Last Lingering Traces of Color

The colors fade quickly once you get past the middle of October, bringing on fall's second phase: the grays and browns of old November.  A few leathery oak leaves will rattle and snarl from their treetops the whole way into April, when fresh buds push them to the ground.

My two favorite months are placed side by side, but otherwise very different from each other.  Two sisters: the Diva and the Spinster, October and November.

 I couldn't make it to the Laurel Highlands today, but the woods around Pittsburgh sufficed.  The only splashes of color that remain are way up high, the ruddy, muted reds and burnt oranges at the tops of the oak trees, and way down low, the yellow-brown of small beech trees, largely still in leaf.

 The wind blows in so hard from the flatlands to the west of Pennsylvania that autumn leaves get blown down early.  And yet, this is a lovely time, too.  The forest is more pungent now with the strong aroma of decaying leaves.  The skies tend gray, the sun visible only as a whitish sphere half-concealed in murky cloud.  The bugs are gone, and most of the birds have fallen silent.  My only companions on the trail today were a chipmunk and what looked to be a barn owl.

 Oh, and one human, whom I avoided.  I hiked back into the Pioneer backpackers' camp at Raccoon Creek--just because I only had three hours to spend and didn't know where else to go.  The camp is a little village of rustic wooden shelters, all spaced very far apart.  As I approached the familiar place--which I've always had to myself--I smelled wood smoke, and my heart sank.

 Some hardy soul was encamped in my favorite, most isolated site.  He sat on the deck of the shelter in his red fleece and gazed at me from afar, as if to dare me to take the spot from him.  I was almost tempted to do it, too.

 A part of me wanted to go talk to the guy.  "Woodsing" is a solitary pleasure for me.  I have friends, but I almost never hike with them.  I go to the trees to escape people.  And it was for that very reason that I wanted to talk to this guy.  He clearly wanted to be alone, too.  I wanted to know another woodland loner like myself.  How many of us are there?  How do we interact when our paths cross?  Are we natural enemies?

 I occasionally meet other hikers on the trails, though I typically pick areas that are lightly traveled.  But this was different somehow.  This guy was making the forest his own.  He had a fire going.  He looked as if he'd spent the night there by himself.  But I passed him by without a word.  In my heart, I knew that we both wanted it that way.

Against all odds, a few brilliant maples still hold onto their leaves with shades of green still close to the trunk.  Next week I'll be hiking up North, where the leaves are surely almost all down.  (The tree in this photo isn't a maple, just a hanger-on.)

Forbes State Forest: Lick Hollow

The lovely, lonely, little-known Lick Hollow Picnic Area is one of only two picnic areas in the Forbes State Forest.  It's a beautiful place, and serves as a trailhead for some great treks out onto the Forbes, including the one described just below to the uber-cool Pine Knob Overlook.

The picnic area is closed after Labor Day, but if you park at the gated driveway on US-40, you can hike in on foot.  I love having places like this all to myself.  Honestly, I'm not sure that people take picnics anymore.  It's kind of an old-fashioned thing, but I could see coming back here with the family and a basket--not that my wife would ever go for anything like that.  It's just so pleasant, and scenic, and sunken into sheltered little valleys in the forest floor.

State forests are a very different thing from state parks.  Whereas park lands are more or less protected--despite Governor Corbett's best efforts--the state forests are "working forests."  Like our national forests, they're "multi-use areas."  This means that they're open to logging and fracking as well as all the regular recreational uses like backpacking, hiking, hunting, and picnicking.  

The age-old conundrum: Two roads, yellow woods...

In a state forest, you can expect fewer amenities than in a state park, but the trails still tend to be well marked and maintained.  This is a truly lovely place, unphotographably beautiful, with rocky streams, huge boulders, steep cliffs, and deep wooded hollows echoing with "the sound of many waters."

Forbes State Forest: Pine Knob Overlook & Trail

The two-mile trail to this overlook from the Lick Hollow Picnic Area was steep in places, the sharp rocks slick with wet leaves.  My original plan was to drive to the overlook, but I was turned back by low-hanging clouds that made the mountaintop too foggy to negotiate.  This photo shows Uniontown, PA, and surrounding countryside, 1,200 feet below.

