clockwise: another day on the black forest trail.

Three fifty-three in the afternoon.

We'd been following the Black Forest Trail in the same direction as the hands of the clock for hours and it wasn't until nearly 4 in the afternoon, by accident, that I happened to notice the time, a healthy indication that a day of days had been unfolding and continued to unfold.

It had been just shy of 3 years since I last went all the way round the BFT in a single push (http://thisbeesknees.blogspot.com/2013/05/erithizon-dorsatum-day-on-black-forest.html) but the many conversations had about the trail and my stumbly-bumbly circumnavigations since then made it feel far less than that.  So recent had that last visit continued to feel, I didn't fret much over the fact that I hadn't really revisited maps or my own report about that trip ahead of this one, as it all seemed very fresh and my navigational oh-I-know-where-I'm-going naivete remained undiminished.

photo courtesy of pahikes.com

To be fair, the trail and its frequent orange blazes are rather easy to follow, but that hadn't kept me from getting turned around more than once back in 2013 and head-down running and trudging has a knack for luring me off even the most well-marked track.  Forty-two+ miles and thousands of feet of gain (and loss) tend to produce some head-down periods even in the most ideal conditions.

counter-clockwise progresses from right to left on this profile

The course was the same as had been on the May day of my first thru-run, but the temperatures and the state of the trail were quite different. While this final weekend of February wasn't serving up the worst of winter, it was still quite cold and blustery and the trail, showing little sign of winter use, alternated frequently between leaf strewn, iced-over, muddy, and full blown underwater.

Other than going around this time in a non-traditional (for the BFT) clockwise direction, the most dramatic difference would be having company.

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A neurotic confession:

I often struggle to describe or even define in my own head my relationship with running and other runners.  Much of what I love about trail running is the solitude and the stepping away from, if only for minutes and hours at a time, the ever present presence of other people.  I'm not a loner in the most literal sense, but I've got my me-just-me streak and attending to it with time in the woods makes me that much more the people-person I am, genuinely, most of the time.  That said, many of my fondest on-trail moments have been spent with like-minded friends and those experiences are surely richer and more deeply textured because of having shared them.

Running group dynamics and their undefined tipping points are a source of anxiety for me and, once that anxiety surfaces, my fixating on it leads only to its amplification.  I don't want to be the one holding up a group anymore than I want to find myself, especially on long, challenging projects, pushing too hard, consciously or sub-consciously, and digging a physical hole that leads to a miserable experience or a total blow-up and possibly even an unfinished route.  Remove time limits and checkpoint cutoffs of organized races from the picture and, rest assured, I will get from point A to point B, but predicting the time (or how many times I throw up while getting there) is a bet not worth making.

Getting to the "finish" is one thing, but enjoying the getting there is something else altogether.  Including others means complicating logistics and requires time coordination. Politics, religion, differing personalities, even just simply not being on the same page are threats to the individual and the entire group being able to walk away with the feeling that whatever occurred really did happen together and the experience was better than it would have been on one's own.

It only takes one and you catch yourself wondering "what was with her (or him)?"

And it's not just about "them", it's also about me not wanting to be the "him" for anyone else in the group.  A read back over the preceding paragraphs makes me feel like maybe I really am a hermit-at-heart, but I don't believe I am.  As the years pass and I consciously and determinedly expend more energy getting "out there" to experience nature, the deeper grows the awareness of just how short our lives really are and how little is the actual time to spend recharging in the outdoors and what a terrible disappointment to find the time but have it be the exact opposite of a recharge.

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Three fifty three in the afternoon.

Three fifty-three in the afternoon and the only wasted time was whatever seconds I had spent beforehand fretting unnecessarily and irrationally (I know these people...I LIKE these people...I should consider myself blessed--I do--that anyone tolerates me!) over group dynamics.

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The alarm on my phone woke me around 6:00 AM after a cozy night of sleep in my makeshift back-of-the-car bedroom beneath the nocturnal watch of a moon shining brightly enough to glow through my closed eyelids.  I was sitting up, but still drowsily breakfasting from the comfort of my sleeping bag when Jeff and Ben pulled up alongside me on their way to the agreed upon rendezvous spot in the parking lot of the Hotel Manor in the tiny village of Slate Run. It was not even a quarter of a mile from where I'd parked for the night and we found Mary and Tom already waiting when we pulled into the lot a few minutes later.

