Weiser State Forest

The Weiser State Forest--like many of our state forests--is lovingly tended with good trails that are well marked and maintained.  Evil Governor Corbett is trying to open the rest of our public lands to fracking, which would utterly destroy our state forest system.  As Corbett faces the looming possibility of being voted out of office very soon, I think he's adopted a "devil-may-care" attitude toward public opinion, and he's giving everything he can to his fossil fuel cronies.  But for now, 60% of our public forest lands are off limits to the gas drillers.  State forests are a particular kind of animal.  Like federal lands, they're open to primitive camping with only few regulations.  You can hike in and set up camp almost anywhere, as long as you're 200 feet from any stream and out-of-sight from the trails.  

I hiked the "Penn Forest Tract" of the Weiser Forest mostly because I collect hiking destinations, but I could tell from the map that this tract was really just a large woodlot on level territory.  It was pretty unremarkable: no bodies of water, no vistas, no interesting topography.  But it's a good place for solitude and silence.  At the trailhead, there was an office-printed pamphlet on folded A4 paper.  It had a map of the forest with short descriptions of recreational activities--very short descriptions, since there are so few things to do there.  And yet, I liked the place for its monotony.  There's a trancelike sensation that descends on you when you're walking a long loop in a forest with little to no visual variation.  It lulls the hiker into a pleasant kind of emptiness.  It reminds you, somehow, that all things are transient. 

The Weiser Forest is well cared for, but I do have to say that the map was wrong.  I intended to make a long loop out of a trail that existed on the map but not on the ground.  As the late winter sun was setting fast, I finished out my hike with a nearly panicked run down the ugly length of a powerline swath, hoping (correctly) that it would lead me back to the road I'd parked on.  Our state forests are really just large geographic regions in which state-owned tracts of forestland exist.  Some of those tracts are quite big, but others--like this one--are merely a few hundred acres.  The Weiser is named after a fascinating but now shadowy historical figure named Conrad Weiser, an 18th century German immigrant who served as a cultural interpreter and sort-of ambassador to the Indians.