PA Michaux State Forest - Meeting of the Pines Natural Area

On this dreary, overcast Sunday there was nobody else except Amos the Coonhound and me and a fat Black Bear on Brickers Clearing Trail. The Black Bear didn't stay long, however, as Amos gave it a bone shattering bay (I call it yelling) that sent the bear galloping up and over the ridge. It was all the excitement we needed for this otherwise quiet 4.5-mile out-and-back along the edge of Michaux State Forest. 

Company dance pavilion at Mont Alto

Our hike began at Mont Alto State Park opened in 1902, the state's oldest and one of the smallest state parks in Pennsylvania. The grand old dance pavilion still stands but little else remains of this destination-by-rail attraction that, in the late 1800s, drew thousands of visitors a day each summer. The park was built originally for the workers and their families of the Mont Alto Iron Furnace (1815 - 1893) of which little remains except for the heavily quarried landscape, now Meeting of the Pines Natural Area. The Penn State Mont Alto Campus occupies the site of the iron furnace, just a stone's throw from the little state park. Bricker's Clearing Trail is all that remains of the ore wagon road that delivered tons of iron ore a week to the furnace at the foot of the mountain.  

Mont Alto Iron Works, c.1880. 

In 1902 the Commonwealth purchased the dilapidated, shuttered iron furnace and the little company park. Another thousand acres of surrounding cut-over slash and deforested mountain was added to the purchase, including the 8 open pit quarries on the mountain that is now the Meeting of the Pines Natural Area. The Bricker Clearing Trail, the former ore wagon road that connected all of the quarries on the mountain, serves as the main trail into the preserve. 

Scrap of ore wagon 

Meeting of the Pines Natural Area was established as the only site where all five of Pennsylvania's pine species occur in the same place. I came to visit with the Table Mountain Pines (Pinus pungens), however, an endemic species of the Central Appalachian Mountain range which is near its northern extent in its home range at altitude from Georgia to Pennsylvania. They grow on the highest, rockiest, and most exposed outcrops in the  Blue Ridge Valley and Ridge Province and are a wonder to see. 

I had a while to hike before reaching the Table Mountain Pines at the very top of the mountain ridge  but the bear sighting and Amos' enthusiastic response to being growled at helped break up the long slow slog uphill. A post-industrial landscape of quarry pits and wagon roads is now completely reforested in hardwoods but the characteristic pit-and-pile topography will endure for centuries.

Pit-and-pile landscape of former quarry lands

Pit entrance

Old pit road

The freshly fallen leaves of Chestnut and White Oak, Maple, and White Pine needles softened the dips and edges of the excavated landscape and muted the contours of trenches and pit holes. Rain pattered down in little fits and starts while the wet lushness of the trail underfoot absorbed the sound of my boots as I went slipping and tripping up the rutted forest road. Two miles up and the hardwoods began to shift to the evergreen of the pines. White Pine became interspersed with Virginia Pine, while  Huckleberry and Blueberry became the dominate understory.

Eastern White Pine, Pinus strobus 

Slope, exposure, and soil chemistry determined what pine communities came next. The scrappy Pitch Pines and Virginia Pines grew stubbornly on steeper pitches where Mountain Laurel came into the picture and everything seemed to have twisty trunks and grappling limbs, hanging on the sloping walls of the bluff above me. Twisty Shortleaf Pine took over from the straight poled Virginia Pine while Mountain Laurel thickets grew dense beneath. Pitch Pine with its crooked tops and trunks grew doggedly in the scrappy clearings of boulder and talus as I neared the top. 

Virginia Pine, Pinus virginiana

Pairs and threes needle cluster of Shortleaf Pine, Pinus echinata

Eastern White Pine cones and five-needle clusters

I huffed and puffed and was glad for Amos to be pulling me up by his lead. I took a long breather at a charcoal hearth, a circular flat level carved out of the slope. The ground scuffed up beneath my boots still showed its rich black char soil. From this level perch I looked down the hillside and could see four different pine species all at once, Pitch, Virginia, Eastern White, and Shortleaf.  Now all I needed was one more push up the steep trail to add Table Mountain Pine to complete the Meeting of the Pines.

Pitch Pine, Pinus rigida  and Table Mountain Pine, Pinus pungens

The bluff almost glowed in the low light. The dark trunks of the pine stood stark against the cliff edge of white Antietam Quartzite while the golden yellow canopy of hardwoods laid like a carpet across the valley below.  Facing into the west wind were the Table Mountain Pines, twisted and contorted at the edge of the bluff, while somewhat straighter Pitch Pine grew on a level shelf of white rock that sloped down from the crest. I took a seat on a quartzite block and let this iconic Appalachian scene soak in. 

Antietam Quartzite 

Mouse-tailed cone of a Table Mountain Pine

Knobby little stems and short paired needles, Table Mountain Pine

Table Mountain Pine anchored tightly to the edge

Each Table Mountain Pine had its own version of twist and lean, each weirdly bending out into the air beyond the cliff edge as if they are both of sky and  mountain.  Buddhist teacher Thich Naht Hahn once wrote "Enlightenment is when a wave realizes it is the ocean," and maybe this is why I love the Table Mountain Pine, shaped by wind and ice, its roots claw down deep into clefts and cracks to draw sustenance from rock itself. It grows on thin or no soils, reaching deep into the interior spaces of the mountain's edge, grown of two worlds, rock and air, knitting them together as it arcs and twists into the light. I spent some time admiring these pines at the edge, so much time that Amos grew weary of it and begged to head back as a light rain began to fall. 

Blackhaw Viburnum 

Crossing West Antietam Creek at Mont Alto to a waltz

As we came down the mountain, I stopped to admire a Blackhaw Viburnum, which I felt like there should have been more of had there not been so many non-native and invasive Bush Honeysuckle crowding the edges of the road as we dropped in elevation. Maybe I was distracted by the clear melody of music coming from the dance pavilion across the Antietam Creek bridge to notice any others. As we approached the bridge leading back to the park, we could see a beautiful young couple - students maybe from the nearby Penn State campus? - waltzing under the dome. Amos was curious and watched from the bridge as the couple glided between the picnic tables, one-two-three, one-two-three... 

Notes:

DCNR Meeting of the Pines flyer (pdf) https://elibrary.dcnr.pa.gov/GetDocument?docId=3816730&DocName=FD01%20Michaux%20Meeting%20of%20Pines%20Natural%20Area%20factsheet.pdf 

DCNR Mont Alto State Park https://www.dcnr.pa.gov/StateParks/FindAPark/MontAltoStatePark/Pages/default.aspx