Haunted

"I am haunted by waters."

So wrote Norman Maclean in his acclaimed and awesome book, A River Runs Through It which was made into a wonderful movie (if you like that kind of movie!)

Three weeks from now I will return to one of my personal primal waters, Pine Creek, known to the original populace as Tiadaghton. It is barely 60 miles long but in its history it has ground a plateau into a gorge and provided a path through a rough and unforgiving wilderness.

Over four years ago I wrote here:

One learns much from water. One learns that a cycle of life is going on around us. It is in the tides and waves. It is in the high water of spring and the low water of late August. It is in the quiet of a calm summer day and the relentless wind turning lakes into wave swept danger.

One learns how to flow to connect places. Water provided the first interstate highways; the routes through wilderness; traffic lanes for a growing economy. Water separated from, then led to, the New World and the seemingly endless lands of opportunity.

I'm going back to learn again from the water as I pedal instead of paddle its length. I will be celebrating my 60th birthday in my home town for the first time in at least 25 or 26 years. I will be flowing with the waters as they head south from Ansonia to the Susquehanna at Jersey Shore.

After a kayak trip to the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior in norther Wisconsin five three years ago, I wrote:

Water is special and exciting and fearsome. Canoeing, kayaking, sitting on the bank watching the river flow. These are sacred events, places where and when the holy can break through. One need only live through a major flood, hurricane, or overly windy day to know that this is not something to play with. It is a power greater than oneself and to come face to face with that power in water is awe-inspiring.

This time I will be pedaling a bike, listening, praying, watching, feeling. I will celebrate 60 years of remarkable life where it all began. I will remember those who helped make me who I am- for better or worse. I will give thanks for allowing me to reach this spot. I will look for signs of God in what is, as the Celts called it- a thin place where the separation between this world and the spiritual world is thin.

Again from four years ago:

One learns to be patient and persistent, prepared and practical; a dreamer and a realist. One learns that water truly is the stuff of life. It is no surprise that the basic sacrament is baptism. It is in water that we are most prepared to be reborn. It is through an act with water that we are reminded that while we may be of dust, our salvation is through water - being washed clean. There is a "hauntingness" and a mystical quality to water. It will never leave us. It may very well be the haunting of the Holy Spirit of God that first moved over the face of water and made what God proclaimed as "Good!"

Amen, so be it

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.

On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.
-- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

But I Can't Forget The Creek

Even though I will not be heading to Pennsylvania in August, I am not forgetting Pine Creek. What started the whole process of thinking about the bike trip was thinking about a memoir/book on what I call the Four Waters that have bounded and filled my life these past 60 years. Three of them are in north central Pennsylvania. The fourth is in northern Minnesota. I have been playing with this idea for well over a year now. I started journaling about it over a year ago and then got stuck.

In many ways Pine Creek is the most foundational of the four waters so I thought about how I could fulfill a dream of traveling the whole length of the creek. Who knows, though. It may be that the book is not to get written or it is to get written without the trip happening yet. And perhaps it is time to leave the creek behind and just start writing. That takes a lot of discipline and focus. I have shown that I can have a strong personal writing discipline with this blog. After all I am nearing 2300 posts and I have been making at least one post for nearly 3 full years. (Since 8/15/05 to be exact.)

So, the bike hike in Pennsylvania isn't the purpose for this summer. It may be just to roll along and see what I can see and discover what it means to be 60 where I am today, not where I used to be. That seems to be the direction that life goes, anyway.

Early Memories of Pine Creek

pmPilgrim photo, 1982

The above picture is a scan from a photo from 1982 or '83. The trains were still running and the rails were still there. But this picture gives the rails a ghostly quality. Within a few years they would be silenced and removed making way for the Pine Creek Rail to Trail where I will be riding in a little over 2 1/2 months.

As I try to remember my earliest memories of Pine Creek it is extremely difficult. How do you pick out the earliest memory of something that was always there. Pine Creek, or often just "The Creek" (pronounced "crick"), was as much a part of life as the Susquehanna River and Bald Eagle Mountain. It never wasn't there. But as I rummage around in the recesses of memory several memories came up that stand out.

