There’s a lot of space for social
distancing in a forest. I haven’t been in a forest lately, but I spent loads of
time as a child in the middle of the Allegheny National Forest, in
north-central Pennsylvania, at a place called Twin Lakes.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) created
the Twin Lakes Recreation Area in 1936. Some of the budget was diverted to another
project, so Twin Lakes only ever had one lake. The irony never occurred to me;
I just knew that it was a great place to be a kid in the summer.
My family camped at Twin Lakes every year
of my childhood. We even had a vehicle that was used only for camping. My parents’
green and white Volkswagen—"the bus”—was already old in the early 1960s
when I was a kid. My dad, a civil engineer, built a wooden cupboard that lived
in the bus. It housed a frying pan, a coffee pot, a bucket, tin coffee cups,
plates, and silverware. Mom would add staples like cans of beans, loaves of
bread, jars of peanut butter, and coffee.
We always started our two-week stay on a
weekday because there were empty camp sites during the week. On summer
weekends, every campsite was filled, and sometimes the Johnsons—the family who
managed the place for the Forest Service back then—would even allow people to
camp in an overflow area above the parking lot.
While Dad was at work, Mom drove my sister
and me, our camp shelf, our tent, lawn chairs, and beach towels, to Twin Lakes
to pick out our campsite. The bus broke down more than once on the nine-mile drive
from Kane, but we just waited, and eventually Dad would come along after his
workday at the papermill in Johnsonburg. (On some of our camping days, Dad had to
go to work, putting on his necktie before driving away from the morning
campfire.)
We headed to the upper camping loop that had
large, private campsites, barely distinguishable from the forest except for a
fire pit, a flattened spot from a previous tent and a picnic table that blended
in with the trees around it.
A large, square tarp over the picnic table
didn’t just keep leaves off the table, it kept us dry, because it always rained
at some point when we camped.
We pitched the tent, green canvas, fading
more each year. Dad had a tent heater, like a squat version of a Coleman
lantern. He’d light it inside the tent before bedtime, and we’d be toasty when
we all first crawled into our sleeping bags. But the mornings were cold, even
in August. Nothing like shivering on the way to the bathhouse at dawn, being
greeted by a couple of fat frogs just hanging out.
I loved listening to raindrops on the
tent. I loved our beach towels hanging on a rope tied between trees, flapping
in a breeze. I loved pollywogs. (Were those fat frogs really once that tiny?) Also
called tadpoles, they were easiest to catch in the shallow part of the lake
where the little kids played. In a cup, they looked like wiggling commas. I
loved the campfire, lighting it, stirring it, staring into it. I loved Little
Debbie oatmeal pies, Mom’s special treat. But mostly, I loved making mountain
pies: toasted sandwiches in a metal contraption with long handles. Set a piece
of bread on each metal circle, fill with pb&j (or cherry or blueberry pie
filling), squash it closed, then set it in the embers. Best toasted pb&j
ever.
Over the years, Mom brought some unlikely
things camping. One summer, she brought an easel, stretched canvases, and oil
paints. The only time I ever painted with oil paints was while sitting in the
middle of the forest. I imagine my painting was a bunch of green blobs, maybe
with a slash of reddish-purple or white like the trilliums growing with abandon
nearby.
Another unlikely choice for camping was one
of our cats. Mom brought the cat because it was the only one that ever came
running when she stood at our backdoor and tapped on its bowl with a spoon
signaling dinner time. Her signaling device didn’t work in the forest. Neither
my sister nor I can remember the cat’s name, but there was no cat after the
first day, maybe even after the first hour. I imagine it went on to live a
happy life, married a bobcat, and its progeny visit Twin Lakes every summer.
Our dog, Cindy, came with us one summer. She didn't run away. She was too lazy to run anywhere.
For all the years that we camped, the caretakers
of Twin Lakes were Phyllis and Vern Johnson, our neighbors in Kane. They had
four kids, and the kids worked along with their parents. They collected the
garbage. They helped serve food in the pavilion, including the world’s thinnest
hamburgers. They played cards and games with camper families who converged in
the pavilion in the evenings to sit by the blazing stone fireplace at picnic
tables made of whole logs.
If the mornings at Twin Lakes were cold,
the lake water was colder. Suck-in-your-breath cold. I learned how to swim in
that frigid water. I was maybe nine or ten when it was time to prove that I
could swim by making it out to the wooden dock anchored in the middle of the
lake and then swimming back. No boats were allowed on the lake, but there was a
rowboat for emergencies and, apparently, for swimming tests. Bill “Moose”
Johnson, a few years older than I, was given the task of rowing beside me. I
made it.
Sometimes we would see the same family a
couple of years in a row. One family from Georgia had a red-headed daughter my
age. Her name was Melanie Mink. We were pen pals for a couple of years. I
wonder where she is social distancing at this moment and if she ever thinks
about those off-the-grid summers.
I haven’t been to Twin Lakes for decades.
My husband is a city guy, and he uses a wheelchair. In the photos I’ve seen
lately on Facebook, the lake and the grounds look amazingly the same, but I’ve
learned that it’s taken a lot of work.
After the CCC building frenzy in the 1930s,
places like Twin Lakes became liabilities for the National Parks Service. Although
Twin Lakes remained open throughout the years under the authority of a site
management company, in 2018 it was no longer open for overnight camping, due at
least in part to a water issue--precipitated by a 1970s sewage system--deemed too
expensive to repair.
That’s when a (truly) grass roots group of
folks formed Friends of Twin Lakes ANF to “improve, beautify, sustain and
preserve Twin Lakes Recreation Area for current and future generations.” Boy
Scouts from Kane, Johnsonburg, and Ridgeway helped out by clearing brush and repairing
steps, picnic tables, and benches. The nonprofit has received grants and
donations, and one of many projects in the works will make the path around the
lake accessible to folks who use wheelchairs.
With the exception of possibly running
into a bear and her cubs, Twin Lakes might be one of the safest places to be
right now. But when the national forests are fully open again and life is back to normal, large numbers of folks will go
fishing at Twin Lakes (the lake is stocked with trout), and there are plans for
live music, story times, even yoga. The campsites will be full. It will be time
again to get up close to nature and to one another. Or time for a walk in the
forest, not because we have to keep our distance but just because we want to.