I actually arrived at the top of Chestnut Ridge, the low mountain range just east of Uniontown, at about 9:40am.  It was so socked in with clouds that I had to rethink my original mission.  Visibility along Skyline Drive, at the summit, was only about ten feet.

Some people call this little range "Mt. Summit," but that's just because they don't know what a summit is.  There's an interesting old hotel called "The Summit Inn" just atop the ridge on US Highway 40, "The Old National Pike."  They probably assume that the hotel is named after the hill, when in fact the hill is named for the chestnut trees that used to grow on its flanks.

The Forbes State Forest map recommends that hikers give themselves four hours to complete the roundtrip hike from the picnic area to the Pine Knob Overlook, pictured here.  I did the roundtrip hike easily in two and a half hours without even hurrying.  Over the course of the trek, you rise 700 feet from where you started, up, up, up into the clouds.

The Forbes exists in four or five major segments that are not contiguous, not to mention many smaller patches of woods sprinkled here and there throughout Southwest PA.  The Chestnut Ridge section is further west and south than the areas where I've been hiking lately.  It's the westernmost line of hills in the Appalachian range--though geologists will tell you that it's not a part of the Appalachians.  The range looms majestically above the little borough of Uniontown as you're approaching in your car.  With clouds at their peaks, you'd almost think the hills were much taller than they really are.  On overcast days, it makes Uniontown feel almost like Albuquerque, where the Sandias stand stark to the east, sometimes lovely and protective, sometimes menacing and dark, but ever-present. 

The woodlands on the mountainside were silver with mist, the tree trunks black.  I felt like I was traveling in a magic land or a movie set.  When I finally arrived at the overlook, the clouds nearly obscured the view entirely, but began to clear up after twenty minutes.  They blew like milky ghosts over the rocks, the steam of the world pouring over the highest ridge between here and the Ozarks, far, far away.

Perspective

"The trees, the flowers, the plants grow in silence.  The stars, the sun, the moon move in silence.  Silence gives us a new perspective."

~Mother Theresa

Linn Run and Laurel Summit State Parks

 Linn Run State Park is beautiful but tiny.  There's a small village of cabins for rent, two picnic areas, a few miles of trails, and that's it.  It's mostly just the pretty woodland adjacent to Linn Run Road, pictured above, but it also serves as the jumping-off place for backpacking adventures into this segment of the Forbes State Forest.

And yet, Linn Run State Park is deluxe compared to Laurel Summit State Park.  This second park is exactly what its name implies: the summit of Laurel Ridge, the long, low hill that stretches southwest to northeast from Maryland almost to Johnstown.  Laurel Summit State Park is only six acres in size and consists of nothing but two parking lots, a primitive latrine, and a picnic pavilion, seen here.  Like, Linn Run, this place is little more than a trailhead for some great hikes in the Forbes.  I secretly collect state parks.  We've got 120 in the state, and these tiny sections of the forest make two more to add to my collection.  (To wit, there are four state parks named "Laurel," and they're all on this ridge.  There's a Laurel Hill State Park, which is big and beautiful and featured somewhere below on this blog.  There's a Laurel Ridge State Park, which is mostly just a long, narrow collection woodlots that have been patched together on the ridgeline of this hill so that the storied Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail can pass through trees instead of strip mines.  There's a Laurel Mountain State Park, which apparently consists mainly of a ski lodge and slopes.  And finally there's this little place, Laurel Summit State Park, a very remote picnic area.)

Forbes State Forest: Beam Rocks Overlook

A few miles from Wolf Rocks Overlook is this place, known as Beam Rocks Overlook.  This is just off the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail.  It was a perfect day to be in the upland forests, blustery, crisp, and clear, with just enough clouds to keep the skies in constant motion.  The bright Octoberlands stretch out many miles below.