Instead of immediately crossing Slate Run to start the loop as would have been the case in the counter-clockwise direction, we left the creek behind us and would reach it only at the very end of the run many, many hours later.  I grinned at the sight of the lovely new footbridge that eliminates the once unavoidable requisite soaking of that leg of the journey. While the cool of those waters was actually pleasant in May, it would have been less so to kick off a 20 degrees morning.

Off we went, the five of us, up the short stretch of road along Pine Creek and into the woods. I didn't "write" a trailhead log entry, so much as I "pressed" one into the paper with a dry tip that refused to summon frozen ink from the bowel's of a feeble pen.  Tom's assurances that rescuers could always make rubbings to determine that we'd been there convinced me it had been an effort well made.

After a nice gradual start for the first mile-and-a-half, the Black Forest Trail rose aggressively into one of the steepest climbs of the day, but fresh legs and early-in-the-day enthusiasm got us quickly to the first sweeping vista. It had been quite dark and I had been in get-this-over-with mode the last time I'd stood here and it was a treat to soak in the view and get the first visual indication of what we we'd set out to tackle.  The wind blew tiny flakes of snow that seemed to emanate from the forest itself and dance in the air around us with no threat of developing into anything more than a nice aesthetic touch to the sweeping landscape all around us.

Photo courtesy of Benjamin J Mazur

The remainder of that climb followed a knife edge ridge and stayed exposed before the trail topped out and ducked in under the canopy of trees as it does for much of its length.  Up high there was still some remnant snow but it was losing ground to melt, evaporation, and the permanent blanket of rocks, roots, and dead leaves beneath it.  Snow-turned-water was on the move wherever able and in other places pooled within perimeters it could not escape, leading to wet and muddy shoes and feet.  Northern and western aspects of the trail held a thin and not always evident coating of ice that made for second-guessing especially when the trail tilted away from sidehills or bent around contours with open-air exposures for unsuspecting footfalls.  This slowed progress but none of us seemed to mind amidst shared conversation and scenery ideal for time taken to enjoy it.

Within a few miles, we reached Little Slate Run, the site of my strange encounter with a salt-scavenging porcupine three years ago.  I'm not a big believer in spirit animals, but am convinced that porcupines are for me whatever the opposite of a spirit animal would be considered.  Either it's that or perhaps the porcupine very much is my spirit animal and I'm just denying it in hopes of discovering a more inspiring alternative.  Either way, there was no sign of my nemesis today and that was oddly reassuring.

Another solid climb and a few more miles brought us down to and across a rushing Naval Run. I remembered, painfully, having not drawn water here on my first visit in the frustrated haze of getting turned around and adding bonus miles.  Trying to push hard and make up for lost time had led to dehydration and exhaustion as punishment for my haste.  This same recollection, however, also reminded me, that water had been plentiful leading up to that point and considering how much more wet conditions were this time around, I was encouraged that staying hydrated wouldn't be of issue today.

The views up above Naval Run are some of the best on the entire trail but hard-earned coming clockwise, as there is one long, seemingly endless Pennsylvania "up" required to get there.  Topping out together, we were rewarded with the postcard-worthy southeasterly views of the Pine Creek Gorge far below.

We'd reached the point on the trail where the calamity of my solo run was now behind us and perhaps not surprisingly the surroundings became a little less familiar for me, as the vivid details of the stretches of trail where the wheels had come off had overshadowed the memories of mile-after-mile of relatively smooth sailing. Long stretches of the trail now felt brand new as if I was traversing them for the very first time.

Hours passed like minutes and despite slippery footing and the hard work of another sneaky long climb, I was stunned to find that we'd come more than 20 miles and arrived at Route 44 and the location of the Halfway House aid station (mile 51.8) on the Eastern States 100 course.  The location itself is rather nondescript, an otherwise un-noteworthy unpaved roadside pull off, but it was where Mary's car was parked and where she and Benjamin had planned all along to call it a day.  Mary produced from her car a thermos of wonderfully hot black tea and an array of muffins and homemade energy clumps or balls or whatever-they-were...and whatever-they-were was delicious!  Delicious and invigorating.

Photo courtesy of Benjamin J Mazur

Solitude shmolitude.  At this stage of the adventure, it was sad to see any member of the group go, but it was time for our now group of three to get moving so we bid farewell, crossed Route 44, and returned to the BFT.

