Seven Ponds Road, Hillman State Park

No one calls it "Seven Ponds Road" but me.  When they started naming the trails out at Hillman, they decided to call this old dirt road the "Wetlands Trail."  I like my name better, and I've been using it longer.

Hillman is an unremarkable place--reclaimed strip mines.  It's got a lot of open, grassy meadows and rolling hills.  It'll do in a pinch if you're a Pittsburgher who just needs a quick outdoor fix and who has neither the time to drive anyplace better nor the patience to deal with all the dogs and crowds in the county and city parks.

Mullein or "flannel leaf" is luxuriously soft to the touch and said to relieve backaches, earaches, dry coughs, and various lung ailments.  It also grows in disturbed soil where nothing else wants to put down roots.

Which means that mullein is a common find at Hillman.  If you stray off the Seven Ponds Road and onto one of the many tributary paths that open onto it, you can find this rolling landscaped reminiscent of some old BBC remake of Wuthering Heights or The Hound of the Baskervilles.

It's nice to have these broad grassy hills all to yourself.  You don't even need a trail where there are so few trees to impair visibility.  I've never met many other people out here except when I've been dumb enough to come in November or December--which is deer hunting season.  The hilltop on which I'm standing in this photo is approached by the faint track that runs straight through the hollow below.  This summit felt defensible.  

I partly came out here to test the theory that this is an awful year for deer ticks.  A lot of hikers on social media are moaning about all the legions of ticks, which--they say--have become impervious to repellent.  I know of no place worse for poison ivy and deer ticks than Hillman State Park, so I thought I'd check since I've got a very long trek planned for the summer.

Like a lot of social media hype, I did not find it to be true.  Not a single tick in three hours of moseying over the grass.  So depending on how you count them, the Seven Ponds Trail could have anywhere between four and seven ponds--each of them delightfully unique.

There are three ponds immediately to the right of the road at various short intervals.  This is the third one, which has been amended by beavers so that the water level is higher than the road.  It's an odd feeling to walk along the roadway and see that the water just beside you is actually up to your waist or higher.

Then, each roadside pond has a smaller pond downhill from it and hidden in the trees to the left of the road.  At this time of year, these runoff ponds are visible through the bare branches, but in high summer they're totally hidden.  That makes three visible ponds and three oft-invisible ones.  Here is the seventh and final pond.  It also happens to be my favorite.

This little pond is the last one in the series, and it sits by itself off to the left at a short distance from the road.  Its seclusion is nice, but I mostly like it for its clear water--which I tried to photograph, but the glare from the sky obscures it.  My brothers and I would have swum in these ponds when we were kids.  In fact Pond # 7 would be perfect for a swim....

For more out-of-state ramblings go HERE for West Virginia and HERE for a short 2016 visit to Hawaii that I forgot to post.

Early Spring at Raccoon Creek

It wasn't my intention to go to Raccoon Creek, but I missed my exit for Hillman and just kept driving.  I was distracted.  It's been hard to stay focused lately.

But I really needed to get out among the trees.  I've been using my days off to scout out potential "camps" to buy.  That's to say, little plots of land with a cabin or where I could have one built.  And so, instead of hiking, my days off have been spent mostly in the car--which is not good for my mental and spiritual health.

But I'm planning a 200-mile trek this summer across the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia.  I'll need to cover about 16 miles a day, so I downloaded an app onto my phone that gauges my speed and the distance covered each day.

I had to get out into the woods to test it out.  It'll be great if it doesn't drain my cell battery.  I know it's an ambitious plan--this idea of backpacking for 200 miles.  But there are so many reasons it needs to happen.

Hallton in the Allegheny National Forest

This old trailer is right on Spring Creek in the little hamlet of Hallton.  It's nothing fancy.  Two bedrooms, an add-on porch, no running water.

It sits right on the water, maybe half a mile from the spot where Spring Creek joins the Clarion River.

This is the view from the yard!

This, too, is from the yard--looking upstream.

Can you believe that this lovely place is for sale?  The asking price was only $35,000, but now the seller is going to accept the highest bid.  (And so I no longer believe I've got a ghost of a chance.)  She could easily get $100,000 for a place right on the water.  The old trailer isn't worth more than a few thousand dollars, but the lot is magnificent. 

Here's the view from the yard looking downstream toward the Clarion National Scenic River.

Other houses on the water in Hallton tend to be really quite nice.

Well kept and frequently visited.

Some few looked as if they might be lived-in year round.

A lot of them have silly names.  This is the Dad-Son-Club.

This is probably the kind of thing that will go up where that old trailer now sits.

Once you get away from the water, the camps are less well maintained.  In fact, a lot of them appear to be abandoned.  I wish the owners would put them on the market.  I'd love to own a little place like this!  It's one of my life's few remaining dreams.

Or even this....