It's a completely different kind of place from Wolf Rocks for two reasons.  First, you can see a lot further from here than from Wolf Rocks.  The view is much broader.  But from Wolf Rocks, all you see is woods.  From Beam Rocks, you look east out over the undulating farmland of Somerset County.  It's out in those woodlots and fields that Flight 93 went down.  Click on these photos to enlarge them.

 Much of the trail from Wolf Rocks to Beam Rocks is a former public roadway once known as Old Rector Edie Road.  It starts off grassy, but soon becomes almost impassable with mud from logging trucks.  The nearby village is a picturesque little place called Rector.  My guess is that the road runs from Rector to another hamlet named Edie.

 But the name "Old Rector Edie Road" created a pleasant visual image in my mind.  I imagined that the road got its name because it once ran past the home of a village rector named Edith--"Edie" for short, an elderly woman with wire rim glasses and a single silver braid wrapped around the top of her head like a crown.  Of course, there haven't been female rectors in the world for very long, certainly not long enough to have disused Pennsylvania lanes named after them.  There could have been a Rector Eddy in former times, but not a Rector Edie, like the clergywoman I dreamed up.  Too bad, I liked her.

Beam Rocks are only one mile from a segment of Old Rector Edie Road that's open to public motor travel.  If you didn't want to hike as far as I did, you could park on the roadside and hike a mile to the rocks and a mile back.

Forbes State Forest: Wolf Rocks Overlook

 The "overlooks" or "scenic vistas" in the Forbes State Forest have proved elusive to me in the past.

 Quite frequently, a panoramic view is promised but not delivered.  It's usually just overgrown with trees.

 But there's so much hype about Wolf Rocks.  I knew it had to be real.

 In fact, if you visit the official page for the Forbes State Forest, the view from Wolf Rocks is the firs thing you see.

 It's a pretty view out over the state forestland and parts of Linn Run State Park.  The silence here is profound, too.

But alas, my hikes are always rushed.  From Wolf Rocks, I wanted to hurry to the other well-known "overlook" in this part of the forest, "Beam Rocks," and I had a long, rocky trek ahead of me. 

Fall in the Laurel Highlands

Every year I say it, and every year it proves true: October's beauty is in its transience.

Fleetingness makes it lovely, the short-lived colors, the rich scent of fallen leaves, the perfect temperatures.  Like all things beautiful, it passes so quickly.

In their transience, the bright days of October whisper to us of finitude, reminding us that we are mortal and destined to return to the dust of the earth--from which we come.

It's a beautiful melancholia.  But more than that: There is an awareness of eternity in all our mindfulness of finitude. 

I'm not talking about heaven, though an October day in the Laurel Highlands is a pretty close approximation.  No, I'm simply talking about the timelessness of the great unknown abyss that surrounds us on all sides: eternity, the absence of time.

It's very calming to touch those things that bring eternity to mind, like an autumn leaf. 

Sections of the old PW&S Railroad are still visible in this part of the forest.  That's the "Pittsburgh, Westmoreland and Somerset Railroad."  In places, it's a trail.  In other places, the tracks just disappear into the forest.  A nice reminder of eternity.

Laurel Highlands Trail: Bridge over PA Turnpike

At long last, on the most perfect hiking day of the year, I made it to the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail's bridge over the Pennsylvania Turnpike, also known as Interstate 76, the nation's first freeway.

I've driven under the bridge many a time, and I've always wanted to stand on it and gaze down at the busy world below, all the distracted drivers rushing between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

 The bridge appeals to me because it's the intersection of two parallel worlds: the forest and the four-lane...which is soon-to-be-eight-lane in this segment. 

 The forest world is constantly encroached upon by the world of hurried people.    

 And yet, the trail, its bridge, the forest in all its hidden beauty--these things are all visible to the travelers below (and vice versa) but completely inaccessible.  It's like two parallel universes.  Most drivers don't even glance up to notice the bridge.

 The Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail is very popular.  I met two couples hiking it separately today.

 One pair told me they had just discovered the old Laurel Hill Tunnel on an abandoned section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike--not to be confused with the well-known segment of abandoned turnpike near Chambersburg, where "The Road" was filmed.  These two have been hiking this area for years but had never been able to find the tunnel before.  