As nice as it was to have gotten some warm beverage and food into our systems, the sitting around had let the cold sink a little deeper into our collective bones and each of us agreed that the chill had set in.  Unsure of whether or not the winds would soon pick up, as the weatherpersons had predicted, and what might become of the temperatures as the late day sun eventually fell away entirely, none of us was yet willing to dig into the extra layers that we were carrying as doing so would leave us without the psychological boost of additional warmth to turn to later.

Movement brought about healthier internal temperatures even as the footing became increasingly wet and muddy.  Our feet certainly weren't getting any warmer or any more dry, but above the ankles, we were moderately comfortable.  The three of us speculated over the location of a high, open, boggy section of the trail and had half convinced ourselves that we'd somehow already crossed it when the trees suddenly grew more sparse and the broad meadow we'd been waiting for appeared.  Sure enough, it was a shallow sea of muck that offered no alternative to simply gritting teeth and getting through and across it in as direct a fashion as possible.  In the end, it was only a couple of hundred yards across and didn't live up to the full foreboding of floundering wallow we'd feared.  Still, it only ensured that our feet remained anything but dry.

Not that it would have mattered much.

Soon thereafter we hit the spot on the trail where a "High Water" alternate route is offered for instances where storms or runoff have elevated the creek that the trail cuts back-and-forth across repeatedly (I lost count somewhere around 12 or 13 and didn't bother tallying the many more that came after) over the next couple of miles.  We'd come to do the entire Black Forest Trail, so there wasn't a moment's hesitation or any discussion, as we ignored the alternative.

While I hadn't bothered to track our time or mileage at any point in the day, we'd made steady progress, especially when the trail was more or less runnable.  Here, though, our pace ground to a halt as we sought out downed trees, rocks, narrow gaps, shallow pools, or other, all-things-being-relative, safe passages from one bank to the other.  We nearly considered just sticking to one side of the creek, but with no clear indication of exactly how many times the trail crossed before peeling away from the creek, it seemed unwise to stray far from the orange blazes.

At one point, Jeff even did an upside-down, hand-over-hand maneuver across one of the broader sections of creek that I was sure would end in failure.  It wasn't me who'd had the idea, however, but a far more competent adventurer and it was actually one of the only "dry" crossings that happened in that entire section.

We were losing light quickly and while getting wet was inevitable, mitigating the time spent shin-to-thigh deep seemed worth the sluggish yards-per-hour pace to which we'd dropped.  Finally and with the sun now off to shine on other hemispheres, we put the last of the high water behind us.

Pausing just long enough to dig out the headlamps that would from there on be our guides, we worked our way down into the beautiful Algerines Wild Area, one of my absolutely favorite sections of the trail and a spot high on my list of "creek stomping" destinations for me and my daughters.  The only downside to going clockwise was reaching this area in the darkness but even without the sun to illuminate it, this lush, pristine cut is lovely.

Jeff relayed a story about the derivation of the term "Algerines" as a reference to pirates who thieved timber from the lumber companies in the 1800's by stealing logs before they reached the mills, sawing off the sections that held the company's claiming brand, and replacing it with their own before selling the logs off for their own profits.  I had no idea of whether or not that was true and even Jeff acknowledged that it was a "so I was told" type of tale, but I have since dug up the following from William James McKnight's A Pioneer Outline History of Northwestern Pennsylvania: "Along the lower end of our creeks and on the Allegheny River there lived a class of people who caught and appropriated all the loose logs, shingles, boards, and timber they could find floating down the streams. These men were called by the early lumbermen Algerines, or pirates."

While this doesn't quite live up to the swashbuckling images I concocted in my head upon hearing Jeff's story, it does seem to lend credence and I quite like that this truly wild remnant place in Pennsylvania bears such a name.

On this night, the only pirate we ran into was, you guessed it, a porcupine, and it didn't stand its ground, departing the side of the trail in a hurry (by porcupine standards) as we passed by.

borrowed, respectfully, from the interwebs

Other than late miles on cold, tired legs, the only real remaining obstacle was the challenging climb up along Red Run leading to the final ridge that parallels Slate Run and eventually leads to the namesake village. Coming counter-clockwise, this descent, done on still energized legs, is a super fun, technical bomb.  The "trail" here consists mostly of boulder hopping and route-finding with the occasional visual confirmation of a nearby orange blaze to confirm that you haven't strayed too far off course.  On exhausted legs and with runoff-turned-to-ice tucked here or there to complicate footing, the clockwise ascent is pretty punishing. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as long a climb as I had remembered and, at this point in the day, going up felt a lot better than going down.

