The Allegheny Trail—the Northern Reaches

I've decided that I'm going to use my upcoming sabbatical in part to travel the length of the Allegheny Trail, which crosses the state of West Virginia.  It runs just a little over 300 miles, mostly through the Monongahela National Forest.  But the northernmost marches of the trail are all along old country roads, like the one pictured here.

I actually drove along the roadside "trail" from near the town of Bruceton Mills all the way northward into Pennsylvania.  It's scenic enough and might make a pleasant walk.  But I don't know where you would get water or put up for the night.

This is Mountain Grove Church of the Brethren.  I suppose you could arrange beforehand for permission to camp in their churchyard among the resting places of the dead--assuming this church still has a congregation.

Looking into Pennsylvania from West Virginia, the trail has many long views like this one.

All the churches look alike in this area, just south of the line.  This one is Methodist, and again, I doubt it sees regular use.  Maybe the occasional funeral or even a rare wedding.  Some old country churches like this get used for a "reunion" or "homecoming" service once a year, usually in the summer.

And here's the northernmost terminus of the Allegheny Trail, on the Pennsylvania border.  It's an ambitious goal to walk this trail from end to end.  I'm planning to take an Amtrak train from Pittsburgh to D.C. and from D.C. onward into the town of White Sulphur Springs, in Southern West Virginia.  I'll have to Uber out to the trailhead, which is some 15 miles east of town.  From there, I'll hoof-it to this little kiosk, where my wife will be waiting to meet me.

An Old Fashioned Camp Meeting, South of the Dixie Line

It's something I say quite a lot, but I'm always surprised by how quickly you pass into another cultural zone when you cross just over the Mason Dixon.  Not many miles to the south, you'll find this old camp meeting grounds in a clearing in the woods.  

It's just a large barn-like structure called a "tabernacle," where revivalist meetings are held for a week in the summer.  The tabernacle is surrounded by humble little one-room cottages.

One of the wooden shutters on the side of the tabernacle was loose, so I was able to point my cell phone inside and get this interior shot.  I wonder what the picnic tables at the front of the room are for.  Do camp meeting revivalists celebrate the sacrament while seated at tables, like the old-time Calvinists once did?

Painted large on the sides of two of the buildings were the words, "Holiness Unto the Lord."

A few of the cottages were duplexes, and I did find one with the door ajar--the one on the left side of this photo.

Of course, the urbex motto is, "Leave nothing, take nothing, break nothing."  It doesn't matter if the building is abandoned (which in this case it was not), nothing inside of it belongs to you.  I just wanted to look around.

Someone will be back here in July to tidy up and make the bed.  Then they'll gather at the tabernacle for some hellfire and brimstone preaching and god-only-knows what else.  My philosophy of religion is this: If it makes you kinder and happier, then it's the truth.  If it makes you meaner and angrier, then it's a lie.  I hope this little camp meeting accomplishes the former in people's lives.

My guess is that it makes some people kinder and happier...but that it does the opposite for others.  Just a guess.  We tend to take from religion a lot of what we bring to it.

I grew up in a little sect that had camp meetings--though they were a lot more sophisticated than this place.  I remember them fondly, and I've always wanted to repurpose the camp meeting movement for religious progressives.  Something like the Rainbow People but a little more distinctly Christian.  Communion at picnic tables would definitely work...

Behind the administrative building, a narrow gravel lane meandered down the hollow and into the forest.  I followed it to this old rock quarry, which was pleasant enough in the sunlight, but which would surely be a spooky place on a dark day.

West Virginia Places Less than Two Hours Away

This is Limestone Road in Tucker County, West Virginia, near the village of St. George.  It doesn't look all that scary in this photo, but I was sure glad I didn't meet any traffic coming the opposite direction when I had that steep drop off to my right.  It's about as wide as most driveways.

I spent my day off scouting out some West Virginia properties I found for sale online.  One of them was less than $6,000 and I quickly found out why.  Despite having a nice stream running through it and the foundation of an ancient mill, the lot was right inside a dumpy little hamlet with messy neighbors crowding in on both sides. Decaying cars in the yards.  You'd have to plant a very tall barrier of evergreens to block the eyesores on both sides, and who knows what kind of noise?  Worst of all, the lot shares a driveway with one neighbor--apparently a Harley owner.  Not the bucolic retreat I'm looking for.  This, however, this steep bit of hilly woods is exactly what I want.

A steep, sequestered acre and a half of woods adjacent to the Monongahela National Forest in northern West Virginia.  I like the sharp grade of the land.  I'd love to delve into the hillside to carve out a sort of "earth ship" with all the protection from heat, and cold, and wind that semi-underground living affords.

I recall as a kid in the poor areas north of here that many families constructed their basements first, then never got around to putting houses overtop of them.  Basement homes.  It could be lovely, with a big wall of windows facing the road and a garden and sitting area on top of the earthen roof.  There's a pleasant stream just across the road and so little traffic passes on this narrow road.  This plot is selling cheap, but it would require a septic tank, and a well, and a lot of excavation--which would add up.  I'm 13 years from retirement and I feel the need to plan wisely.

A part of me feels hopelessly selfish--knowing that the people of Ukraine also have their dreams and hopes for retirement and secluded getaways.  How can I allow a selfish venture like this to occupy my energies when their lives are entirely upended?  But truly, as much sympathy as I have for the Ukrainians--and I have a lot--I wonder why their lot should upset me any more than that of the Syrians and Afghanis?  I have managed to be happy during their sufferings, haven't I?  God forgive me, there's surely an element of implicit racism in all of that.  I don't want it, but there it is.  In any case, their lot may be mine someday.  Let me smile whilst I may.  Besides, hoping for things is often better than attaining them--and hopes may be as far as I get with this desire for a cabin.  West Virginia is a lovely woodland escape for me, but the towns down there all have a shared dereliction.  This is the crooked town of Newburg, a spooky, impoverished little place with houses and churches but no people to be seen anywhere--a scattered wraith of a place, clinging for survival to the exhausted hillsides.

Parsons is only a little better, despite the fact that it's surrounded by the most beautiful country and much of it the Monongahela National Forest.  This is the seat of Tucker County, West Virginia.  I mean, honestly, doesn't it look like it's sitting a little crookedly against the hills and sky?  See the logging truck with the enormous timbers, the pickup trucks, the mawkishly ornate courthouse.  I hail from places not unlike these.  But it was strange to observe once again that, a mere hour and forty-five minutes south of Pittsburgh, everyone speaks with a gentle southern drawl.  And there's something distinctly southern about all of it, the speech, the mannerisms, the tiny cinderblock churches with names like Redemption Tabernacle, the tar-papered roofs, the old Virginia-style barns, with a portion of their roofs extended out over the barnyard for some kind of pulley system.  This is the South.

It is truly lovely down there.  Beautiful, and wild, and foreign, and slightly...adventurous.  There's a little hospital in Parsons--which is the kind of thing that starts to matter as you near retirement age.  And the Monongahela National Forest is my favorite.  It contains such wild places as Dolly Sods, and Otter Creek, and Cheat Mountain, and Shavers Mountain, and Seneca Rocks--all places that I've explored on this blog.  The day is coming when I'll no longer be able to hike it, surely.  Maybe it will be good at least to live there among its sacred trees?  Now tell me, is this not the biggest farmhouse you've ever seen?