Allegheny Almanac

Emily Dickinson's weather report

 
 
Besides the Autumn poets sing
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the Haze--

A few incisive Mornings--
A few Ascetic Eves--
Gone--Mr. Bryant's goldenrod
And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.

Still, is the bustle in the Brook--
Sealed are the spicy valves--
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The Eyes of many Elves--

Perhaps a squirrel may remain--
My sentiments to share--
Grant me, oh Lord, a sunny mind--
Thy windy will to bear!
 
~Emily Dickinson

Photography by Snowbelt Parson.

 

Snowbelt is a photographer, voyageur, and parish minister with a current home base just outside of Pittsburgh. You can go hiking with him whenever you want at his blog, called The Allegheny Journal 

Re-tracing George Washington's Hikes

by Snowbelt Parson

photos and article Copyright 2010 by Snowbelt Parson

I'm still taken aback by the spooky feeling that I get in the woods down here in the south-western part of the state. It's not so spooky that I don't enjoy the hikes, and it's definitely not enough to keep me out of the woods. But it is a sensation of strangeness, foreignness. Some ancient, primordial defense mechanism built deep into the human DNA puts us in "alert mode" whenever we're surrounded by the unfamiliar, and 
though I've spent much of my life here in Southern PA, I didn't begin hiking in earnest until moving north. The woods down here just has an eerie quality to me. Of course, all the poison ivy might have something to do with my guardedness. You honestly cannot look at the ground anywhere along the trails at Hillman State Park without finding sprigs of poison ivy.

And butterflies. The woods are swarming with butterflies, some of them pretty large. They tend to fly away as soon as they see you lifting a camera to them, but otherwise they flit and dance around like graceful puppets on invisible strings. In fact, this second photo has a couple of butterflies in the throes intimacy and a few leaves of poison ivy lurking beneath.

Hillman's history as a coal mining area becomes apparent the more you visit. Many of the trails are old coal roads, as seen in the third photo, and a good many of the ridges and summits weren't left there by the glaciers. They were formed by the screaming machinery of the 1970s, removing the topsoil, restacking it, and tearing the coal from the earth.

Although the natural wonders in the southern part of Penn-sylvania are less gripping than those up north, at least the history of European civilization is much older and richer here. There are a few buildings dating back to the late 1700s. Heck, the Hickman Family, who built the house I own, had been living on that spot since the 1780s. I theorize that the kitchen and "servant's quarters" above it are the original structure.

George Washington made many trips through this region as a rookie officer before the Revolutionary War, and at least one trip out this way as an old man in failing health--the President of the newly formed United States--trying to supress a peasants' uprising now known as "The Whiskey Rebellion." People around here still talk about the Whiskey Rebellion as if anyone outside the South Hills of Pittsburgh remembers it.

Today's one-hour trek was a loop through pleasant woods crawling with poison ivy. Some elevation offered something akin to vistas from time to time. Once again, beginning at the hamlet of Knowlton, take Knowlton Hill Road eastward, away from the townlet, and stop at the second parking area on the left.

Snowbelt Parson is completing his tour of the Allegheny River Watershed in Western Pennsylvania after having written extensively about hiking up in the Pennsylvania Wilds. He currently resides in a pre-Civil War home outside of Pittsburgh. You can follow his saga at his blog, called The Allegheny Journal: Backwoods Treks in Western Pennsylvania.

One Last Summer Hike in the Allegheny National Forest Brings Blackberries

by

Snowbelt

Parson

Save the last dance for me. Just one more dance. Let's not rush our goodbyes. We'll dance long and slow until the music dies out forever over gorge and glade, over rocky crest and hemlock-darkened brook. And even then, after the last notes fade, still we can stand cheek to cheek lingering in the afterglow until the moment passes from our grasp.

Moments do pass. They rush ahead, without looking back. You and me...we look back. But time does not. Today, since I didn't get to hike on Sunday, I skipped out of work in the middle of the day and took one last trek through the Allegheny National Forest. At long last, I did the Brush Hollow Trail system north of Ridgeway, Pennsylvania.

This place isn't called "Brush Hollow" and "Brushy Gap" for nothing. There are blackberries all over the place, and don't try to hike it in shorts.

The blackberry bushes are already fruiting, reminding me that
"fruition" doesn't always happen on the same timetable as we'd expect or prefer. Things happen when it's time, and most of us never live long enough to see our labors produce much fruit...

When a couple, very much in love, comes together one last time, do they know it? If one of them is dying, or if they're just getting too old, do they think about the fact that they may never again celebrate the act of physical love? Do they dare admit it, or is the sorrow just too much? Or maybe by that time, they're just too tired and matter-of-fact to care!

I've been trying to hike the Brush Hollow Trails for about three years now, and each time I've been prevented from doing it. Once I didn't have enough time to go further than a quarter mile. The second time, in the dead of winter, I arrived to find a group of about twenty senior citizens on skis. But today was the long-awaited day. It also happened to be my very last hike in the ANF before moving away. I'll hike here again someday, surely, but not as a local. What becomes of all the intimate knowledge I have of this forest? Does it get stashed away in the cerebral archives, there to be slowly consumed by the moths and mold of time?

~It was a gift, this last dance. It wasn't the Trail of Tears. It was a trek much like the others. And now I'll trek in new territory. But I'm grateful for this time, which drew to a close like the arrival of blackberry season, so much faster than I anticipated.

Snowbelt Parson is moving from a Victorian home in Kane, Pennsylvania into a pre-Civil War house in the environs of Pittsburgh. We would look forward to hearing about his hikes in the southern portion of the Allegheny River Watershed. You can wish him well at his blog, Allegheny Journal.

Photos and article Copyright 2010 by Snowbelt Parson.