Topping out, we knew we were within 10 kilometers of the Hotel Manor parking lot and had nothing but rolling ridge top ahead of us until the final long descent to Slate Run.  With no ambient light to mask its glory, the clear sky rained down starlight and welcomed gawking at the Milky Way in all its splendor.  Were we not so depleted and the cold air not so capable of bringing on hypothermia to the unwary, we would have loved to perch up on the many rock shelves to spectate.

As had been the case all day long, stories continued to be swapped and laughter remained ever present as we power-hiked along. While the warmth of the car, a cold beer, and a hot meal were beckoning, these last miles weren't wrought with the desperate how-much-farther, how-MUCH-farther! that often accompanies the end of a long endeavor.

We joked of turning around at the cars to finish our out-and-back and even as we and our worn out knees clambered stiff-leggedly down the final quarter mile of hillside with the sparse lights of Slate Run in plain view, I couldn't help but think that going back out again didn't sound all that bad.

Next time, friends (if you'll have me).

old bloggers path.

Sugar Pie (Mamie, when formally introduced) was quite antsy as we crept along the old unpaved roads leading from Ralston deep into the Loyalsock State Forest.  The sun had set long ago and we had already ventured down one set of rural, wooded roads without the payoff of a run for the dog when two hours prior we had dropped Lily and Piper off at a Juniata cabin with their grandparents.  By now Sugar Pie had waited long enough and her four fidgety legs delivered her from one side of the backseat to the other as she surveyed the fringes of the shadowy forest outside the windows.

On the off chance that Suge could translate my slangy English to Dog, not a word was uttered to explain that we would not actually run a single step until morning or before we managed a few hours of in-the-car sleep.

We reached the end of our road (for the night) at the State Forest sign that calls out the former location of Masten, a long abandoned logging town that has been housing nothing but ghosts since 1941.  A single still-standing fireplace and its chimney were landmarks enough to confirm that we'd reached the site of a handful of DCNR primitive campsites situated right atop the crumbled foundations of the former mill and its once surrounding lodging.

This also meant that the traditional starting point of the 27+ mile Old Loggers Path stood somewhere nearby.  There, a few hours later, Sugar Pie would get her chance to run.  But first, ghosts or no ghosts, we needed to catch some shut eye.  Suge took me for a short walk so I could pee and then we crawled back into the car and were soon, fittingly, sawing logs.

From what little history I've been able to turn up, many, many logs were sawed during the roughly three decades during which Masten was founded and thrived before operations were abandoned in September of 1930.  The Civilian Conservation Corp established a camp on the site in 1933 but, less than 10 years later, the last family moved away, leaving Masten completely uninhabited.

In its heyday, the town, in addition to the mill and a tannery, consisted of over 90 homes, a boarding house, a hotel, a barbershop, a pool room and a dance hall.  Grainy photos reveal the large structures of the mill itself and the old Susquehanna and New York railroad station.

Those photographs are now completely disconnected from the the ongoing natural reclamation project that has reforested the hills and encroached upon beds and grades where rails once lay.  It is along those very contours that the Old Loggers Path wends its way and watchful eyes can find remnants of rails, old wooden ties and man-made this-or-that but these glimpses are brief and other than periodic crossings of logging and fire roads, the route feels worlds away from civilization, old or new.

It was in great anticipation of wandering out into that remote, abandoned landscape that Sugar Pie and I awoke.  Jeff Calvert, one of the organizers of our little group outing, was already up and tending an inviting fire.  The three of us made our introductions and the dog set about exploring while I heated up some coffee and oatmeal and pondered how much clothing was just enough for a cool, crisp day in the woods.

We were soon joined by the final three members of our party, Thomas McNerney (Jeff's co-organizer), David Walker and Roth Reason.  David and I had met a few times in passing, but didn't know each other well and I had never met Jeff, Tom or Roth.  As is so often the case amongst trail runners, that unfamiliarity didn't seem to matter one bit.  Within just a few moments, it was obvious that I was in good company and the day became just that much more full of promise. 