Perhaps the earliest was a train derailment up the creek at Slate Run if I remember it correctly although it could also have been Cedar Run. It was in the mid-1950s and I remember the family piling in the old Packard and heading up to see it. Somewhere in my batches of slides from that era are a couple pictures of the derailment. They are washed out now and I wish I could put my hands on them easily.

What I remember most about the derailment was that there was a box car filled with watermelons. Or at least that's how I remember it. I don't think we went down and got a close-up view but I do remember wishing we could get some of that watermelon.

Perhaps the most lasting image of the creek for me has always been the sharp sides along the road that follows the creek. In many places there isn't a lot of space between the side of the hills and the railroad or the creek itself. In spring th road signs warning of "Falling Rock" were heeded because there were big rocks, boulders, along the side of the road. As the snows melted and the water came off the steep sides toward the creek at the bottom of the valley, it would often bring rocks and boulders down on the road.

Just as interesting was the ice that formed along the rocky sides. It was often still there into April or even later depending on the year. In the shadier sections it always reminded us of the long cold winters of those years. It also reminded those of us who lived in town why many of our classmates didn't get to school when we were able to. We didn't think of it as wilderness then. But we knew that life was harder the further up the creek you went.

Now a whole lot has changed in the years since. The road isn't much wider (if at all). There has been very little development although some think the Rails to Trails will add some needed dollars in tourism which may change some of the dynamics. But the creek is still the centerpiece. And it is not always a friendly, benign neighbor.

But that is for another time.

Twelve Weeks To Go

This is what the bridge shown in my masthead above looks like when heading downstream on the Pine Creek Rail to Trail. When I was a kid and we would drive up The Creek for some reason or another this bridge (and one closer to town) always intrigued me. There was alsways something about them that made me want to get out in the middle of the bridge and just look up and down The Creek.

I was always too much of a wimpy, scaredy-cat to walk out on the rails that were there then. I know others probably did. I don't think many people ever jumped off the bridges- the water level is not all that deep and a permanent spinal cord injury was sure to follow. But I never did that myself. I would just look longingly.

Actually, in those years me and wilderness would not have been two things that easily came together. It wasn't necessarily because I liked the comfort of a nice bed with a roof over my head. It was fear. Fear of bears and animals in general. Fear of snakes, especially the dreaded rattlesnakes that were - and are - prevelant in the area. One of the white missionaries from the 1700s even commented on that in one of his reports in his diary. In some ways I am surprised Tiadaghton (the Indian name for the creek) didn't mean Rattlesnake Waters.

The other thing was that when you grow up in a place like the Pine Creek/Susquehanna Valley you don't know what you have. The mountains, the waters, the trees are all psrt of the expected scenery. It is only when you leave that you realize what you had. Which is what has happened to me over the years. I think it also made me more open and aware of the need for wilderness of some kind in my life.

I use the word wilderness quite broadly to actually mean nature in general. Nature and "tame" wilderness can be found in parks in the middle of cities as well as in one's backyard where a stream comes up out of the ground. It can be in the trees and life from a park that your backyard abuts to. Such contact with the "nature" world was so in-bred into me as I was growing up that I didn't even notice it.

But then I found myself looking for the parks and quiet places. I became aware of being a "river rat" who looked for water to connect with. I began to sense those "Thin Places" as the Celts called them where the separation between heaven and earth was for some reason "thinner" than others. As I looked backward then I realized that Pine Creek and the Susquehanna River were two important places in making me who I am and turning my spirituality into reality for me.

So in August we will be back there. Twelve weeks from today is my 60th birthday and I will complete the last few miles of the 60 Miles for 60 Years bike trip. We plan on staying in the valley near the Creek for the whole week, though, and just letting the wildnerness surround and carry us.

I hope to post something each week on the journey and its roots. It is all part of the Rolling Toward (and Through) Sixty for me. I will try my best to bring you along.

Pine Creek- Tiadaghton - 14 Weeks to Go

Pine Creek Gorge Panorama, taken from West Rim Trail in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, USA. View is of the "Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania" looking south, Pine Creek and the rail-trail are visible.(from Wikipedia)

Just some information about Pine Creek. Fourteen Weeks to go until my 60 miles for my 60th.

