My plan is to backpack across the breadth of the Allegheny National Forest on the North Country Trail, which meanders for about 98 miles through the ANF, Pennsylvania's only national forest. I hope to do it in the summer of 2021, but the family and I were there for a short camping excursion on Salmon Creek, and so I decided to scope out a portion of the trail near the area where I'll be starting my "through-hike." Starting at the Amsler Spring Campsite on the North Country Trail, I could either wander north into nearly 100 miles of wild lands, or I could make the short trek south to see my real starting point at the southernmost border of the ANF. I decided to go north first, then come back and go south.
Big mistake. Today was not a good day in the woods. In fact, today the forest did to me all the things that I expect the forest to help heal. Oh, the trek started off pleasantly enough. The Adirondack shelter and the broad campgrounds at Amsler Spring are pleasant and close to Salmon Creek Road.
The North Country Trail follows the road for a short distance and crosses over Salmon Creek, which is a shadow of its regular self due to very dry weather. But the sound of trickling waters was the only sound at all, which is a beautiful thing. Silent legions of dark butterflies swarmed my little car, parked beside the road. The trail leaves the road and ascends into the woods through an old apple orchard, long overgrown. There along the path I picked tart green apples and sour black raspberries. The elderberries were still green. My goal was the campsite at Little Salmon Creek, which appears on my forest map. I thought maybe I'd string up the hammock in that spot, read a little, meditate, take in the quiet and the stillness of the woods.
That's not how things turned out. Less than a mile along that winding, climbing trail, I started to hear the distant buzzing of chainsaws. Lots of them. The noise grew deafening as I advanced, and the forest became brighter for the disruption of the once-shady canopy. Acres and acres of trees, mostly beech, had been cut to the ground and left there like so much carnage. The smell of fresh green leaves was oddly strong. At first the trail ran along the edge of the clear-cuts, but then it began running directly through this wasteland of slaughtered trees.
There were guys with chainsaws all over the place. I encountered one, a short, round-faced Latino fellow who greeted me courteously with a very heavy accent. I know that these guys could be working for the US Forest Service. These trees, they might say, are being cut to open out the forest and allow new growth to occur. Forests, like all living things, need predators--they might say--to cull the herds and bring about adaptation. This is a "land of many uses," after all. There's recreation, and conservation, and industry all at work on public lands. Yada, yada, yada. Or else, maybe this woodland ass rape is all just the damnable greed of the lumber industry. But hell, it made for an unpleasant hike. And it made no sense to me at all why they chose to cut certain trees and leave others standing. Often, the surviving trees looked sick or scraggly, and the felled trees looked healthy. The chainsaws just screamed and screamed until at last I crossed an old forest road and re-entered a darker part of the woods again. This time there was a different noise, eerie and plaintive: oil derricks. The damn things were all over the f***ing place. Land of many uses, maybe, but clearly industry is the only one that the Forest Service favors.
After the derricks, I came upon the top of a valley where it sounded like an 18-wheeler was idling loudly. This was maybe the worst noise of all. It was unrelenting and sounded very much like the world I was trying to escape. I chanced upon this disused campsite on top of a rock ledge, just alongside the trail. See how the rock stands level with the upper reaches of nearby trees. It would have been a nice place to sit quietly for a moment, but the industrial noises were too loud for that.
Here's a view from the edge of the rock overhang. It wouldn't exactly be a great campsite--even without the truck engine roaring nearby--because there's no water sources, and where would you even put a tent. But it was probably once a fun place to sit and watch the forest go dark around you.
Here's the rock ledge as seen from below. It's in the left half of the photo. But I was pressing on to the campsite on Little Salmon Creek. I was hoping that both water and silence would be available once I got there. But...
The campsite looked like a crime scene. I noticed a plastic bag on the trail and turned toward the campsite to see what was up. There was garbage everywhere. Candy wrappers, plastic bottles, two broken kerosene lanterns, some weird-looking hemp necklaces. It totally creeped me out. And to make matters worse, a big white driller pickup truck pulled up about 200 feet away from the campsite. A guy jumped out and looked at an oil derrick that I hadn't seen, then he jumped back in his big Texas-boy pickup and hurried away. Even the damn frackers are scared to linger in this spooky spot...
The scariest thing of all was an old hammock that had been abandoned there, still attached to a tree. It looks as if someone cut down one end of the hammock as well as the rain fly that might have been over it. Tell me it doesn't look like someone got murdered here! Or else they fled the place as fast as they possibly could. I didn't even want to draw water from the nearby brook, but I didn't have much choice. I got water and retraced my steps, discouraged, making a mental note to myself to BY NO MEANS spend a night at the Little Salmon Creek campsite when I come back next summer. I don't care if the mess is cleaned up by then, and I know that all trail maintenance is done by goodhearted volunteers. I'm not criticizing anyone. But this place has some bad vibes.
And so, it was three miles from Amsler Spring to Little Salmon Creek, six miles round trip. I felt disheartened, sad, deflated by the ugliness and the noise that I found in a place where I'd gone seeking if-not-beauty, then at least peace. There was none to be found. But I still had a few hours and some energy left, so I decided to trek south from Amsler Spring to the southernmost border of the ANF, to the spot where my 100-mile pilgrimage would begin next year. I'm glad I did. The woods here were not special--just a patch of plain, nondescript hardwoods. The trees mostly looked young, as if this part of the forest had also been harvested some twenty years ago. But there was silence, sweet, sweet silence the likes of which I rarely get to enjoy. I could have wept for love of it.
It's just three miles to a large, level area called Cicely Camp. I wanted to reach that spot in order to reassure myself that not all campsites along the North Country Trail would be like the one at Little Salmon Creek. I also just wanted to see this place named "Cicely," because I used to be a fan of that old TV show Northern Exposure, back in the 90s, and Cicely was the name of the fictitious town in Alaska where the show was set. Surely it was a fellow fan who named it that, right? With the strange spelling and all?
Then back through mostly level young forest to the trailhead on Guitonville Road. I left my walking stick by the trail register for someone else to use. I love the Allegheny National Forest, and I know that the southern half of the forest is the more industrialized part. But I was shaken and a little repulsed by all that I'd seen and heard in the forest that day. It makes me wonder if I shouldn't be looking elsewhere for the things my spirit needs.
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