of the city's very few plateaus.  The opposite side of the monument reads:

"In memory of Alexander Negley, born in Germany 1734, of Swiss ancestry, came to Eastern Pennsylvania 1739, served in the war of the Revolution, settled on site of Highland Park 1778, died Nov. 3, 1809, and his wife Mary Ann Burkstresser, born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, June 20, 1741, died June 17, 1829, both interred here.

Erected by their granddaughter, Sarah Jane Negley Mellon"  

Fourth Avenue, Pittsburgh

 The Arrott Building, constructed in 1902, is one of my favorite skyscrapers...though it's only 18 stories tall.

 The same building at street level.  

 Here is the former headquarters of Dollar Bank.  They've long since outgrown it, but continue to maintain offices here.  The two lion statues that guard the doors on either side have been taken away for restoration.  They'll be back.  

 Another shot of the two old bank buildings that appear in an earlier post.  This angle shows a little more of the redbrick edifice, which is beautiful.  These stand just across the street from the Arrott Building.  

Pittsburgh was settled in the 1750s, but the streets weren't laid out in any proper fashion until 1784.  Fourth Avenue is one of the city's original streets.  That explains why it's so narrow and dark, overshadowed by tall buildings.  

Christmastime in Pittsburgh

           The beauty and the sentiment of the season are upon us, despite the fact that it feels like late April out there.  This is the city's Christmas tree at PPG Plaza, which--together with the adjacent Market Square--is roughly Pittsburgh's equivalent to Rockefeller Center.  There's an even larger tree on the fountain at the Point, where the two rivers meet.  People ice skate around the base of this tree.  The Christmassy boutiques, carolers, shops, and displays are at the opposite end of the square, behind me.  I almost never venture into this part of town, but when I rediscover it, I'm always surprised by what it has to offer.  (I'm not a big food person, but there's a noodle restaurant down there to die for.)

           During the days of industry, the Fourth Avenue corridor was a financial center second only to Wall Street.  (Google it; it's true.)  Pittsburgh had its own stock exchange.  Here are two beautiful old bank buildings on that street.  The one on the left still contains a branch of the First National Bank, which is relatively rare in this region.  The elegant building on the right was the headquarters of the old First Union National Bank.  It appears to contain luxury apartments nowadays.  Dollar Bank still has administrative offices on Fourth Avenue in a remarkable building not pictured here.  (Somehow, this picture makes me think of the old Mary Tyler Moore Show.)

           Did I mention that we're season ticket holders now to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra?  Heinz Hall is always lovely, but especially at Christmastime.  And in all honesty, the music is unfailingly beautiful.  I don't always "get it" the way people seated around me seem to get it.  It doesn't usually move me to any kind of emotional high, but I can see that it does for some folks.  The first time I saw a married guy, about my age, getting verklempt during a piece by Tchaikovsky, my initial reaction was to was to snicker at him...which is kind of like going to church and making fun of people who are praying.  

         And yet, I don't think the guy was being a poser.  I think that excellent, live performances just move some people in the same way that trees and brooks move me.  Our seats are so far from the orchestra that I get almost dizzy looking down.  It's called "the gallery."  The music is always beautiful, but I would prefer it if performances were about half their actual length.  There should be Symphony Lite for those of us with short attention spans.  The music ranges from engaging to mildly dull, but I do find that the environment is profoundly life-affirming.  There's something very powerful about spending time in spaces that are dedicated to beauty.

Moon over Allegheny General

Valley Trail, Raccoon Creek

           It's a beautiful season, these last lingering days of November.  I hate to see empty-headed fools rushing from one feel-good holiday to the next, putting up their Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving.  This, too, is a chronological place, a landscape in time.  This season, too, is worth savoring.

          It's still fall.  And despite the hunters, it's one of the best times for a hike through wooded hills.  With all the leaves off, there are vistas that are hidden much of the year.  A sunny day in the late November woods is its own distinct kind of pleasure.  So quiet.  So solitary.  So pure.

           The Valley Trail, at Raccoon Creek, starts near PA 18, where it bisects the park into eastern and western halves.  The park road that meanders from its east entrance to this midway point at PA 18 is actually a full five miles long.  But the trek along the Valley Trail is much more direct.  It only takes 35 minutes to hike from the trail's western terminus to within view of the lake.  And it gets prettier the further east you go.

           In places, the views out across the wooded valley and adjoining hills are something more than "pretty," if a little less than "gorgeous."  For me, on this day when I completed the rough draft of my doctoral dissertation, it was a transcendent experience: a perfect journey through a brilliant place of sunlight and shadow, rocks and ravines, bare trees and broad panoramas.

           I heard not a single gunshot, though I did see hunters' cars parked alongside the road, and a solitary hunter having a lonesome picnic in the Roadside East Picnic Area.

