Desert Solitaire

 

Having recently found out that my nephew, a good friend is reading and enjoying a book that I had read and loved decades ago, I pulled my copy off the shelf and started re-reading it. This isn’t just the second time I’ve read it; I can’t even guess at the number times I’ve been transfixed by this book.

    The book is Desert Solitaire, written by Edward Abbey in 1968. It was the first non-fiction book that Abbey wrote, a nature narrative compared by some to Thoreau’s Walden.

    I probably discovered the book in the mid 70’s. Telling about his years as a park ranger, Edward writes about the joys of sitting with his cup of coffee and waiting for the sun to make its appearance in the morning and watching the moon rise in the evening. He writes about the things I wanted to do and things that I still do now!

    As I was reading, I watched as the sunlight crawled up the hillside across from my vantage point. The sun was slowly setting, I couldn’t see it from where I was, but I could see its light. As the sun dropped closer to the horizon its orange light climbed up the hill across from it, leaving the trees below in shadow. Soon it was on just the tips of the trees and then the brightness of the sun disappeared.

    It is a Friday night; the sounds of the traffic on the roads below have quieted down. It is far from silent though, nothing like the quiet and solitude of the desert that Edward had written about.

    The trees and the woods are losing their details, the trees are no longer individuals, they have become a mass, a collection of greens and browns. A few dead trees stand separately, their trunks and branches white, like skeletons. In the sky the clouds are gaining a pinkish tinge.

    I had just read about Edward’s ideas about banning cars and roads from the national parks. Eliminating powered transportation and requiring visitors to hike or ride on mules or horses, making them see the wonders of the land the way they have been seen for centuries, under their own power. He was definitely against “industrial tourism”.  He knew it was coming and there wasn't much he could do other than write about it. (He does mention a couple other things in his book(s)...)

    My reading has only taken me through 60 pages, give or take, yet I understand already what it is about his writing that captured me so long ago. I don’t agree with all his ideas but yet I have always admired this man, his thoughts and his writing.

    I am no longer sitting at a table in my backyard in Western Pennsylvania. I am in Arches National Park in Utah, along with my teacher Edward Abbey. He is explaining about the desert, telling me about the wildlife, the soil and the plants that inhabit this difficult land. He is telling me how important it is that we preserve our world!

    If you’ll excuse me now, I am going to sit down by his campfire again and listen a bit further. This is just like visiting with an old friend!

An Amtrak Journey

This may not be exactly what you were expecting... let me tell you a bit more.

    I’m not sure what it was exactly that brought the idea into my head. I was thinking about photography. This moved into catching a picture of a train coming through the city, with the buildings behind it glowing from the rising sun. “There had to be a spot where this could be caught!”

    I started by consulting my maps and a web site called “The Photographer’s Ephemeris”, a site that shows the direction and times of sunrise. I found out that Amtrak has a daily train to NYC, leaving the Pittsburgh station six days a week, leaving at 7:30! Looking at the maps, a couple spots presented themselves.

    During the upcoming days, I visited them. Some appeared better than others, there weren’t as many as I had hoped. My first attempt was from a parking lot beside the tracks.

    I had to wait for a good morning; wanting the sunrise reflecting on the buildings meant that I needed a day without rain or heavy clouds. This can be difficult in Pittsburgh. Finally a day arrived that met my criteria. I got there early, the parking lot was empty. I parked near a set of signal lights, hoping to catch the engine coming between them. The camera was set on a tripod, the scene was framed, all I needed now was the train.

    Just before it was due to leave the station a car pulled up, the window rolled down and a security guard asked me what I was doing. I explained and was told that I was on private property and would have to leave. I talked and maybe even begged a bit and was granted 5 more minutes. Just as this was given to me, the train came into view. I snapped my pictures, thanked the guard and tore down my set-up. I won’t be returning to this site again!

