Ohiopyle Legends and Tom Faucet's Grave

Ohiopyle Legends

Call me a dork, but I didn't think it was too early to book campsites for the annual Memorial Day weekend excursion with friends.  I actually convinced everyone to go a little further afield than Raccoon Creek this year.  This is Ohiopyle in the snow.  I trekked about a mile down the frozen campground road to look over the sites and see which ones I liked best in order to book them.  The Kentuck Campground at Ohiopyle is wooded and beautiful, and the Laurel Highlands have so much to offer.  Tubing, rafting, kayaking, biking, fantastic hiking, great views like this one.  The only drawback is that swimming is about 15 miles away, at Laurel Hill.

Good thing I gave myself several options; when I got home I discovered that all my favorite sites had already been booked.  This is not the case nearby at Raccoon Creek, where the four best sites are still available.  But Ohiopyle is THE outdoor destination around here, so people must book early.  We were lucky to get a few acceptable sites that were adjacent to each other.  The Laurel Highlands are Pittsburgh's equivalent to New York City's Catskills--not the closest patch of woods, but definitely the closest bit of wilderness.  Anyway, I'm glad I had to walk into the wintry campground on foot; otherwise I might have missed this strange little trail to an old cemetery.

The infamous frontier ruffian, Tom Faucet, is buried at the end of this path, and here's a little plaque to commemorate his boasts and misdeeds.  Of course, Faucet became a prominent name in Western Pennsylvania.  There's an old Methodist church near my house that was founded in 1812 and named after the Faucets.  I'd long heard that old Tom bragged about killing Braddock, his own commander in the French and Indian War.  Little did I know he was buried in Ohiopyle State Park.  Click on this photo to read the tale.

Here's the fellow's grave, the stone dating back to 1822.  Of course, if he actually did shoot Braddock in the back, it was all the way back in 1755.  He lived a long and fairly prosperous life after murdering the ruthless Scotsman.  By all accounts, one of the reasons for Braddock's failure to rout the French from Fort Duquesne was his refusal to respect his colonial and Indian soldiers.  He treated them with arrogance and disdain, ignoring their counsel and often resorting to public shaming and physical abuse of his own men.

Now, I don't believe in ghosts.  Really, I don't.  But I grew up in a pretty superstitious environment, so I occasionally think about spooky things.  Standing there in the snow of this neglected old graveyard, I spoke to Tom.  It was a relatively windless day up in the mountains, and I said, "How about it, Tom?  Did you really kill old Braddock?  Two strong gusts if you did!"  I waited a moment, and out of the still sky, suddenly the treetops began to creak and rattle in a surge of wind.  It stopped, and I said, "Okay, that's one."  But no sooner had I said this than another gust of wind shook the forest.  Then all was still.  I was a little spooked, so I said, "Well done, my friend.  I hear Braddock was a jackass."  Then I hurried away.  

Of course I don't honestly approve of the murder of General Braddock, if indeed he was murdered.  But if old Tom would shoot his own commanding officer in the back, then I didn't assume he'd much fancy a sermon from the likes of me.  I know this story sounds apocryphal, but I swear it's true.  Here's a little unmarked church not too far from the cemetery.  I wonder if this is where his funeral was held?  I peeked inside, and it looks like it's still used from time to time: pulpit, lectern, piano, pews, hymnals, a framed print of the Last Supper.  I wonder if this is now a chapel for the Ohiopyle campground.

Kinzua Bridge State Park--Reborn

When it was constructed in 1882, the Kinzua Viaduct was the highest railroad bridge in world.  A local tourist train used to cross it until 2003, when it was struck by a rare tornado.  This was all that remained of it for years.

But in recent times, the half-collapsed bridge has been turned into a skywalk!  That's to say, the portion that remains standing is open to the public.

I no longer enjoy heights, but here is a view of the valley floor from over the railing.  About nine years ago, before hiking trails had been put in and the skywalk built, I hiked that valley floor.  It was still illegal back then. 

