South Branch Kinzua Creek, Allegheny National Forest

           Kinzua Creek lends its name to several things in this region: a reservoir, a famous bridge, a few streets.  The "A" at the end of the word isn't pronounced; locals call it KIN-zoo.  If you call it kin-ZOO-ah, you'll get yourself branded as a come-from-away.  But hell, they'll know just by your car, and your hat, and your backpack that you're not from these parts.  General Thomas Kane recruited a lot of Swedes to settle this part of the state because he thought they would tolerate the climate better than other Europeans.  They're goodhearted people up in this area, but they're not very effervescent or forthcoming with strangers.  Truly, with the gray skies and silent people, you could sometimes think you were on the set of a Bergman movie...

           Kinzua is a storied stream.  It flows past the rustic old Inn (with a top notch restaurant) at Westline and through some of the loveliest parts of the forest.  The word Kinzua evokes a sense of wilderness, beauty, and adventure in the minds of many folks in Western Pennsylvania and upstate New York.  It's our minor equivalent to the words Yellowstone or Yosemite.  In fact, until a rare tornado took out the famous Kinzua Railroad Bridge, there was a train from Kane out to the Kinzua gorge, with all the attendant B&Bs and tourism.  Most of the tourism is gone now, though motorcyclists still like to roll down US 6.  When I was living in West Africa--five years of endless summer--some family members took an October trip on the Kinzua train and sent photos to me.  Those pictures set my heart to yearning for home.

           My third and final day in the forest required me to trek in an area relatively close to the cabin we were renting, because my wife needed the car.  Since we were staying in the little hamlet aptly known as "Blissville," it only made sense to explore the South Branch of the fabled Kinzua Creek.  In all honesty, I would have bushwhacked along the main branch of the creek if I had been able to cross over to it, but neither the big bridge on PA 321 nor the little bridge in this photo appealed to me.  This region has a special place in my heart.  I learned to kayak on the waters pictured here.

           I know the rough forest road that goes from this area to the scenic village of Westline by following the north bank of Kinzua Creek, main branch.  But I'd always heard that there was a lesser-known passage along the south shore, too.  I set out in quest of it and, frankly, never found it.  Instead I found a spectacular old logging road that hugs a mountainside and gradually ascends a steep bank above the creek.

           I'd estimate that the road dates back to pre-National Forest days--one hundred years or more.  It's long since disused, narrow, and in places a little scary to tread in the snow.  The drop to the left was long and far into the icy waters of the Kinzua.

           The old forest road doesn't appear on any map, and I soon figured out that it wouldn't take me to Westline, which was fine; I didn't have time to go that far anyway.  See the stream as it snakes through this photo.  The road winds above this ever deepening valley on its way up the hill, and the views get better and better as you go.

           In time, the old road breaks away from the stream valley and trails off rightward into a hollow that divides the mountain's ridge into two separate summits.  This hollow leads toward a high pass between the two peaks, but this segment of the road is very old and so choked with jaggers that it would be impassable in high summer.  The hollow is pictured below.  Alas, I didn't have enough time to pick my way through the brambles all the way up to the mountain pass.  But I did rest on a boulder and play my panpipes: sad, medieval melodies, echoing out over rock and glen, for all the sylvan world to hear.

          If anyone is adventurous enough to make this unknown trek, it wouldn't be too hard to find.  Take PA 321 north out of Kane.  As you come up on the unincorporated village that locals call Blissville (about seven miles from Kane?), slow down and look for Forest Road  # 279 on the right.  If you pass Bob's Trading Post, on the left, then you've gone a little too far.  There are a few signs at FR 279.  One says, "Snowmobile Trail # 1."  Another says, "Road closed 500 feet."  Follow the road anyway to a parking area on the left.  Walk past the gate and toward a snowmobile bridge that crosses the creek, straight ahead.  Now comes the tricky part: measure exactly 95 medium-sized paces from the end of the bridge, then turn left into the brush.  Keep walking despite the absence of a trail; you'll ford a small brook and continue past an enormous fallen tree on your left.  The old logging road will appear in front of you as it begins its long ascent up the mountainside.  By far the best trek of this winter pilgrimage....

North Country Trail, Allegheny National Forest

           If you follow PA 321 north exactly 7.2 miles from US 219, there's a little pullover for the North Country Trail.  Don't be fooled by all the other NCT signs that you see prior to this one; they'll lead you to segments of the trail that run alongside the road on the banks of the Kinzua Reservoir.  Roadside hiking is the worst, and the North Country Trail has its share of the stuff.

