Polish Hill, Pittsburgh

 Polish Hill is one of the historic ethnic neighborhoods of the city.  In fact, a lot of old industrial towns in the region have a neighborhood called Polish Hill--like my hometown of Oil City.  But the one in Pittsburgh is the real McCoyski.  Unlike some of the nearby communities--Lawrenceville, The Strip, even much of Bloomfield--Polish Hill has not been gentrified with groovy shops and restaurants.  It's still very much the Pittsburgh of old.  Despite the fact that it's squeezed onto a steep hillside just above The Strip, this part of town retains a lot of its original charm.  It's a working class place with crowded but well-kept rowhouses and one very large church, which still has a Polish language mass on Sunday mornings.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary Church makes Polish Hill visible from many parts of the city.  It's monstrously huge with a greenish Old World dome that immediately tells onlookers, "Lookie over here.  This is Polish Hill."  It's the defining landmark of the neighborhood.  Some local websites claim that this old immigrant church is one of the most beautiful in the city.  And since I devote much of this blog to sacred spaces, I made a pilgrimage to Polish Hill to take a look.  It's true that I often find Catholic--and especially Polish Catholic--churches a little bit kitschy: the larger-than-life statues with affected poses and facial expressions, the plastic flowers, the pastel colors.  And yet, I'd seen pictures of the interior of this church.  It looks pretty amazing.  But alas, the Polish church was locked up tight enough to resist a Cossack invasion.  Even the rectory didn't look open.  Hell, the whole neighborhood has a forlorn look on a January morning--closed down, cut off, uninviting.  I may call ahead sometime and see if they allow snoops to visit the church.  It's really too bad that a building like this one isn't left open to the public.

More Indoor Glories

 This is the interior of St. Paul Roman Catholic Cathedral in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh.  As many times as I've driven or walked past it, I'd never ventured inside until just a few days ago.  Of course, churches are best in the daylight--especially if there's a lot of intricate stained glass.  But the Cathedral of St. Paul is lovely even after dark.

 I frequently attend the Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque Society's performances in the cathedral's "Synod Hall."  It's a great space, too...faded, austere, and faintly medieval.  But the cathedral is magnificent.  This strange side chapel seems to be dedicated to St. Joan of Arc.  In all my church snooping, I've never before seen a chapel in her honor.  I wonder what its story might be.  Click on the picture to see the oversized statue of the warrior saint in prayer.

Many Catholic churches in this region tend toward kitsch: overly pious-looking statues of saints in pastel colors; murals depicting androgynous saints in fantastic poses, making unnatural gestures with their hands.  Though it's definitely bad manners to mock a church for its piety, the religious showiness of the murals and statues often strikes me as contrived.  (I don't tend to trust displays of emotion.)  But St. Paul doesn't succumb to those hackneyed notions of religiosity.  It has the two features that I find most important in sacred architecture: airiness and clear light.

Indoor Glories

 It's not that I stop hiking in the winter.  It's just that my life gets crazy busy, busier than most, at Christmastime.  It has to do with the line of work I'm in.  One of the [few] advantages to living in an urban area is that there are indoor glories to visit when all the free time you get is a few stolen hours here and there, and not enough time to immerse yourself in a sylvan trek.  This is the foyer of the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh.  It's attached to our big museum complex and appeared in the movie "Flashdance."

A day alone at the museums is always nice, even if it's not a real substitute for the forest.  It was especially cool to see the Hall of Sculpture entirely devoid of lame traveling exhibits and elementary school groups.  This is the kind of room where you could spend a long moment.

 One thing to love about Pittsburgh is that its florid, old fashioned architectural details are similar to a forest.  There are always things of beauty waiting to catch the eye.  Most people never notice them.  Just look at the rich detail in this marble door frame.  It's inlaid with a thistle pattern, no doubt to represent the Scottish heritage of the city's wealthiest and most philanthropic families, like the long-ago Carnegies, and Mellons, and Fricks, and Beattys.

