Oil Creek State Park under Snow

I slipped away on a Sunday night, just after the concert described in the post below, to go up to the North Country to write a Christmas Eve homily.  The sermon on Christmas Eve needs to be short, poignant, and pleasing to the ear.  It's more a poem than a speech, so I needed the inspiration of snow and silence and trees.... Also, my birds were getting hungry. 

While there, I went to an area of Oil Creek State Park that I'd never hiked before.

I didn't realize that Oil Creek State Park was originally created by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which owns and operates the Frank Lloyd Wright house, Fallingwater.  That knowledge inspired me to become a supporting member of the Conservancy...which I've considered doing for years.

Oil Creek really is a beautiful place.  It's not jaw-dropping beauty, but it's consistently scenic.  And there are great birds.  In fact, this park put on a brief course in birding, and that's how I got initiated into my newest hobby.  On this short jaunt, I saw nuthatches, a downy woodpecker, and the ubiquitous chickadees.

The snow seems to last all winter up there...

Old Petroleum Center Road was a sheet of ice.

The park is mostly just the steep-walled valley of Oil Creek, which I seemed to have entirely to myself on a Monday afternoon, a few days before Christmas.  

My goal was to follow the Gerard Trail from Old Petroleum Center Road up to the overlook, or "vista," that's shown on the park maps.

The ghost town of Petroleum Center was located where the park office currently stands.  It was as wild a place as any other oil boomtown in these parts: saloons, brothels, overnight millionaires, whiskey, opium, intrigue, abductions, de facto slavery...  Girls were lured to these boomtowns with the promise of respectable work as nannies for wealthy families.  But once they got here, they were imprisoned in the bedrooms of the bordellos and made to commit sex acts against their will.  All that remains of the notorious Petroleum Center is a train station and a single historic house that appears to be maintained but disused.

Interesting how the towns that existed prior to the oil boom are still in existence: Pleasantville and Plumer go back to the 1820s.  But Pithole and Petroleum Center disappeared when the oil began to trickle out.  So many ghosts of the oil days are hidden in these hills.  Old wooden barrels, grassy old roads returning to forest, rusted pipelines, and even the occasional shed or other building.

The birds were great, but I also met a porcupine!  Porcupines are pretty consistently less excited to meet me than I am to meet them.  This guy refused to pose for the camera.  In fact, he wouldn't even let me look him in the face; he kept turning his back and fanning his quills at me.  

Here he is again.  I remember being told, many years ago, that porcupines can shoot their quills at you.  I'm not sure I believe it, but I didn't want to take any chances, so after a brief conversation, I allowed him to carry on along his slow and tottering way.  Our conversation was largely one-sided anyway, more a monologue than a dialogue.

This portion of the Gerard Hiking Trail was picturesque.  

And here's the humble vista out over Wildcat Hollow, with a bench to sit and watch the raptors soaring over the treetops below.

The Gerard Trail circles the entire park.  I really, really want to complete this whole 30-some mile loop someday.  It'll take me three days to do it, due to the fact that it's very strenuous in places.  In winter, you really need a pair of cleats on these steep and slippery trails. 

A beautiful winter day to be out in the world.