Forbes State Forest, Felgar Road

 The Forbes State Forest is becoming my regular hiking grounds, which Raccoon Creek used to be.  It's further afield than Raccoon, but so much wilder and more beautiful.  I like the mountainous terrain, too, and the beautiful upland farm lanes.  

After waking up at Kooser State Park this morning, I ventured out early to explore a place I'd found once while poring longingly over my treasured maps.  A little gravel way called Felgar Road runs parallel to to the PA Turnpike for a while then disappears deep into the Forbes State Forest.  Felgar Road is an unwelcoming place.  The few private properties along the road have menacing signs, warning of video surveillance and prosecution.  It's kind of an eerie neck of the woods, albeit pretty on a sunny, blustery fall day.  Where the road ends, a network of intriguing trails begins.  According to the map, Felgar Road is gated near its eastern end, and has to be traveled on foot to the trails.  But it comes out at an appealing spot, near the new footbridge where the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail crosses overtop the turnpike.

It was indeed a very strange drive, with the wind blowing hard in the autumn forest.  The further I went, the narrower and more difficult the lane became.  It also wended gradually uphill.  At about the time I'd gone a few miles and reached the Ritter Cemetery--above--I allowed myself to get spooked.  My fuel gauge was telling me I had less than an eighth of a tank left, which was strange since I'd begun with a quarter tank.  I turned tail and went to get gas and hike another part of the forest, near the beautiful Linn Run State Park.  But I regret chickening out, since a part of me knew all along that my fuel gauge was giving an erroneous report due to the uphill grade.  I'm definitely going back to Felgar Road.  And soon.

Kooser State Park, Revisited

The Spillway at Kooser Pond

The last time I visited Kooser State Park, in the Laurel Highlands, I bemoaned the fact that its beautiful four-acre pond is polluted with industrial sludge, and it's beach is closed.  Nevertheless, I really liked the place.  The dense forest, the rustic old buildings of rough-hewn timbers and stone, the general layout.  It just reminds me so much of Twin Lakes, too.

The first day of fall in the Laurel Highlands

I liked it so much that I scheduled a time to go back there with my kids to spend a night in one of its three wooded campsites.  It didn't work out, but since I'd already paid for a night, I decided to go by myself, and it was so cool.

A peninsula on Kooser Pond--mostly for trout fishers

I'd never camped alone before, and I found the prospect of it a little intimidating.  I'm not scared of bears or coyotes.  There's just something a little vulnerable about sleeping alone in a tent along the roadside.  Backpacking might be a little less creepy since you can hide your campsite far from view.  But in a conventional campground, you're on display, sleeping and exposed.  

The west end of the Kincora Trail is very, very steep

I even get the willies sleeping out in the back yard.  But this was really nice.  My goal, when I camp, is always to hear an owl, which has only happened once, at Twin Lakes, Kooser's more isolated doppelganger up north.  But last night at Kooser, I actually heard a screech owl!

Along the Kincora Trail

Of course, I also heard coal trucks screaming by on the PA 31.  The highway noises didn't let up until about 11pm.  But if you come emotionally prepared for the traffic racket, it's not so bad.

The little lane leading up to the three wooded sites

There's something almost holy about spending a night alone in the woods.  Outside my little ring of firelight, it was incredibly dark.  I always forget the beauty of the night skies away from urban light pollution.  There were so many thousands of stars.  I wish I had the kind of camera that could film them.  In fact, I wish I had a decent camera, period.

My solitary wilderness home, site 33

If I return to camp at Kooser, I'll always get site # 33.  It doesn't have much level space for a tent, but it's the only site in the whole park that backs onto the woods.  And of the three wooded sites, it's the only one that actually feels secluded, since the other two overlook the main campground.  The Laurel Highlands are so beautiful right now: the golden sunlight, the autumn trees, the beautiful old farms with enormous, ornamented barns.  The deep green of the meadows contrasts with the changing trees.  I spent a few hours hiking but a few hours, too, just driving down those lovely country lanes, lined with yellowing trees and split rail fences.  The wooded ridges are always in the background, now tinted in red, and orange, and yellow.

Fall

 It feels like fall.  The green leaves on most trees have a yellowish tint, and some few trees are already in full autumn leaf.  This is my fifth fall back in Pittsburgh, and I'm always reminded that it's not as spectacular down here as it is up in the northern reaches of the state.  In the Pittsburgh region, fall is when the trees are completely overtaken by the blight that they've exhibited all summer.  The leaves turn brown around the edges, then wither and drop without ever providing any kind of autumnal splendor for the aesthete.  There's some hysteria about the hard winter that we're supposed to have this year, though weather reporting has become so sensationalist.  Power outages, people frozen in their homes, snow up to the second floor windows.  I'm not usually into mass hysteria, but I am looking into some heating alternative in case of a long power outage...like temporarily installing a small wood-burning stove and running the stovepipe out a window, like some sort of Jed Clampett.

But it's a lovely time of year, even with the impending winter and the lesser natural beauty of Pittsburgh.  I like the "retraction" of the fall.  Everything is in retreat.  The yard furniture is getting pulled inside.  Parks and beaches are empty.  Campgrounds are still open, but they're spooky for lack of campers.  I'm actually going on a solo camping trip for the first time ever soon.  I reserved an isolated, wooded campsite at Kooser, so my daughters and I would have something to do while my wife was away on business.  Turns out that the kids aren't going to be able to go with me, so I decided to go alone.  It's a little intimidating, the idea of sleeping alone in the woods of an empty campground.

The photos were taken in the remote western half of Raccoon Creek.  I returned there recently, though frequent trips to the Laurel Highlands have spoiled me.  Raccoon can't compare.

Oil City, PA

Oil City, PA, is formerly the home and headquarters of both Pennzoil and Wolf's Head Oil.  Both companies have been sold and resold since I was a kid, and neither one has much of anything around here anymore.  The fossil fuel industries are greedy and inhumane.  They pillage and leave, and this ragged old borough bears all the marks of a discarded boomtown.  And yet, this place is situated nicely in the valley of the Allegheny River in its more northerly reaches.

 Oil City is my hometown, and this house was our home.  Built in 1900, it was in our family until about 2003.  It doesn't look bad from the street, but it's needed a roof for as long as I can remember.  Whoever bought it never re-roofed it, and now I suspect it's unlivable.  Oil City is a great town to buy a huge, decaying Victorian and spend your life fixing it up.  

In this photo, there's an old yellow bucket in the trash heap in the yard.  That's one of my grandpa's Pennzoil buckets.  He used to have stacks and stacks of them all over the house, and even under this wrap-around porch...which is no more.  There was a porch swing in the back, near the bay window.  Though the house is three stories in the front, it's a full five stories in the back, counting a sub-basement (or wine cellar) with a walk-out entrance into the steep woodlot out back.  

The whole town looks pretty rough these days, though it's especially sad to see our home in this condition.  We kids always believed the place was haunted, but the stories--the ghost stories as well as the true childhood memories--none of them really matters anymore.  A homeplace can fall into ruin, but it has planted itself in the hearts and lives of those who once loved it, and in that way it re-creates itself in all the other places of their lives.  I had the occasion to pass again through Oil City en route--circuitously--to New York for a beautiful early autumn cruise to the Maritime Provinces of Canada: New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.  Both places are unspeakably beautiful, though I only got a handful of unsatisfactory photos.  It might be interesting to take a "sacred places pilgrimage" of Canada's east coast.