According to Wikipedia:

• Pine Creek is named for the many pine trees that lined (and now again line) much of its banks. The Iroquois called Pine Creek “Tiadaghton”, which according to Steve Owlett in Seasons Along The Tiadaghton: An Environmental History of the Pine Creek Gorge, either meant “The River of Pines” or “The Lost or Bewildered River.”
  


• Pine Creek is the largest “creek” in the United States.Pine Creek's watershed covers 979 sq. mi, the largest watershed of all tributaries of the West Branch Susquehanna River.
  

Also, in another article on Wikipedia:

• The Pine Creek Rail Trail is approximately 65 miles from end to end, and it generally follows a north-south orientation. The trail is located wholly within Tioga and Lycoming Counties.

• The trail's northern terminus is near the intersection of U.S. Route 6 and Pennsylvania Route 287, about 3 miles north of Wellsboro. The trail parallels Route 6 in a southwesterly direction for about 6 miles until it reaches the village of Ansonia. From there the trail parallels Pine Creek as it goes south along the floor of the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania. It passes through Leonard Harrison State Park and the Tioga State Forest. Approximately 17 miles south of Ansonia, the trail passes through the village of Blackwell. The section between Ansonia and Blackwell is very remote, and much of the trail is inaccessible by road.

• South of Blackwell, the trail enters Lycoming County and the Tiadaghton State Forest. It parallels Pennsylvania Route 414 for about 25 miles. Pennsylvania Route 414 ends in the unincorporated village of Waterville. South of Waterville, the trail parallels Pennsylvania Route 44 for approximately 17 miles until the trail reaches its southern terminus in Jersey Shore. Between Blackwell and Jersey Shore, the trail crosses the highway and Pine Creek several times, and it is almost always within sight of both the road and the creek.

• The earliest industry in the region was logging. In the years between 1820 and 1883, trees were floated down the creek to sawmills in Jersey Shore and Williamsport. In 1883, the Jersey Shore, Pine Creek and Buffalo Railway opened. Sawmills were constructed in several communities along the creek, and finished products were carried out by train. Coal mining was another important industry, and coal was also shipped along the railroad.

• After a series of reorganizations, the railroad along Pine Creek became a part of the New York Central Railroad and eventually Conrail. Freight and passenger service continued for many years. In 1988, Conrail ended rail service. The tracks were removed, and the first section of the Pine Creek Rail Trail opened in 1996. The trail opened in stages with the most recent section (from Ansonia to just north of Wellsboro) being completed in 2007. The trail is operated by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

• In 2001, an article in the USA Today newspaper named the Pine Creek Rail Trail one of "10 great places to take a bike tour" in the world. It was one of only five places in the continental United States on the list, which was compiled by Patricia Vance, author of bicycle touring guides. The article cited the "Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania" as "idyllic in fall" and mentioned the "gorge with views of the cliffs and mixed hardwood forest".

Why Pine Creek?

As I have talked about here before (and will again) I am planning on a 60-mile bike trip this summer along the Pine Creek Rail Trail in northern Pennsylvania. It will be 60 miles for my 60th birthday. I have given one of my reasons for the trip. I have always been entranced by the Pine Creek Gorge and when I was younger the New York Central/Penn Central/Conrail line ran up the Creek. I always wanted to make that trip in the head end of a freight. What an adventure. What a feeling of power in a diesel pounding out the miles.

Well, the rails are gone. It is now part of the Rails to Trails program. It is an "easy" trail having no more than a 3% grade anywhere along the route. So it makes sense for a first time bike trip like this.


But why Pine Creek? There are probably 60-mile rides like that elsewhere. Well, not for me. Pine Creek is a deeply embedded part of who I am. It is one of four waters that I think of as my spiritual well. In many ways it may even be the most influential, though not the biggest. There was an old saying that my aunt used to repeat when I would talk about leaving the area and not hanging around. Once you get your feet wet in Pine Creek you will always come back.