           Follow the little connector path from the parking lot into the woods and turn right onto the NCT.  This segment of the trail runs along the banks of the scenic Nelse Run and ascends the mountainside just above a beautiful, broad valley of hemlocks.  I love hemlocks, and with the morning sunlight filtering through the delicate, lacy branches, it felt to me as if all the world was on the brink of being made new.

          This is truly remote country.  Mine were the only tracks in the snow that day, and as the altitude gets higher, and as the valley gets narrower, the trail becomes less and less visible through the snow.  In fact, at the point where it crosses over the summit of the hill, the path is very hard to find.  Blazes are infrequent, too, which makes for slow going.  At some points it was downright frustrating to stand in the forest, staring into the trees, scanning every gray trunk for a blue rectangle to indicate the direction of the path.

           After summiting, the trail descends toward the lake, which glows icily through the trees far below.  My goal was the Hopewell Campground, which is one of those lakeside camps in the Allegheny National Forest that are only accessible to backpackers and folks who arrive in boats.  The patchy blazes and slick trail conditions meant that it took me a long time to reach my destination.

           Call me melancholic.  Call me morose.  I love being the only person in an abandoned place.  I love trekking to these summertime spots in the dead of winter.  The water level had been dropped for the season.  Not a bug, not a bird troubled the deep silence of the forest.  Once I arrived at the pleasant hillside campground, I looked around for a while, found a nice table near the frozen lake, and had a solitary winter picnic.  The wooded hills in the distance are lovely and serene.  They're quiet and dark, the keepers of ancient secrets.  The Seneca Chief Cornplanter made his home in the now-flooded valley between my picnic table and the distant hills pictured here.

          A snow squall moved in as I was relaxing at the beach.  Within ten minutes, the hills on the opposite shore were almost invisible through white flurries.  This troubled me because my only way to get back to the car was to retrace my footsteps through the snow.  The trail blazes were hard enough to find when the weather was clear; they would be impossible to see through falling snow.  And if it fell fast enough, it might obscure my footprints and leave me stuck in the wilderness, four miles from the car.

          As it happened, the snowfall wasn't heavy.  I picked my weary way back up over the mountain, down the other side, through the hemlock valley, and to the parking lot on PA 321.  This was the main trek of the two-night trip back to the Allegheny National Forest.  It took place on my 43rd birthday.  When I got back to the cabin, my wife and little girls had a cake waiting.  I gotta say, I'm beginning to feel my age.  But it's not every 43-year-old who hikes 8 miles in 15 degree temps.  Who is the Arctic Fox?  Whose dreams are peopled only by frozen lakes, and bare branches, and snow, and jaggers?

Back in the Allegheny National Forest

           All things considered, the southern half of the Mill Creek Trail doesn't make for a spectacular hike either.  It's a scrubby, neglected trail passing through mostly level terrain.  In fact, Jeff Mitchell warns that the trail eventually just disappears altogether.  And it does.  The northern and southern halves never quite meet in the middle.  There are plenty of ugly blowdowns in the area, to boot.  But I didn't care.  I was back in the Allegheny National Forest for my Second Annual Winter Pilgrimage, and my heart was content.  The forest was still there, exactly where I left it, waiting to welcome me back.  Despite the fact that I'd lived in this area for three and a half years, I had never bothered to trek more than a few hundred yards down the southern end of the Mill Creek.

          If I returned to the unglamorous southeastern segment of the forest on my first day back in the Big Woods, it was only because time was limited, and I needed a quick hike close to the borough of Kane.  (As a general rule, the ANF gets better the further north you go.)  It was all of 7 degrees that day, but I gave not one damn.  I had three hikes planned for my two-night sojourn in the forest, and it was okay if the first one was the least dramatic.  I dropped the family with their friends and headed out into the hills.  Under a fine mist of snow, I hiked the old Mill Creek Trail north until it petered out, then backtracked to hike this natural gas pipeline swath eastward into that Big Woods.  So vast.  So varied.  So wild.  It was so good to be back.

"Their Life Is Like a Forest"

          "Their life is mysterious.  It is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one.  Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers.  And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving.  There are really two kinds of life.  There is...the one people believe you are living, and there is the other.  It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see."  
          ~James Salter, Light Years          (My all time favorite novel)  

Camp Trail, Raccoon Creek

The Camp Trail suffers from an unimaginative name, like many trails at Raccoon Creek State Park, but otherwise it's almost as pretty as the Valley Trail (see my point about the names?), and it runs through a remoter portion of the park.  

A thin little wisp of wintertime was making itself known out over the hills and hollows of the park, but nothing like the Januaries of yore.  We used to have a "January Thaw," which meant that temps got up into the high thirties for three days.  Now we have the occasional January Freeze.  