 Of course, philanthropy is very often a thinly-disguised attempt to repurchase one's own conscience (and perhaps soul) for ruthless and selfish business practices.  The steel mills used to publish their lists of dead workers every week.  These glories are constructed on their graves, figuratively.  Isn't that always the case with human-made glory?   Versailles.  The pyramids.  The cathedrals of Europe.  All of these are mortared with the blood of the poor.  Ah, but just look at the lovely tiling on this floor.  What kind of a geometrist came up with this design, hacked out of pure marble? 

This room looked a lot different in the 1970s, when I was a kid.  It used to have faded watery-colored murals of oceanic scenes from the earliest prehistory of the earth.  Scared the living hell out of me.  Sometimes I'm glad to be back in Pittsburgh.  It's nice to be in a place where some of my earliest memories were formed.  I'm glad to have lived out West, and in suburban New York City, and half a decade in Africa.  I feel like an old Englishman who lived his life in the far-off, exotic reaches of the Empire, only to return to a little brick rowhouse in the Midlands, settling into his memories and tea at 4:00.  (Okay, the analogy breaks down with the Midlands, and the rowhouse, and the tea, but you get the drift...)

Fred Woods Trail, Elk State Forest

Although it's only a four-and-a-half mile loop, the Fred Woods Trail--in the Elk State Forest--is well worth a three-hour drive up from Pittsburgh.  Everyone who comes this direction hopes to see elk in the wild, and we were not disappointed, though I didn't get any photos.  They're such majestic animals, with their graceful antlers, their enormous girth, and their great self-confidence.

The Fred Woods Trail is certainly remote.  The only way to get there is to follow a narrow dirt track, known as Mason Hill Road, up the steep mountainside.  I don't know what you do if you meet a car or truck coming the opposite direction.  This trail has some of the best scenic vistas in the state, and it's surrounded by truly wild country--the Quehanna Wilderness.  The wooded hollows of Cameron County are so far-flung that they make a great place for cooking meth.  This region is famous for its meth in the same way some regions of the world are known for their wine or beer.    

But it's unspeakably beautiful.  The Elk State Forest is no stranger to me.  I hiked here pretty frequently in the mists of another life.  But my most recent visit was threefold: first, I've wanted to hike the Fred Woods Trail since first reading about it here; secondly, I wanted to do some research on the possibility of doing a "through hike" on the nearby 75-mile loop known as the Quehanna Trail; and thirdly, I was entertaining a visitor from out west who's always making deprecatory remarks about how easterners think any woodlot is a wilderness.  I wanted to humble him a little.

 He loved the Fred Woods Trail, with its elk. and grand rock formations, and long views, but he kept insisting that it was nothing compared to Utah.  He's probably right that the Pennsylvania Wilds can't compare to the empty places of the Utah deserts--at least not in terms of the vastness of unpeopled expanses.  But there are two things that keep me from taking an interest in Utah: impending water shortages and Mormons...and not necessarily in that order.

 Along an undramatic section of the Fred Woods Trail, we came across this interesting old stone fence, which was surely placed here when farmers were still trying to scratch a living from these stony uplands.

The rock formations along the trail are really amazing.  These boulders are about fourteen feet high on either side of the trail, which might be three feet wide.  The silence of this place is dense and otherworldly.  Ah, I miss the northern part of the state so bad.  Coming back here is a rare joy that reminds me of how much I lost when we moved to Pittsburgh.  It feels like someone I love has been taken away from me, killed in a senseless accident, sacrificed on the altar of expediency.  The wilderlands east of the Quehanna are even more vast and unknown.  I don't mean to be an ingrate, and I love my city very much...but sometimes I miss this place more than I can say.  If we only get one life--as I believe we do--then shouldn't we spend it living in the places and in the ways that bring us joy?

Ohiopyle

 I've never given Ohiopyle State Park the attention it deserves.  It's definitely the premier outdoor location for Pittsburghers willing to drive an hour and half.  It's got hiking, and backpacking, and kayaking, and whitewater rafting, and modern camping, and zip-lining, and rock climbing.  On top of all of that, it's a beautiful place with scenic vistas and lofty pinnacles.  The new park office and visitors' center is located right in the quaint little village of Ohiopyle, with its railroad tracks, its noisy waterfalls, its 19th century homes, and stores, and bars, which cater to the outdoorsy crowd.