    The pictures were OK but I felt as if I could do better so… My next spot to attempt my picture from was a bit further away. I figured I could get a sharper image by adding a bit of distance from the train, making the speed of the train less noticeable, showing less blur.

    The sun was rising a bit earlier each day making the chances of sunshine on the buildings a little better but as I already said, the weather always plays a part in any outdoor photo shoot.

    The next site was on a bridge that spanned the railroad tracks, about 1000 feet further away from the last site. The day I chose was cold and the ground had a light layer of snow on it. Clouds were in the sky. I was glad I had brought gloves! The train came right on time but the city wasn’t lit up. My best picture from that day showed the snow blowing off of the top of the train; the city wasn’t in it.

    I returned a week later and tried again. While I got the city in the picture this time, once again the morning sunlight I had hoped for never developed.

    Looking at the pictures intrigued me. I decided to forget the city and go for another location. Out came the maps again. I found what looked like a good spot in-between Shadyside and Homewood. I took a ride to scout it out and it showed possibilities. A signal tower sat on either side of the tracks; maybe I could capture the train between the pair. The sun (if there was one) would be illuminating the front and side of the train.

    I returned with the camera to see what I could get. The sun was up, things were looking good. I decided to skip the signals since the lights wouldn’t be visible in the picture. The train came and a couple pictures were taken.

    These pictures were starting to become an obsession now! I decided to try again with my 4X5 camera so 3 days later I returned. I caught it between the signals this time, but the train was blurred, the shutter speed was too slow. Drat, always something!

    I started looking further out the line. Looking at the maps I noticed the tracks went underneath the George Westinghouse Bridge in East Pittsburgh. Oh it takes so little to grab my attention!

    My buddy Frank and I planned a trip out to where we thought we’d get a good view of both the bridge and the tracks. We had found a geocache a few hundred feet away a couple years ago. A bridge once crossed the tracks here and the pier provides a wonderful view of the valley. A section of the old brick road leading to the bridge is visible poking through the dirt and weeds. Stepping over a broken wooden roadblock takes you to a comfortable spot complete with a concrete shelf to put excess camera gear on and provide a windbreak.

    While we were setting up and then waiting, we watched a westbound freight pass by. Ten minutes later the Amtrak train came, about 20 minutes after it left the city. High hills are on either side and the light wasn’t the greatest…so we decided to come back another time.

    A week later, we were back again. The sunlight was just hitting the top of the bridge. We surveyed a few other sites in the area before we set up. Frank decided to go a little lower down the road while I stayed on the bridge pier. We got some nice shots including a few with the moon in them but we still weren’t satisfied. Was I pulling Frank into my obsession?

    We returned one last time. (at this writing) It was eleven days later on a Saturday morning. There were occasional drizzles as we drove back to East Pittsburgh. We brought Kelle and Ann Marie with us this time, for company, perhaps good luck and to share the excitement of the hunt.

    This time we set up underneath the smaller bridge in front of the Westinghouse Bridge. While the on and off rain never came down hard, the bridge provided a cover for us.  It also gave us a different view of the train and the bridges.

    I brought my 4X5 camera along and I set up a bit closer to the tracks than Frank. The women hung out beside the car. We heard lots of train whistles while we waited but none of them were from the train we were waiting for. Then we heard it, there was a definite difference in its sound! The headlight first appeared between the branches of the trees and then there it was, speeding towards us. I took a few shots with the digital camera and then depressed the shutter release on the bigger camera. A couple more digital shots of it as it raced away from us and then I started tearing things down. All that preparation for only 10 or 20 seconds of excitement, was it worth it? As far as I was concerned, it was!

    We repacked the car and headed for a place to get some breakfast to celebrate a successful trip. Even if the pictures don’t come out as we planned for them, we were still happy!

    Thinking about the various shots I’ve taken, I figure this will probably be the last time we come out to this spot. I can let this series go now. I developed the 4X5 negative, it came out OK, it’s the photo at the top of this story.