Strangely, they found that the tunnel was enclosed with Quonset huts at the mouth and had enormous air conditioning units attached to it.  Someone is using it for something, controlling the temperature and humidity inside.  The couple suggested that it might be the Department of Defense.  The old Laurel Hill Tunnel is easy to find on Google Earth.

Forbes State Forest, Felgar Road Revisited

 Felgar Road turned me back the last time I traveled it, last week.  That unspectacular misadventure is described in the post just below.

 And so, I returned today for a rematch.  The upland forests are lovely right now and rich with the memory-laden scent of October leaves.  This is my favorite month, such a pensive time of year, when memories of days gone-by drop silently around me like so many leaves.

 Fall awakens old yearnings in me.  It makes me long to walk off into the wilderness on some kind of quest, and so Felgar Road was an ideal destination.  The top photo shows the road as it runs alongside the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  On this open stretch, it feels almost like a service road, but I think Felgar Road is actually older than the pike.

 You follow the road a frighteningly long distance into the steep woods only to re-emerge next to the Turnpike.  The Texans and other frackers are digging a pipeline that runs between the two roads, and in places you can see the fatsos in their orange vests right through the trees.  This photo looks west along the Pike.

 Once the track becomes impassable to vehicles, you get out and walk, abandoning the car at one of the rare pull-offs.  It's only then that you discover these amazing views out over America's first superhighway.  Notice the semis traveling the Pike.  This is looking east.

 The traffic screams in the valley below, but there's a smug isolation up here on the peaks above it all.  As others speed at breakneck velocity from one place to the next, I stand apart from it all, surrounded by golden leaves like some medieval saint enshrined in stained glass.  An observer, unseen by the travelers far below.

 Along much of the trek, the "road" was little more than a grassy track along the ridgeline above the Pike.  I suspected that Felgar Road would eventually rejoin the frackers' new pipeline road at some ugly juncture of ruined forest.  This turned out to be the place.  In theory, even this dangerous-looking thoroughfare is open to hikers.  Trail signs point to it, saying "PA Turnpike / Route 31."  But I didn't really find it very appealing.

 Today's hike was really cool, despite the fact that I did not escape traffic noises and I did end up seeing frackers in the forest--both things that I deeply despise.  The world was just so bright with autumn colors and the views so vast.

 You would think I'd have been disappointed.  Not only did I suffer industrial incursions into the forest, but I also missed my hiking goal.  

 I had hoped to trek from Felgar Road onto the multi-use trail that leads to the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail's footbridge over the Turnpike.

 I intended to stand in the middle of the footbridge and watch the interstate traffic passing down below.  But I got sidetracked by the hideous new pipeline road, with all its noise and florescent-vested Texans.

And yet, despite missing my goal, I ended up bushwhacking through some scenic if nondescript meadows and woods, like the places pictured here.  It was a day of great discoveries.

 There were good mountain views in spots.

 And in the end, I accidentally discovered the Marshall Fields Trail, which called me further and further into the woods, away from the Turnpike.

 The Marshall Fields Trail is a beautiful little lane that snakes through autumn trees.  At a certain point, I came upon a lesser lane that split off and led to this clearing.  Is this one of the "Marshall Fields"?  I wonder what it's for and why someone clearly comes out here to mow it.

 But alas, when you hike an hour and a half from home, you don't get as much time on the trails as you would hiking thirty-five minutes from home.  I had to hurry back to the car so that I'd be back to the house before the school bus dropped off the kids.

 I had some anxiety about traveling back uphill on the deep, loose gravel at this far eastern end of Felgar Road.  I didn't know if my car would end up spinning out on it.

Here, again, is a more traveled segment of Felgar Road as is runs along the Pike.  I met some young guys in a red pickup who told me they were out on the forest looking for firewood.  They asked me if I worked for Powdermill, which is strange.  One of the trails out there is called "The Powedermill Loop."  I wonder what it is.