Today, a friend and I hiked the first two-and-a-half miles of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail through its Ohiopyle portion.  It gains a lot of altitude in a very short distance, leaving your calves aching.  But the views between the second and third milemarkers--above--are worth the hike.  The deep silence is only broken by the rare, mournful whistling of a train, far, far below.

Last Lingering Traces of Color

The colors fade quickly once you get past the middle of October, bringing on fall's second phase: the grays and browns of old November.  A few leathery oak leaves will rattle and snarl from their treetops the whole way into April, when fresh buds push them to the ground.

My two favorite months are placed side by side, but otherwise very different from each other.  Two sisters: the Diva and the Spinster, October and November.

 I couldn't make it to the Laurel Highlands today, but the woods around Pittsburgh sufficed.  The only splashes of color that remain are way up high, the ruddy, muted reds and burnt oranges at the tops of the oak trees, and way down low, the yellow-brown of small beech trees, largely still in leaf.

 The wind blows in so hard from the flatlands to the west of Pennsylvania that autumn leaves get blown down early.  And yet, this is a lovely time, too.  The forest is more pungent now with the strong aroma of decaying leaves.  The skies tend gray, the sun visible only as a whitish sphere half-concealed in murky cloud.  The bugs are gone, and most of the birds have fallen silent.  My only companions on the trail today were a chipmunk and what looked to be a barn owl.

 Oh, and one human, whom I avoided.  I hiked back into the Pioneer backpackers' camp at Raccoon Creek--just because I only had three hours to spend and didn't know where else to go.  The camp is a little village of rustic wooden shelters, all spaced very far apart.  As I approached the familiar place--which I've always had to myself--I smelled wood smoke, and my heart sank.

 Some hardy soul was encamped in my favorite, most isolated site.  He sat on the deck of the shelter in his red fleece and gazed at me from afar, as if to dare me to take the spot from him.  I was almost tempted to do it, too.

 A part of me wanted to go talk to the guy.  "Woodsing" is a solitary pleasure for me.  I have friends, but I almost never hike with them.  I go to the trees to escape people.  And it was for that very reason that I wanted to talk to this guy.  He clearly wanted to be alone, too.  I wanted to know another woodland loner like myself.  How many of us are there?  How do we interact when our paths cross?  Are we natural enemies?

 I occasionally meet other hikers on the trails, though I typically pick areas that are lightly traveled.  But this was different somehow.  This guy was making the forest his own.  He had a fire going.  He looked as if he'd spent the night there by himself.  But I passed him by without a word.  In my heart, I knew that we both wanted it that way.

Against all odds, a few brilliant maples still hold onto their leaves with shades of green still close to the trunk.  Next week I'll be hiking up North, where the leaves are surely almost all down.  (The tree in this photo isn't a maple, just a hanger-on.)

Forbes State Forest: Lick Hollow

The lovely, lonely, little-known Lick Hollow Picnic Area is one of only two picnic areas in the Forbes State Forest.  It's a beautiful place, and serves as a trailhead for some great treks out onto the Forbes, including the one described just below to the uber-cool Pine Knob Overlook.

The picnic area is closed after Labor Day, but if you park at the gated driveway on US-40, you can hike in on foot.  I love having places like this all to myself.  Honestly, I'm not sure that people take picnics anymore.  It's kind of an old-fashioned thing, but I could see coming back here with the family and a basket--not that my wife would ever go for anything like that.  It's just so pleasant, and scenic, and sunken into sheltered little valleys in the forest floor.

State forests are a very different thing from state parks.  Whereas park lands are more or less protected--despite Governor Corbett's best efforts--the state forests are "working forests."  Like our national forests, they're "multi-use areas."  This means that they're open to logging and fracking as well as all the regular recreational uses like backpacking, hiking, hunting, and picnicking.  

The age-old conundrum: Two roads, yellow woods...

In a state forest, you can expect fewer amenities than in a state park, but the trails still tend to be well marked and maintained.  This is a truly lovely place, unphotographably beautiful, with rocky streams, huge boulders, steep cliffs, and deep wooded hollows echoing with "the sound of many waters."