A Woodland Return

 Today my heart was pulled in too many directions.  I wait all week for my day off, and sometimes when it comes, it finds me still mired in indecision about where to trek.  I wanted to put my kayak into Chartiers Creek at the spot where it empties into the Ohio River, at McKees Rocks (not to be confused with McKeesport).  I wanted to make my annual hiking trip back down at Ryerson Station State Park.  And I wanted to revisit the Monongahela Valley to spend a little more time in McKeesport.  I'm increasingly convinced that I would really like the place if I explored it longer.  

 But with so many competing claims upon my several hours of freedom (and upon my limited imagination) I ended up trying to do too much.  It was too cold to kayak, so I set off for McKees Rocks just to scout out the boat ramp that I'd seen on Google Earth.  Instead of putting into the water, I reasoned, I would get all my locations planned for a warmer day.  I live in the middle of the Chartiers Creek Valley, and someday I'd like to paddle it from Canonsburg all the way to its mouth at McKees Rocks.  I was also checking out the boat ramp on the Ohio River because I'm wondering what it would be like to paddle over to Brunot Island, which is owned by Duquesne Light, and unreachable by car.  And so, my trip to The Rocks was exploratory.  Once there, I also looked around the Onion Dome Ghetto of that town--described above.  

With a few hours of liberty left, I decided to make for the nearest patch of woodlands.  It had been so long since I'd had a good, sylvan hike that I felt almost obligated to try it again.  These Mon Valley adventures have been a lot of fun, but they're a completely different kind of trek.  Going to the woods today was like forcing myself to work out.  I thought my spirit needed it, even though I didn't want to do it.

Hillman State Park is the closest patch of real woods to Pittsburgh.  It's not beautiful by any reckoning, but it is possible to find solitude there, but it's close.  From McKees Rocks, I was easily on the trails in less than half an hour.  And yet, it almost always pays to spend an extra ten minutes in the car and go all the way to Raccoon Creek.  The woods at Hillman are thin, wispy, ragged, and littered with all kinds of beverage containers and cigarette butts.  There are some vaguely scenic spots, but not in March.  Right now the whole place is gray and haunted.  It wasn't even all that great to get back to the woods...not these woods.  A little more focus really could have made this day a success...