Our intent was to travel the entire misshapen loop of the OLP, traversing first north and then south by following the trail in a counter-clockwise fashion.  Being early November, a week after the clock fell back, and getting off to a not-all-that-earlybird 8:00 AM start, we would have roughly 9 hours of daylight to make the circumnavigation and we expected to be able to accomplish the task in less time than that.

The trail climbs immediately and Jeff set a healthy pace with the rest of us strung out behind him.  At the rear, Roth and I were busy producing steady streams of snot, he from a nasty cold that he was just getting over and me from one just settling in.  This wouldn't prove to be an issue for either of us, but, at the start of our long run, it left us both wondering how the day would go.

Sugar Pie just grunted from the couch behind me as I type this, I suspect to remind me that it was actually she who was out in front of the pack, but, be that as it may, it was Jeff who made sure we followed the proper orange blazes.  It was also Jeff, not Suge, who did the proper thing and recorded our presence in the trail register that greeted us within the first mile-and-a-half.

After topping out and running the ridgeline for a short time, we began dropping down toward Rock Run, one of the loveliest creeks I've stumbled upon in this state or any other with its in-cut banks, overhanging mountain laurel and deep, clear pools.  It was beside one of these large natural bowls that we made one of our first brief stops of the day to investigate the ways in which water had carved the spectacular ravine into which we'd descended.

The landscape was so serene and the lullaby of moving water so soothing, it took effort to pull ourselves away and get back to work.  And work lay just ahead, as one of the few really relentless climbs of the route began immediately as the trail hooked a hard left away from Rock Run and shot straight up the ridge.  For the first time, our running changed to hiking but we continued to make steady progress, soon reaching Yellow Dog Road and Tom's parked car/aid station.  We'd reached it too early in the morning to break open the cold beers stashed there, but it was nice to sneak some water without having to dip into the little water that we each were carrying.

It was there that I remembered reading about the Molnick brothers (though I couldn't recall their last name at the time) who somewhere in those hills had run a successful still as the lumbermen of Masten couldn't score any booze in the "dry" company town.  Apparently, business wasn't good enough to keep the Molnicks from brazenly stealing the Masten safe only to be captured and jailed for the offense shortly thereafter.  I suspect their restless spirits were out there somewhere and would probably have loved to have hoisted one of those beers to their thirsty lips.

Time for that later.  For we runners, if not the Molnicks.

The climb continued but soon leveled and revealed the first of several sweeping views of the gap cut by Rock Run looking out over the McIntyre Wild Area and, off to the northwest, the hidden-by-trees town of Ralston.

The trail continued to track across the ridgetop and soon began bending south.  There were many rocky outcrops that we all agreed were pleasantly devoid of rattlers thanks only to our not having attempted the route earlier in the season.  We were making good time and moving at a healthy pace across the slightly rolling terrain that topped the ridge.

At least we were before Sugar Pie, who had continued to pinball between the front of the line and sidetrack ventures to chase sounds and scents to which the less-sensitive bipeds were impervious, showed sudden signs of distress.  Though not one other member of the group witnessed the encounter or heard even a whimper from Mamie, she'd managed to jump her first porcupine and suffered the inevitable consequences.

Quills protruded from the end of her snout, her upper lip and, most disconcertingly, the roof of her mouth.  A full-fledged pitb...what's that, Mamie...oh, American Bulldog, she has a jaw not easily unclenched without her accord.  Initially confused and upset, the dog wouldn't allow us access to the inside of her mouth, but I held her in my lap and the other guys gathered round to help calm her.  She slowly let me get her jaws opened more widely so we could do our best to remove the quills lodged there.

While we did our best, I'm not sure we would have accomplished the job right there on the spot were it not for the two backpackers who happened upon us, the only people we actually saw all day if I'm not mistaken (earlier, we saw three packs leaning against a tree but spotted no backpackers to match to them), and kindly lent a Leatherman multi-tool to the affair.  

With all quills removed and the bleeding stopped, the wag of Sugar Pie's tail instantly returned and she was again ready to move.

I thought I was too, but the minutes spent cradling the dog (and stressing about her condition, perhaps) on the heels of our first 14 miles of running found my troublesome back acting up when we got back on our feet and headed on our way.  There were some wonderfully runnable downhills and I grit my teeth and hoped that I'd shake out the stiffness and my back would settle back down. That wishful thinking didn't prove out and by 17-18 miles into our day, I was laboring to keep up.

