Clearing way for others

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.comEducation Reporter

LACKAWANNA STATE FOREST -- It is spring on Choke Creek Trail and the earth is particularly swampy, with spots made spongy by seeps, and streams crossing frequently under foot.

Some such moist obstacles have small logs set into the muck, creating a corduroy walkway. Other soggy stretches leave hikers no choice but to slog.

Up ahead on higher ground, Carl Griffin works with a brush whacker. Sporting an orange helmet, ear covers and a black-mesh face mask, he looks a bit like Jimmy Stewart playing an alien invader in a forgotten sci-fi B-movie, loping forward, swaying and pivoting as the long-handled tool whirs and slashes low brush.

“This is my fourth year with the Keystone Trails Association,” Griffin says during a break, though he’s been involved with a similar group in Allentown. He lives in Schnecksville, just northwest of there.

He usually only has time to help with one- or two-day “trail care” efforts to tone up a footpath. Thanks to the unfortunate luck of being laid off, he’s been here all week, helping a crew finish one new path on the Pinchot Trail system that skirts the state park’s boundaries, sleeping in the tents at the Manny Gordon picnic area and enjoying group meals. It’s a volunteer project that draws helpers from near and far, all with a penchant for fresh air, wildflowers and a break from civilization.

These people are the reason hikers don’t find themselves constantly scrambling over fallen trees. They turn a wall of rhododendron into a corridor. They put in stone steps if the incline gets steep, keep the ferns and scrub oak from brushing and dampening your shins with morning dew, and stop tree branches from stealing your hat. They are trail volunteers, working for little more than personal satisfaction … and meals.

“Last night we had spaghetti and meatballs,” Griffin says. “It was good. Of course, I have to say that,” he grins, “my wife’s the cook.”

Cooks have become a bit hard to get, he added. It’s a full-time job, drawing up a menu, replenishing supplies and typically preparing two camp meals and portable lunches each day. Last year the maintenance camp planned here was cut short because they couldn’t get a chef for the whole week. It was one reason Griffin’s wife, Anne, agreed to the gig.

Griffin is trimming his way up to John Bauer. Yes, he’s heard jokes about being related to fictional terrorist fighter Jack Bauer of TV’s “24.” Bauer – the real one – came here from Rose Valley, on the southwest outskirts of Philadelphia. It might sound like a long trip to clear brush, but “it’s a great opportunity for me,” he said. Knee problems have forced him to curtail more ambitious hiking efforts, and “it’s always nice to get outdoors.”

Griffin and Bauer work in a leapfrog pattern. They started a good bit apart. When one catches up to where the other began, he moves ahead, leaving another gap of uncut underbrush between them.

Farther back, Wayne Gross of Canadensis, Monroe County; Bob Mercando of Forty Fort; and Roseann Trolio of West Pittston work with loppers, paring away anything Griffin and Bauer missed or ignored – brush nudging too close to the foot path or tree branches too high for the brush whackers to safely reach.

The rocks, Mercando notes, are left alone. “They are for your hiking pleasure.”

Mercando admits he’s no forestry expert. But he’s no stranger to the woods. He recounts seeing a black bear on the trail once, not far from the picnic area he was approaching. “I figure he was looking for lunch.”

And we’ll pause on that note to remind forest newcomers: DO NOT FEED THE BEARS (or other wildlife). Besides the fact that an adult bear could rip you open like a pinata, the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources notes that feeding bears only makes them less fearful of humans and more aggressive. It’s dangerous for you and the bear.

Trolio concedes she is not one of those homeowners who love to dabble in the garden, and that this is only her second time doing trail work, but “I’d rather do this than be in the house cleaning.”

This crew will work until it meets another crew working in the opposite direction from an access point several miles up the trail (“like the transcontinental railroad,” Gross quipped. “Do we have a gold spike?”). That other team is currently clearing the path along the eponymous Choke Creek, a serene stream at the southwest tip of the Pinchot Trail System, which creates a nearly 20-mile loop if you walk the outer edges from the trail head west of Thornhurst on the Meadow Run/Thornhurst road.

At the other end of the state forest, near Painter Creek Trail, the crew spent the week completing the Watres Trail, a new side path giving access to more of the northern half of the state forest that protects the trail system from development.

Building that second trail actually took three years of visits, Dave Walp said as the second group took a break along the creek. With a gray beard and wry grin, Walp looks as if he came straight from an “old-school outdoorsman” casting call.

Making a new trail involves scouting it, marking it, clearing blown-down trees, then the shrubs and clutter, and finally “raking” the trail to try to discourage any seeds from taking hold before the foot traffic begins.

Besides a cooked meal and dry tent at the end of the day, the biggest reward might be the portable shower tent, complete with a propane tank fueling an instant water heater that provides a hot shower in the otherwise primitive, makeshift campground. The only drawback: The shower doesn’t have much pressure.

“I have trouble getting the soap out of my beard,” Walp says, chuckling.

During the break, Woody Loudenslager lounges on the sloping ground as if it were a beanbag in front of his TV. He jokes that his crew is “the A-team” in this operation, and regales with tales of volunteer trail work with the American Hiking Society. “Volunteer” is a relative term, because he has to pay his own transportation and a nominal fee that has climbed to more than $200 for some trips.

Of course, they are some trips. “I’ve been to Alaska twice, I’m going again soon,” Loudenslager says.

The Society offers what it dubs “volunteer vacations” working on spectacular hiking trails across the U.S. – including Alaska and Hawaii -- and the Virgin Islands.

“I just come out for the wild women,” Loudenslager jokes. “I’m the official tick checker, though no one ever takes me up on the offer.”

Break time ends, there’s another crew out there to meet, so they begin again, chain saw, brush whacker and loppers in hand, working through the sassafras and ferns, the scrub oak and Mountain Laurel, a pack of oversized trail elves dedicated to making the walk more comfortable for the hundreds of others who will never even know these crews were here.

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Mark Guydish, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7161