So there is that pull. But it is richer than that. It is the spiritual pull of water- and for me this water- that draws me. It is a place of spiritual power. It is what the Celts would call a "thin place," a place where the wall between God and you is so thin that He can break right through, a place where the separation of the spiritual and material is thin enough that you can see to the other side. Some places have this naturally; others have it because of what we bring to them.

My spiritual intuition tells me that Pine Creek is one of those natural places. It has a sense of the Holy about it. It has a sense of the spiritual flowing around and through it. Water in and of itself can do that. Pine Creek has a wilderness and a majesty that is hard to grasp that adds more of that Holy. Over most of its 60-mile length it is hard to get a sense of the whole since it is so large. At the northern end at the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania you can get some sense of it. There you can be on top and look down and see, like in the picture above. But elsewhere you are caught by its height and even "softness." (Like in the picture on the masthead.) It isn't a mountain like you see at the Arizona Grand Canyon or the Rockies.

This is the Allegheny plateau with the gorge cut by ice and water. The valley is a water course through the plateau. It is not a water gap between mountains. It is cut out of the mountains themselves. Generations ago it may have been one of the few routes north in that part of the country when the native Indians needed a way to connect with their brethren in New York. Yet it was dangerous with rattlesnakes and wild animals, not to mention possibly hostile other humans.

But there was something about it. Something unique and special. When I was young that something terrified me. All wilderness did. I dropped out of the Boy Scouts because I was afraid of camping. There were things and powers and problems that I couldn't easily solve out there. Give me my warm bed and solid roof. But I remember going to the Canyon as a child. I remember, no, I don't remember in a memory that can be pulled back, I remember in a feeling that has never left me. Every time I have gone back over the past 40 years (and it has been many) my soul remembers that this is part of "home." It is part of me. I cannot let it go. It won't let me go. It is part of my ongoing pilgrimage. It is part of how God has filled me with His Spirit.

Okay, so I'm getting all mystical and weird about this. That's because these are things that are beyond words. They reside in that deep place of the soul that you know are real. They also remind us that in spite of all we may say about "home" being heaven, I am not so sure that this is the case. We were not created to live in an ethereal or other worldly "heaven." Eden was here, material, earthly and I am sure earthy.

So this trip is a time of connecting. I don't expect some overwhelming spiritual experience. I don't know what to expect in that sense. Other than a beauty and a power and a spiritualness that will, I hope, be a celebration of life and its ongoing hope and possibility as I end my 6th decade and head into a whole new territory.

Four Months and Counting

Four months from today, August 3, 2008, I am planning to be starting out from Ansonia, PA, in the northern tier of the state, on a 60-mile bike hike. I plan to go about 30 miles or so the first day, finishing the second day, August 4. Which also happens to be my 60th birthday. The "hike" will be along the Pine Creek Rail Trail through the Pine Creek Gorge- one of the natural wonders of the east coast.

I have, in essence, training for this for over a year now. It hasn't been a straight-forward, always moving ahead kind of training. I tend to get lazy or sick or just don't feel like working out from time to time (like the past several weeks- more later on that.) I started very, very slowly at the end of January 2007. Just easy riding of the stationary (recumbent) bike at the fitness center. My cardio was poor, my strength level was poor, my leg strength was poor. So in order not to do something silly or stupid I went slow.

I have not pushed myself since then either. I have added some core and body strength training since then but have consistently worked on the cardio and peddling the bike. I have figured that being able to peddle for long periods of time at slow speeds will help me make the whole 60 miles without too much pain and agony. I am planning on some warm-up rides around home when the weather clears. We have several Rail Trails in the Rochester area that I am looking forward to riding some short distances on.

The only fly in the ointment, so to speak, continues to be my back. That's one of the reasons I have been a little off the past few weeks. I have a long history of lower back problems which over the past few years morphed into lower leg and foot numbness. It has recently had a "qualitative and quantitative" shift that has slowed me down. Some. Fortunately it is not painful. And it doesn't act up when I am sitting.

And since I am not walking the 60 miles, well, I just need to get back on the bike and get moving again. At this point my stubbornness does not allow me to say I'm not going to be able to do it. In fact, I am more convinced than ever that in the end it will be even better than imagined.

As I have said before I will keep you posted. After I get back to the fitness center.