          I had gone to the park office to purchase the book Walks, Hikes, and Overnights in Raccoon Creek State Park, by Mark Christy. The publication date is not recent (2003) and it's one of those mathematical books that counts the elevation changes and the mileage from landmark to landmark.  It's not glossy, which is fine, but it also seems to have a clinical approach to hiking, omitting most visual detail and description.  All the same, it's thorough and precise, and it should help me plan my hikes in a way that I haven't really been doing.  I don't love the book the way I loved Hiking the Allegheny National Forest, by Jeff Mitchell.  But Raccoon Creek is my Allegheny National Forest now.  And to the untrained eye, these photos look exactly like the ones I used to take up North.  In fact, I can remember hikes in the ANF that looked surprisingly like today's.  Few there are who even remember who I was before.  And this forest is good enough.  It's not as big, but big enough.  It's not as wild, but wild enough.  It really is good enough.

Frankfort Mineral Springs

           The Frankfort Mineral Springs are an old spa dating back to the late 1700s.  All that is left here is the water spring, a building, and some stone foundations and lawns.  In wetter seasons, the trickle of water on the left side of the photo becomes a full-blown waterfall.  That's my florescent orange cap atop my walking stick; it's that time of year again when you have to carry a talisman into the forest to ward off the bullets.   

           Speaking of orange, I don't know what minerals are in this water, but I'd say there's definitely iron.  This, too, is in Raccoon Creek State Park, which is becoming my new haven.  I come into the east entrance of the park then drive the wooded lane five miles west to the middle of the park, and the further I go, the more relaxed I become.  By the time I've reached the lake, I'm thinking to myself, "I just love this place."  It took me a long time to accept the fact that Raccoon Creek was my best local option for woodland adventures.  I couldn't stop comparing it to the Allegheny National Forest and feeling disappointed.

 There's great hiking in this part of the park, which is just off PA18.  I'd never fully discovered these trails because I just never gave the park a chance.  

 I especially like the Upland Trail and parts of the Mineral Springs Loop--the parts that don't run alongside a busy state highway.  The forest here is pretty, if a little noisy.

 I'm not sure what the building is about, but it's interesting enough.  

The Mineral Springs Loop Trail runs beside a deep ravine that was too narrow and wooded to photograph, but which made a scenic backdrop for my sylvan meditations.  

Gratitude

          I'm grateful that time heals most wounds, and the ones it doesn't heal it eventually makes tolerable.  I'm grateful that Paul Theroux has published four new novels since the last time I looked.  Most of his fiction is about white people falling into sad and sordid lives in tropical places.  Reading his stuff feels like affirmation of my life's story, at least the Africa years.  I'm grateful that the Sixteenth Street Bridge--barely visible in the right side of this photo--is so beautiful, with its ornate stonework and sculptured seahorses.  I'm grateful for this strange little park that overlooks the Strip District, near downtown.  It's a seldom-visited place just off the crazy-busy Bigelow Boulevard.  I'm grateful that the Hegelian dialectic can be applied to a human life like mine: orientation, disorientation, reorientation.  When some form of disorientation comes along to disturb the status quo, we always want to move back to what we had before.  And yet, life's call is always forward to the new thing, the next thing.  I'm grateful that I'm finally coming to grips with having moved here from the Allegheny National Forest.

November Dreams

 It's the gray that I love, and the bare branches.  I love the unclaimed appearance of the trails and every patch of wilderlands in the November woods, even here at the ever-popular Wild Flower Reserve.  

 By making the outdoors less appealing to the crowds, November enhances the illusion of remoteness.  Solitude isn't the same thing as seclusion, but it will do in a pinch.  

There's an otherworldly quality to the November countryside.  Except for the rattling of fallen leaves and the chill groan of the wind, there's little noise.  Water might still be coursing in the brook, but the birds and bugs are mostly gone.  It's a surreal kind of time when senses are dulled, and yet vistas are improved...with only little to see.  I love October best of all, but November sounds an echo in my soul.  I understand the gray.  

Wild Flower Reserve, Raccoon Creek

           Call it spooky.  Call it sad.  But the stark November countryside has its own dark beauty.  

           Despite some nice rock formations, I've always avoided the Wild Flower Reserve at Raccoon Creek, mostly because it's so popular with day-trippers from the city.  But there aren't many flowers to draw folks to this place in November.  Besides, no dogs allowed!  

           Although it's not a large area--314 acres--and it's adjacent to a pretty busy road, the Wild Flower Reserve offers a pleasant stream valley lined with sycamores and enclosed by scenic walls of rock.  

 There's also an old one-room cabin on a ridge top that used to belong to a once-famous cartoonist named Cy Hungerford.  Apparently, Hungerford created the still-familiar "Rosie the Riveter."  What I wouldn't do for a place like this...

Today's trek was only 45 minutes long, and not spectacular, but I needed it badly.  A few stolen moments in the grayling woods.  It's not much to ask from life, but sometimes more than my schedule can easily deliver.  Click on any picture to enlarge it.