Thursday, May 22, 2025

PA Clear Shade Wild Area/ JST - Gallitzin State Forest


High up on the plateau of the Allegheny Front in the beautiful Gallitzin State Forest, Amos and I did a muck hike on a portion of the John Saylor Trail (JST) of about 7 miles. What another spectacular bog walk but in a region much less visited than the Black Moshannon State Park Great Bog we walked last week. 

At 2,700 feet, this area is the southern-most location in PA to see a true northern hardwood forest and northern bog complex. With recent heavy rains and some flooding on the Clear Shade Creek, the almost 3,000 acre wild area embedded within the 27,000 acre state forest was sopping wet and so much fun to explore.


Northern Pitcher Plant


After parking at the Fishermen's Access on the gravel and dirt Shade Road, we climbed down the steep timber steps down, down, down to Shade Creek which had just settled back into its banks at the marshy edges of the forest. The trail was deep in tannin-stained water until we got to a washed over section of Hemlock grove and the cable bridge which was freshly slick with mud and clogged with debris. Amos gave the bridge a hard nope so we changed our route to the main track of the JST. 



Yesterday's forest floor flood scrubbing!

Nope!


The flooded trail gave the impression we were hiking through an ancient, mystical age-old bogs that had been here since Wooly Mammoths roamed the tundra savanna. But not so! These ancient-looking northern woods and wetlands began growing over clear cut, deforested and heavy fire-scarred land, a time when a lot of Pennsylvania was a treeless landscape of slash and tailings from the late 1800s through 1920.  

In 1916 the Pennsylvania Forestry Commission took possession of this destroyed landscape and allowed the forest the space and time to restore itself with a lot of help in regulatory and ecological stewardship. Named for beloved 19th century Catholic priest Fr. Dimitri Gallitzin, "Apostle of the Alleghenies," the forest began to rebuild, seeming to echo his frequent mission homilies on resurrection and rebirth. A forest service worker who I met while walking the forest road back to the truck recalled that his grandmother had an icon of Fr. Gallitzin on her dining room wall when he was growing up near Pavia in the 1960s. "I'd like to know more about him," he said. "So would I!" I replied.  


A good old-fashioned muck trail!


Solid ground!

We crossed a series of boardwalks that crossed domed bogs of deep, bouncy moss mounded high with clumps of Northern Pitcher Plants. Painted Trilliums ringed the bogs on the higher ground, always under or near Hemlock surrounded by beds of Canada Mayflower. So much water was moving under the moss, each boardwalk we crossed caused the bog beneath to wiggle and burble. Amos stepped off one boardwalk on to what he thought was solid ground but he broke through and sank up to his knees! Quick! Back to the boardwalk! He was quite proud of himself. 


Staghorn Lycopodium


Heath wetland with fern hummocks

Marshy edge of the Clear Shade Creek

Balsam Fir and Larch ring a bog

Another boardwalk! Oh boy!



The land-use history of this landscape is industrial:  a logging railroad bed serves section of the JST, a large holding pond contained by a splash dam once submerged much of this section of forest, landings for logs and the roads to support trucks and horse teams cross cross the hills.  Rush beds encircled numerous depression bogs formed in the hollows of  long-gone stump pits. I watched tadpoles wiggle away from Eastern Spotted Salamanders that tried to gobble them up in one pool. A Northern Water Snake sat half hidden in the halo of rushes next to another. 


Jack-in-the-Pulpit

Bladder Rush

 Depression bog 

Railroad bed


Stacks of sandstone and siltstone appeared indicating the predominate geology of the Allegheny Mountains and the Allegheny Front. This bedrock formed from the bottoms of ancient inland seas and large river deltas.  Migratory birds, arriving from their wintering grounds in the Southern Hemisphere were everywhere - Chestnut-Sided Warblers, Black-Throated Green Warblers, Black-Throated Blue Warblers, Yellow Warblers, Yellow-Rump Warblers, Black and White Warblers, Bay-Breasted Warblers - so many warblers! They moved like water flowing through the canopy, some singing, some silent, an enormous wave of migratory activity which continued throughout morning. 