 But now there are good trails all the way down to the Kinzua Creek, which is pronounced "KIN-zoo."  You can even wander around amid the twisted metal wreckage of this once-great bridge.

 And here are the fallen bridge supports as seen from the observation deck at the end of the skywalk.

So...look at the light coming through the deck at the very end of the bridge.  That's a glass floor that people actually stand on.  My wife made me stand there for a few seconds to get my picture taken, and I nearly retched with fear.  

Beartown Rocks, Clear Creek State Forest

 The so-called overlook isn't very dramatic, but it does offer an expansive view out over miles of forest canopy.  And the boulders are big, really big and well worth climbing.  

Doak Farm, 1772

 Today I discovered an area of Raccoon Creek State Park that I'd always overlooked.

 I'd been there before, but I never ventured down behind the building where frontier survival skills are sometimes taught in the summer.  It's got this way-cool picnic area down below.  Of course, this is not one of the old Doak Farm's original buildings.  Those are long gone. But they've retained the name of the family that was dispossessed of this place when the park was created.  

It was 16 degrees outside, but here I sat for three hours in the warm winter sunlight, reading, meditating, playing my panflute.  It was just about the perfect day.

 Every once in a while the cold would catch up to me, so I'd get up to explore Doak Field, a very large grassy area with trails and lots of birdhouses.

 I'm all in favor of public lands, but I do pity these poor Doaks.  They settled this land in 1772--well before the American Revolution--and in the 1950s, the state came and confiscated their 400-acre farm to add to a newly created state park.  

I've photographed this beautiful tree in every season.  It was a lovely day for several winter hikes, including the Pinto Loop.  All the world was bright and cold, but comfortable with very little breeze, and a blameless blue sky overhead.  It was silent, so wonderfully silent except for the occasional plane overhead.  

Nebo Church, Mount Jewett, PA

 Apparently the Nebo Swedish Lutheran Church, near Mt. Jewett, can be booked for events and might even host an annual Swedish-language service.  Info on the Internet is pretty patchy.  Otherwise, it's a pretty quiet place.  It does not have a congregation.

 But it's an interesting old site, high on a wooded hilltop and surrounded by a cemetery up there in the Northern Tier of the state.  US Highway 6 runs right past it.

It does look like something out of an Ingmar Bergman film.  It was good to be back up in that area recently.  I'm having trouble downloading my photos, but wanted to document a trip to nearby Kinzua Bridge, which has been revitalized as a tourist destination.

Clarion River Valley and Clear Creek State Park

It's been so long since I've been back in my North Country home!  But I was asked to contribute a chapter to a dry, arcane professional book, and so I went up to a cabin in Cook Forest to write.  Sad choice.  I was so distracted by the beauty of the forest that I barely got the job done.  I'm pretty sure the editor is going to say, "Um, thanks, but we've found something that better suits our purposes..."  I spent far more time hiking than writing.

 This is the valley of the magical, mystical Clarion River.  Memory served me well: I followed the dirt road that runs alongside Millstone Creek from the Allegheny National Forest to the place where the creek meets the river.  This is a lovely part of the world.  Being back here after all these years was like falling into the arms of an old, old friend.

 In Clear Creek State Park, Tadler Trail runs along the Clarion, then turns a corner and travels for a while along one of its tributaries, Tadler Run.  It climbs back up the backside of the hill and then offers views of the river valley from above.  It's one of the nicest hikes around, and I had the place all to myself in February.

I was just so happy to be back, even though I didn't revisit a lot of my old haunts.  At one point, we said that I was going to do an annual winter pilgrimage back to the ANF, and we did it a few times but not since 2013.  Ah, it's just so beautiful, and so empty, and so wild.  What I wouldn't give for just a little one-room cabin somewhere in this valley, just a quiet place to live out whatever years I've got, "content to let the world go by, to know no gain, no loss."  I miss this place so bad I feel hot tears building up behind my eyes.  Why do we have to live apart from the places we love?  Why do we choose lives anyplace other than where we want to be?