There's a lot of old garbage and debris sitting in the yards of these bandos.  This old school bus probably used to serve as a bunkroom.  

The roof is pretty far gone on this place, but you'd probably just tear it down and build something new.  

You could keep kayaks at your camp up here and paddle from Spring Creek and out onto the river.  This is the Clarion River as seen from the center of Hallton, near the William Tell Bridge.  I wonder how the bridge got such a name.  An old house in this village is home to a bar that was once known as the Hallton Hilton. 

Rail Trails: Indian Creek Valley Trail and a Few Treks South of the Border

 

So many of the old rail beds I used to walk as a kid have been turned into rail trails.  It’s a good way to repurpose disused train lines—though I do miss the smell of creosote on a hot summer day, the thrill of an oncoming train, the melancholy cry of the whistle.  Rail trails are nice when they run through rural areas, less so as they pass through towns.  They almost always follow streams and rivers—like the incomplete Indian Creek Valley Trail in the Laurel Highlands, above photo.  They’re groomed for both hiking and biking, but their industrial pasts make them a little too accessible for the hardy hiker.  If you’re looking to escape the crowds, rail trails are not the way to go.  When they run through populated areas, rail trails—like the railroads they replaced—traverse the busiest or grittiest parts of town, the places where trains would have gone in industrial times.  And because trains cannot ascend steep grades, these trails are relatively level, making them a favorite place to walk a dog or push a stroller.  The day may come when that’s the only way I can get my outdoor fix—on a level, bustling, easily accessible trail where joggers and cyclists make sport.  But at this point in my life, I still need a little more wildness than a rail trail can usually offer.  

And for that coveted “wildness,” dear reader, I have to search further and further afield—as you well know.  I’m looking more and more on the far side of the Mason Dixon Line, in places like THIS and THIS and THIS.

Wolf Rocks Overlook, Forbes State Forest

It’s been such a very long time since I’ve been here except in winter.  In fact, it’s possible that I’ve only ever been drawn to Wolf Rocks in the winter.  I don’t seem to have any photos of this place in any other season, nor any memories.  Some places (and people?) are best when they’re dormant and at rest.  The porcupines have ravaged the bark on the upper branches of the trees at Wolf Rocks.  Click on this photo to see.

In 11 years of rare, occasional visits, I've never encountered another human being at this place--until Wednesday of last week.  When I turned onto the short connector trail that leads to the rocks, I saw a fresh pair of small footprints...and realized with a bit of sadness that I would not have the overlook to myself this time.

Worse, I suspected that the person leaving those footprints was a solitude-seeker like myself and almost certainly a woman.  I'm sensitive to the difficulties that a female nature-lover must feel when she's alone on the trail.  I don't think I come across as creepy or dangerous, but all the same, I probably overdo it when I try NOT to seem creepy: smiling, and chattering, and hurrying away...  Anyhow, the young lady didn't seem scared, but we were both a little disappointed to have our solitude interrupted, I think.

I sought a lonely place that I know out on the northern edges of the rock face, where I sat to meditate and read a poem that I'd brought with me, all the while taking in the pleasant view of snow-covered hills beneath the dark vertical pillars of naked trees.  By the time I was finished, she was long gone.  I must say, it was good to have a few hours of winter up there in the highlands.  I miss real winters.

The disappearance of winter has been a nagging sorrow for me.  This is a "first world problem," I know.  The discontents of climate change are serious and life-threatening, and the poorest of the world's people will suffer first and worst.  But I admit that I mostly miss the snow, and the cold, and the whole aesthetic of the winter season.  I miss the whitish glow in a room when the snow on the ground outside refracts the dim, gray light of day back into the room when the sun is hidden.  It's a cool, pale radiance that comes from nowhere and everywhere: snowlight.  I miss the hunkering down, the taking shelter, the feeling of getting cozy inside your den as raging Boreas claims the world outside.  

It's especially fun to hole-up in a tent out on a trail in the winter, when the world is silent and bright.  The late 90s were a 5-year August for me.  I lived in Africa and missed the cold seasons painfully.  I've never stopped missing them even though I've been home for 22 years.  I savor them when they are mine--however briefly--and I long for them when all is sunshine and heat.  This dull gray November limbo that lasts through April is no substitute for the wise solemnity of a genuine winter.  The cold makes us find and face our inner selves.  There's a beauty in the cold that can be found no place else.  

A Sacred Place in the Snow

Pleasant Grove United Presbyterian Church, dating back to 1780.

9 Degrees in the Laurel Highlands

It was bitterly cold up on Laurel Summit.

Not too cold for a book and a thermos of coffee at a picnic table in the effete rays of the winter sun.  Were the sun's rays ever so ineffective?  On those rare occasions when we get brief tastes of a real winter, I like to read books that are about the season, and I like to do it in the cold.  This most excellent novel was The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason: an instant favorite set in the mountainous eastern reaches of a rapidly-waning Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I.