Sugar Pie seemed to sense that I was flagging and began halting in mid-trail to let me catch up which wouldn't have been as problematic if she hadn't first placed herself just ahead of whichever human was at the front of the line.  I tried to talk her into sticking with me as a duo of a caboose but as soon as I would catch up and offer a word of encouragement, she would again reclaim her spot as the engine of the train only to repeat the brake-and-wait process anew.

Thankfully, for both she and I, we were with a most patient and understanding group of fellow runners.

Reaching one of the most southern points on the trail, the Sharp Top Vista served up an incredible view of ridges stacked one upon the next, jostling for position in the lowering afternoon sun.  Had the entire trail been a bust, this view alone would have been worth the effort.

 It was beautiful, but whipping winds, taking advantage of all that open space, brought a biting cold that we'd been spared most of the day and persuaded us to head back to the shelter of the woods.

We settled into a mile of downhilling and I managed, stiffly, to run a bit of it before a sustained uphill reminded me that my back was very much on the fritz.  We reached a spur trail that led to another high overlook and I lay flat to regroup while David and Roth sought out the advertised rocky vantage point.  After a few minutes of rest, I decided to begin hiking to cover whatever distance I could before the group caught up again, as I knew it would, in hopes that this tact would keep us on track for our time goal.

The first teammate to catch me, not surprisingly, was Sugar Pie, who couldn't initially resist getting a peek at the overlook with David and Roth.  She came upon me at a dead sprint but then peeked back over her muscular shoulders to make sure that the others were coming too.  It seemed like a good opportunity to get a photo of each of them on the run.

Jeff

Roth

David

Tom

Putting the camera away, I tried to give chase but, with little more than 3 miles to go, I was likely going to be hiking the remainder of the Old Loggers Path.  I found the group, including Suge, waiting for me several hundred yards later, but I urged them all on their way comfortable in my ability to follow the blazes home before the sun set.

While I would have loved to still be running, walking those next few miles was nearly as invigorating.  The OLP had again dropped into one of the second growth wooded valleys that seem the signature of the Pennsylvania wilds.  The trail itself was smooth and forgiving and the yellows, oranges, reds and browns of late Fall were enthralling.  I had a bit of solitude to replay the wonderful shared moments of earlier in the day while enjoying some quiet, reflective time alone with my thoughts.  Not feeling the need to push the pace and being able to ease off the throttle, I could give my back a chance to relax.  Taking a little bit of edge off that pain reopened my eyes to the beauty of the landscape in which we had played all day long.

David, Roth and Sugar Pie dueled to the very end and I wasn't there to see who closed the Old Loggers loop first.  I happened upon Jeff and Tom with about a mile to go as they had paused at a hard left intersection to make sure that they were headed the right direction.  The three of us jogged to the trailhead from which we'd started some 7:43 minutes earlier.

Sugar Pie saw us coming and darted over to welcome us home.  According to my Suunto, Jeff, Tom, David, Roth and I had covered 27.6 miles and I wish we had outfitted Suge with her own GPS so we could see how many extra miles she had on us.  Whatever the final tally, she earned the crash that came after the adventure.

Before parting ways at Masten, we cracked open a couple of cold beers to wash down the effort of the day.  I knew my back would tighten up on the drive back to Juniata, but right then, right there, I felt fantastic, having made new friends and together enjoyed nearly every second of the day's available light on the move along another incredible Pennsylvania trail.

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I mulled over Masten, loving that it and all its history had "been" but also thrilled that it was no more.  The idea of the wild woods that we had just passed through being razed and the hills stripped bare was appalling but the testament of restoration that had occurred by man simply vacating the premises was truly inspiring.

This area of Pennsylvania is very much threatened again, this time by the encroachment of natural gas drilling.  It's weathered many a storm, at least one of them man-made, and here's hoping it isn't forced to withstand one more.  With one inspirational story already written, we don't need another.*

I tipped a beer toward the approaching darkness and wished the Molnicks well before heading back down the lonely road that had brought me and Sugar Pie there.

*If you're interested in joining the chorus of voices urging current PA Governor Tom Corbett to disallow further drilling in the Loyalsock State Forest, check out the following Penn Environment link:

Tell Gov. Corbett: Protect the Old Loggers Path

If you have greater interest in Masten or other abandonded settlements in the Keystone state check out Pennsylvania Ghost Towns: Uncovering the Hidden Past by Susan Hutchison Tassin. Most of what I've learned of Masten came directly from her book.