Sandstone formed from sediments of ancient inland seas


The immensity of this once destroyed forest turned wilderness was stunning. It actually slowed me down. I couldn't walk at more than a monk's pace (I know a little something about how monks walk) as my senses filled up with the miracle that is the Clear Shade Wild Area. These kinds of landscapes are survivors from an age of complete industrial degradation and have returned as great swaths of wilderness and varied ecosystems. But these places didn't come back on their own - they had a lot of help. 



Century-old Black Cherry


From the late 1890s through the 1920s Pennsylvania conservation leaders across the Commonwealth, especially in forestry, rallied behind new concepts of ecology and the science of ecological restoration as they looked despairingly at what had happened to our state. The most vocal and active of those early conservationists was Dr. Joseph Rothrock. "Sixty years ago, I walked from Clearfield to St Mary's, thence to Smethport - 60 miles - most of the way through glorious white-pine-and-hemlock forests. Now (in 1915) those forests are gone. I wish I could devote a week exclusively to photography along the banks of the Clarion (River). Mile after mile is simply laid waste. I could not 'abomination and desolation' out of my mind."  See: "Father of Pennsylvania Forestry" 


Rothrock on an overlook in Michaux State Forest (1917)

Rothrock's activism to conserve Pennsylvania forests resulted in dozens of newly established restoration projects for some of the state's most heavily damaged landscapes. One of those sites, the Gallitzin State Forest region is today as wild as it gets and if I weren't an environmental historian with an eye for signs of human impacts on the land, I would have guessed this place a forest primeval, as pristine and as perfect as a northern woodland one could find. But knowing that it had been the scene of incredible destruction and ecosystem loss, made this hike even more awesome. 


Golden Ragwort

Being the southern-most northern woodlands in Pennsylvania, however, means that Gallitzin State Forest is bearing a heavy burden when it comes to experiencing the greatest human impact of all - environmental change brought about on a warming planet. Some changes include cycles of long-term drought coupled with an increase in the number of annual severe weather events over the Mid-Atlantic region that play out as periods of torrential rains, high wind events, and the gradual creep of range expansions due to warming winters. 

On the horizon for this forest is the displacement of northern habitats and species with southern species range expansions, especially among tree species. Finding a Southern Bald Cypress living happily in a northern bog environment rather startled me as we walked the JST out to a forest road through a complex of lush, wet meadows. I stood facing a stand of Bald Cypress then turned around to see an Northwoods assemblage of White Pine, Hemlock, Birch. I was standing literally at the edge of environmental transition  while leaning on the John P Saylor Trail sign. 




I asked the forest worker later about the Bald Cypress. "It's been a mystery as to how this little stand started. To date, no one has found evidence of humans planting them so seeds must have been brought in from the swamps of Virginia or Southern Maryland on the feathers or in defecations of migrating birds. No matter, they are the leading edge of what's to come I suppose."  The migratory birds were still pouring through the canopy as we talked so I could imagine that a seed eater like a grosbeak or other finch could have dropped viable seed on a day like today on their way north. But how did we encounter that forest worker even to ask that question?


Southern Bald Cypress (?!)

 
As Amos and I left the JST to make the road walk back to the truck (2 miles) a Blackburnian Warbler landed directly in front of us. It did a little hop in the loose, warm dirt. Its orange and black head bobbed here and there. I realized it had found some big juicy ants and was scarfing them up like me with a bag of M&Ms. The last time I'd seen a Blackburnian was in the Shenandoah Mountains a few years ago and I was holding back a little jig until it flitted away into the canopy. So then we danced, me and the dog, down the road until embarrassingly the forestry truck rounded the bend and the forest worker stopped to ask if I was okay. "Tell me about those Bald Cypress," I said as if he hadn't seen me doing my bird dance. 


Painted Trillium

Cinnamon Fern

Blue Violet

Common Columbine (European)

Common Blue Violet


With almost 3,000 wild acres to explore our little day hike had me wanting more, so I know I will be back. The greenish-yellow highlight on the map below shows our alternative loop on the JST after Amos refused to cross the cable bridge to the south loop. 





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