Fools Knob shows up on all the maps, so I assumed there’d be something to it. You know, a “knob,” a rocky outcropping, a visible brow of a hill, a clear, sharp ridge line… There was none of the above. Just another partially clear-cut upland with felled trees obstructing the path. I had never visited this quadrant of the Allegheny National Forest before.
The woods felt spooky to me that day. It was strangely dark, and an old man I met walking the forest roads spoke of unmarked graves beneath the hemlocks—women who farmed this land after their husbands died and who were imagined to be witches because they lived out in the forest with no one to protect them. There are little pockets of private land within the bounds of the national forest, some of which still have old houses or cabins on them.
Fools Knob has a curious name…a name that called to me, honestly. At 1,670 feet above sea level, it’s exactly as tall as the high point for the state of Iowa, which is in a cornfield, I think. I might come back to this part of the forest someday to find those graves.
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