    I don’t think I’ll be chasing this train any further. It was nice knowing when it was going to pass as compared to just standing trackside and hoping a train goes by. Should it pass me again, I’ll take another couple pictures of it. I’ve been taking shots of this train long before this year.  

A past shot of the morning Amtrak train coming into the Horseshoe Curve

The search always continues, whether or not I get anything isn’t important, it’s all about the hunt

I See Ghosts!

Whenever we drive into a new town or city, we always look at the buildings.  They give us an idea of what the town is like now and what it used to be like. They tell us a little bit about their history, they tell us a bit about the people who founded the towns and what they did.

    It isn’t so much the new, shiny glamorous buildings that have recently been erected; it is the older buildings, the ones which aren’t streamlined, dull and boxy or looking just the same as the others around them. We look for the buildings in-between the new ones, the ones still remaining. Those with ledges complete with nice patterns carved into them, false facades crowning their fronts, fancy brickwork, maybe even gargoyles. Its things such as these that set them apart from the newer creations. It often seems that an older, dilapidated building has more class as compared to a new sleek building that was planned complete with a tight financial bottom line in its plans.

    Driving past these older buildings we often spot painted signs on them. If we are lucky, a complete sign will be visible. A sign advertising a company that used to occupy the building or maybe a product such as candy, flour, chewing tobacco or a soft drink. Coca-Cola and Mail Pouch Tobacco signs can be seen all over the place! Some signs are so faded that you can only guess what they might have said while others appear as if they’d been painted yesterday. Many of these signs have been painted over with other signs, making them even harder to read!

    They are called “Ghost Signs” The men who painted them, called Wall Dogs or Barn Lizards used oil and lead based paints which helped the signs last longer. The men who painted them did it by hand, they were true artisans!

    Many of these signs are found near the centers of towns or in the commercial districts. They are also seen near railroad stations and places where newcomers might congregate. In some cases, a new building was built beside a sign, hiding it from view and also the damaging effects of sun and weather. When the building was demolished, the sign became visible again. There may be many you pass daily and never notice, they have become part of our background. Further out from the cities, in the country side, Mail Pouch tobacco signs decorate barns in over 20 states. Between 1891 and 1992 thousands of barns were painted with their ads. A pair of skilled men could do 2 barns in 12 hours!

    The signs may be for Banks, Savings and Loans, Tailors, Machine Shops, Shoe Stores, Drug Stores and Grocery shops. They advertised the things that the people needed. The signs are a part of their history! A lot of communities are still using these signs though now they are more as a tourist attraction as compared to a selling device. Some have restored older signs and some have painted new signs. To someone who looks for ghost signs, these aren’t quite the same as finding the older, original signs. They consider re-painting a sign sort of like re-touch a piece of artwork. These were done by masters of their craft and by re-touching it, you might be possibly damaging it. The new signs, while they look nice, aren’t quite as exciting as the originals!

    Here are a few of the signs we have come across in our travels. Most of them are original but there are a few that are reproductions. When you’re out on the road, keep an eye out for these old pieces of artwork. 

I don’t know about you, but I believe in ghosts! Keep watching for them, you’ll see them sooner than you think!

Reliving the Past

During the past couple weeks I have been limiting my travels a bit due to a pinched nerve in my neck. While the trips I've taken had been enjoyable, I paid for them the next day.

    My friend Frank had recently found a couple pictures from a trip we had taken down to West Virginia a while ago and shared them with me. We both remembered the trip but there were a couple questions we had about it.

    We weren’t sure of when we went and we also were puzzled about the pictures themselves, since they were taken on film. We thought that we had both switched over to digital cameras when we had taken this trip.

    We knew that we had been in West Virginia, that was one clue. We also remembered a geocache we had found while on it, one that had been hidden near a mine and a furnace of some type. Another clue was my Jeep. It sat on the edge of the picture, that fact helped narrow down the time period.