The Upper Lake is the original body of water at Raccoon Creek, dating back to CCC times.  It's much smaller than Raccoon Lake, in the eastern portion of the park.  Fishing on this lake is entirely "catch & release," so the place isn't much visited by fishers.  And there's no beach.  

The beautiful thing about hiking is that there are times when you actually feel as if the wild country that surrounds you goes on forever.  Maintaining healthy illusions is one of life's consoling arts.  

Honestly, this could almost become a blog about Raccoon Creek State Park.  It's always my first choice these days.  And yet, in these midwinter days, my thoughts are often faraway.  I think back on the Africa years.  And the New York years.  And the New Orleans years.  Mostly, I think about New Orleans, since Mardi Gras is just around the corner.  In fact, after all these years, I'm finally reading A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole...a book that my New Orleans fiancee of long ago wanted me to read in order to better understand the city. It was a doomed engagement anyway...

CCC Camp, or Camp # 3, Raccoon Creek

 Group Camp # 3 at Raccoon Creek is said to be one of the old original CCC camps.  It's out in the big western portion of the park, which is the oldest but most remote segment.  That's to say, the park actually began as a CCC project out in this area.  It spread gradually east from here, as private lands were purchased, and nowadays most of the heavily used areas of the park are well to the east.  

 The architecture definitely looks like those old CCC camps, but even more rustic than most.  I think this is the cafeteria and main hall.  

 This is apparently the shower house.  I ran into two kindly old Republicans out here who whined to me that Obama was going to take away their guns.  It's amazing, the things people will assume about you when they meet up with you in the woods.  I'm a gun owner, but if those nice old fellers feel the need to pack assault rifles, then more power to President Obama.  

It's these little cabins that I love.  They're tiny, with wire spring cots leaned against the walls and interior shutters to keep out the light and air.  A drafty little shanty on the edge of a deep, wooded valley.  What more could a man want?  Okay, a man might also want some books.  And some music.  And just enough food and water to sustain life.  And an AK-47 for self-defense.  But then, you're set.

"The Eternal Drift"

(Washington County, PA)

 No single thing abides, but all things flow.

Fragment to fragment clings--the things thus grow

Until we know and name them.  By degrees

They melt, and are no more the things we know.

(Washington County, PA)

 Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift

I see the suns, I see the systems lift

Their forms; and even the systems and the suns

Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.  

(Lake Ontario, NY)

 Thou too, O earth--thine empires, lands, and seas--

Least, with thy stars, of all the galaxies,

Globed from the drift like these, like these thou too

Shalt go.  Thou art going hour by hour like these.  

(Rochester, NY)

 Lo, how the terraced towers, and monstrous round

Of league-long ramparts rise from out the ground,

With gardens in the clouds.  Then all is gone,

And Babylon is a memory and a mound.

(Allegheny County, PA)

This bowl of milk, the pitch on yonder jar,

Are strange and far-bound travelers come from far;

This is a snowflake that was once a flame;

The flame was once a fragment of a star.  

(McKean County, PA)

The seeds that once were we take flight and fly,

Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky, 

Not lost, but disunited.  Life lives on.

It is the lives, the lives, the lives that die.

(Elk County, PA)

 They go beyond recapture and recall,

Lost in the all-indissoluble All--

Gone like the rainbow from the fountain's foam,

Gone like the spindrift shuddering down the squall.  

(McKean County, PA)

Flakes of the water, on the waters cease!  

Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these.

Atoms to atoms, weariness to rest, 

Ashes to ashes, hopes and fears to peace!

~Lucretius 
(Way, way abridged)  

Three Bears' Cabin at Raccoon Creek

 Some years ago, in the mists of a freer life, I hiked down a long, snowy lane through a remote quadrant of the Allegheny National Forest.  Much to my surprise, it led me to a beautiful little cottage in the woods.  The place was completely snowbound, so I spent some time hanging out on the broad front porch, watching the woods.  I felt like a bald Goldilocks, peeking in the windows, poking around the outbuildings, picking my favorite chair to sit in... Today, at Raccoon Creek, I had a similar experience.  

 

 I've been curious about the eastern tip of the park.  On the map, it looks like there's a good, big stretch of woodland where there are no trails.  This part of the park is rough terrain, very hilly; it's the area to the immediate right when you come through the park's main entrance at US-30.  I decided to bushwhack through the area to see what's up there.  In the back of my mind, I had the idea that someday I might join "The Friends of Raccoon Creek" and volunteer to blaze a nice loop trail through this unvisited segment of the forest.  