    I started looking through my pictures trying to find some from that day. My collection of photos is organized by the date they were taken, not by subject or location, not much help for this! I checked through my furnace pictures, organized by name. In these photos I found a file titled “Unknowns”. Inside there was a folder titled “Unknown Furnace or kiln in WV 100702”. Ah ha! Inside I found 15 pictures of the furnace I was thinking of. Frank was in some of them also. 

    My labeling system is rather easy. The date is listed by year, (10) month (07) and the by day (02). This would mean that these pictures had been taken on July 2, 2010, about 15 years ago. So, now we had a date.

    Another question was, where are the rest of the pictures taken that day? I went to my external hard drive but those photo files only went back 4-5 years. I needed to go further back. I dug into my older shots, saved on memory sticks, camera memories and CDs. Thankfully they are in order!

    On a memory stick I found a folder entitled “100702 Trip to WV with Frank” Inside this folder was 127 pictures taken that day. Success!

    It is always fun reliving the past, so let me take you along on a trip to West Virginia.

    Stepping back into the past…

Sunrise

    Frank and I always attempt to be on the road early. Should there be a nice sunrise, we would like to be able to catch it! A short distance past Friendsville, Maryland we pulled over on the side of the road to catch the sun coming up over the mountains. We were about a 100 miles into our trip, about two hours away from my home. It was 6:05 in the morning. We had left home at just the right time!

    Moving towards the west we entered West Virginia. One of the places we wanted to visit was a section of RR track that we called West Virginia’s Horseshoe Curve. Now whether anyone else calls it this I don’t know. I’m not sure where this even is other than in WV.  It gave us a spot to aim towards. 

The “Curve”

    We found the spot about an hour and a half after sunrise. We took some pictures, found an old cemetery and waited for a train to go by. After waiting for a while, we decided to call it quits and continue on. 

House exploration

    While exploring an old, deserted house, Frank realized that he had lost his hat. It had his fishing license on it so we headed back to the RR tracks to see if we could find it. There it was, sitting on the road. Just after he picked it up…we heard a train laboring up the hill.  

The train!

Continuing up the mountain

    We caught some nice pictures of it as it passed us. There was a reason that the hat was left behind! The story of the “lost hat” is a story we tell often.  We would have never gotten a picture of the train on the curve if it hadn’t been forgotten!

A cache

Outside the mine

Inside

Cache hidden inside a mill

The Virginia Furnace

    We did some caches as we continued south including one near a limestone mine and a kiln. We stopped at an old grist mill and an old iron furnace where other caches were hidden. There was lots of history that we visited on this trip!

The Grafton Rail Yard

Leaving the yard

    We later ended up in Grafton where we took pictures of the rail yard and the turntable that sits on the edge of Three Fork Creek. We headed back towards home after that. It was almost 7 when we got back to Frank’s house, truly a long trip!

Bob and Frank’s camera

    The pictures we found brought back some good memories and answered a couple questions. We found out the date, and on one of the last pictures, what camera Frank had been using, a Pentax ME Super. He got a digital camera soon after. (Now he is experimenting with film again I’m happy to say!)

    It is always fun reliving the past by looking at old pictures. They help us (especially ME!) remember. 

The Tour Test

 After a few days of extreme cold, both Ann Marie and I were dying to get out of the house. We needed to go outside and breathe some fresh air. The temperatures had moved up into the 30’s and we decided to take a ride.

    We left around 8 in the morning; the sun was just over the horizon but sadly it was hidden by thick clouds. This didn’t hamper our excitement, we had a trip to take.

    We were going north, through Butler. I had been writing about iron furnaces and had put together a “tour” that visited 4 different iron furnace sites. On this drive we would be checking to ensure my directions were correct. The last thing I would want to do is to get someone lost in the wilds of Pennsylvania!

    As is always the case, we made sure to have some high test coffee with us. We stocked up at the Vintage Coffeehouse located on the main drag of Butler. Friendly and outgoing people run it and to make it even better, their coffee and snacks are exceptional!

    Fueled up we continued heading north on rt.8 until we reached Harrisville. This was where my “tour” starts. We also did a few geocaches on the way to help the time and miles pass quicker. A few miles east of Harrisville, we came to the Marion Furnace.

    This furnace had been built about 175 years ago and had only produced iron for a little over ten years. This furnace sits in an idyllic spot, it’s one opening almost touches the small stream flowing past it. Ferns and bright green plants surround it making it look almost like a passageway into the underground. In the winter it looks quite different. The stream was frozen over; there was no cracking noise as I walked on it. Getting to the furnace was easier also because the thick snow helped avoid slips on the hillside and the weeds and vines were pushed down, not springing up at different heights just waiting to grab you.

    Our next stop, not counting the geocaches, was above the town of Emlenton. We pulled over on the side of the road and followed the deer trails into the woods. We passed where a barn and another building used to stand. Their foundations were made out of nice stone, possibly from the furnace situated below them.

Date unknown

    This was the Stapely Furnace. It just looks like a pile of rocks but there are many stone walls scattered all around it, if you look closely, you can see the curved brickwork of the inner furnace near the top. Built in 1835 this furnace wasn’t built beside a stream that could power a waterwheel, they used steam to power the bellows that helped raise the heat of the furnace. The outer stonework was missing from this furnace in 1966 leaving only the inner sections visible. The structure has collapsed further since then. When I was here last, the “jagger-bushes” were thick and by coming in the winter, I not only avoided getting caught in them but I didn’t lose any blood either!

    Back in the car we continued a short distance further and then turned onto a dirt road. This would lead us towards the west and to the Rockland Furnace.  The road was still covered with snow and ice but it had been cindered and in places, sanded. We were cautious going around bends and down hills but really had no problems at all.

    The road going DOWN to the furnace was passable and there was a nice wide spot to turn around and park. I made a short trek towards the furnace but the rocks and the path were icy and I didn’t want to risk a fall so I quickly returned to the car.

    We continued our trek, heading now towards Kennerdell. We stopped at the overlook before going down to cross over the Allegheny River and eventually return to rt.8. Here we turned to the north and the town of Franklin, the county seat of Venango County. It was well past lunchtime and our coffee cups were drained. 

    Franklin is a wonderful town, on the drive into it you pass a group of well kept Victorian style house, some very nicely painted and up kept. The town itself has wide sidewalks, no parking meters and a nice variety of stores and restaurants. We ate lunch at Benjamin’s Roadhouse across from a wide park and got some coffee from Iron Furnace Coffee. A fitting place to fuel up during our trip! The coffee was strong and had that wonderful coffee aroma and taste that you can only get in some shops.

    We stopped at a bookstore in Franklin, one of two on our trip but unfortunately, both were closed. We headed towards the south and home, but there was one more stop to make. About 7 miles out of town we pulled over on the side of the road and I climbed over a deer fence and worked my way down to Victory Run. The Victory Furnace sits across the stream at the bottom of the hill. I have been here many times and I always enjoy visiting the site.

    The Victory Furnace was built 1843 and probably only operated about 7 years. It may have been put back into blast for a couple years just before the Civil War but there aren’t any documents to prove it. The furnace sits on a shelf near the intersection of two streams. The snow hid some things from me such as a watercourse coming from the one stream and any slag. Supposedly there are the remains of a charcoal house on the hillside above it, but that will have to wait for another visit! The furnace is in fairly nice shape though it does have a crack running up its front and the lintels in its single opening are cracked. It is a nice, quiet spot to visit and reacquaint yourself with old iron history!

    We returned to Harrisville, the “tour” ended up being about 80 miles long.  There were only a couple small corrections that needed to be made! With only a couple short stops on our way back to Pittsburgh, we arrived home about 9 hours after we left. We put 180 miles on the car in the process. It was an exciting and fun way to spend a winter day!