But today was not a day for bushwhacking across steep, trackless hills.  I've often said that March is the worst month for hiking because the temperatures are just warm enough to make the leftover snow very slick.  Today felt like a march trek.  And so, I followed a forest road that led up into the area.  At the end of that road--perhaps a quarter mile in length--I came across this little farmstead.  

The place is obviously not abandoned.  It doesn't have the forlorn look of a forsaken house.  Also, there were birds hovering around the feeders in the side yard and a new air conditioning unit on the other side.  I was pretty sure that I had the place to myself, but not sure enough to approach the house.  I didn't want to get attacked by a dog, so I didn't get any closer than the the middle picture.  I'm guessing it's either a summer home or a place where park employees or volunteers live during the high season.  Clearly, it was a farm at one time.  There's an old barn up behind the house, and a smaller stable on the hillside to the right, not visible in the middle photo.  There's a little pond to the left--also invisible--with a wooden pier.  It's not much architecturally, but it looks like heaven on earth to me.  

I double-checked the maps, and this place is well within the park's borders.  Imagine it!  A place like this at the end of a long dirt lane in the hills, surrounded by protected public lands!  What I wouldn't do to disappear here.  Nothing but trees, and snow, and views out over wooded valleys.  

Frozen in Time

 Sometimes I believe--if "believe" is still the word--that every moment lives on forever, that even past days are stored away somewhere, fully alive, deep in the consciousness of the Universe, existing as we once knew them, continuing forever and ever, world without end.

 Sometimes I hope--if "hope" is still the word--that there's such a thing as Still Life...that pictures, and photographs, and faded portraits from bygone days are merely shadows of things that truly are, no matter how long past they seem.  Perhaps even imagined scenes are real.   

 I've called this notion "Still Life."  It's the hope that none of our best yesterdays is forgotten, but that they live on forever in the very life of God.  And by "God," I don't mean the Big Bearded One.  I mean the only God I believe in: The Ultimate Reality, The Ground of All Being, The Mystery that I encounter in the forest (and sometimes even in religious edifices and rites) The Holy Trinity of Life, Love, and Joy.  

I hope--even if I can't quite believe--that our unforgotten selves live on in some other dimension.  Perhaps I stand forever on the brink of this stony valley, far away.  Maybe our best, and happiest, and most fully alive selves live on forever.  They're frozen in time, and we cycle back around to them eventually.  Maybe nothing is lost.  Maybe we get it all back in the end.  It's something to wish for, and what's the world without wishes?  What's a New Year without a few fond yearnings?  

A New Year Discovery

 I came across this strange structure in the woods today.  Actually, I've hiked right past it in the summertime but never saw it through the leaves.  It sits high on a crest above the Lake Trail, Raccoon Creek, some 300 feet from the path.

 There's a chimney--about 15 feet tall--and a terrace-like area, but no apparent fireplace.  Someone has put old chairs on the terrace, so it's been used for hunting. 

 Here are the openings, some of which have iron doors still intact.  Was it a furnace?  A kiln?  A place to burn rubbish?  What is this thing?  

Perhaps there was a campus or an institution of some kind here.  A factory or school.  There's nothing here now but this enigmatic chimney place, surrounded by snow and jaggers.  

2013 Dawns in Silence

 The New Year dawned in silence over the valley of Traverse Run.  The fireworks, and clanging pots, and gunshot were only heard from a distance at midnight.  It's the silence that I came here to find: the quiet of eternity to bear me into another year.  I was on the trail by the time the first light appeared over snowy woods.  Instead of staying up late and being raucous, I begin the New Year by rising early and being silent.

 Someday, all our years will draw to an end.  And when they do, all that remains is the silence that preceded our clamor and din.  The dull racket of my life will cease, with its passions and urgencies, but the deep silence of the forest remains eternal.  It's the one thing that truly sustains me.  

The distant Raccoon Lake--I think--in the very middle of this photo.    

Silence is one of the few things that I really believe in, and I believe in it because it has returned to rescue me from myself time and again.  Sometimes I think the silence speaks of something more, something eternal.  I'm no longer sure of the Supernatural, but I am certain of the Extraordinary.  I encounter it in the cold, muffled quiet of the wintry forest...and elsewhere.  It has to be pursued, sought out, made central.  

The tomorrows roll in long succession.  They gather into weeks, and months, and years.  The years themselves collect into decades, eventually to dissipate before our eyes.  But silence gives me strength; it makes me accept impermanence...including my own.  Silence gives me a kind of faith that life itself is holy and good.  The silence transports me--sometimes--into mystic, transcendent experiences, especially when there's snow.