The Northern Hardwood Forest at Pennsylvania’s Wolf Creek Narrows Natural Area

Wolf Creek Narrows Natural Area, owned and managed by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy (WPC), is located in northwestern Butler County, Pennsylvania, just 30 minutes from where my son and his family reside north of Pittsburgh. Matt, his dog Oakley, and I circuited the 2.35-mile trail on the morning of September 22, the first day of autumn. I focus this photo essay on the exquisite old-growth northern hardwood forest.

My heart soared at the prospect of returning to an ecosystem shaped by a continental ice sheet just 13 millennia ago. The absolute freshness and newness stimulate wild conjecture and total admiration for Nature’s rapid recovery from thousands of feet of ice.

The Western PA Conservancy provided an online description:

Wolf Creek Narrows Natural Area is particularly known for its spectacular display of spring wildflowers. An active floodplain, mature northern hardwood forest, and scenic cliffs make this property one of WPC’s most popular. It is believed that the steep, narrow gorge of Wolf Creek Narrows originally formed when the ceiling of an ice-age cave eroded and collapsed due to runoff from the melting glacier. The site now consists of a high-quality stream meandering through towering 50-foot cliffs. These natural processes, including annual flooding and ice scouring, as well as limited human activities, have resulted in diverse natural communities.

We have lots of karst topography and abundant caves in my present home range of northern Alabama, but nothing so exciting as ice-age caves and ice scouring!

The meadow trail below led into the deep forest.

 

Okay, I’ve opened the portal to Wolf Creek Narrows. Now comes the tough part. How do I package 31 photos and two brief videos into a Post digestible within 15-minutes? Species resident to the Allegheny Hardwood forests of my 1984-85 NW PA and SW NY PhD field research welcomed me with warm and comforting embrace.

 

I’ve found that brief videos tell a richer tale than still photographs and written narrative. I recorded this 58-second video within the mixed forest. I hope that I’ve stimulated your interest in this special place.

 

The Narrows and Wolf Creek lie beyond the forest edge.

 

Matt stands six-feet tall, behind a 30-inch diameter American beech. The red oak beyond the beech (at left) is nearly 40-inches in diameter.

 

You don’t need my narrative to appreciate the beauty, magic, inspiration, and awe of this park-like northern hardwood wonderland.

 

Take a look heavenward into this cathedral forest canopy.

 

I love the deep shade and open understory far below.

 

I frequently lead or co-lead organized woodland Nature excursions (saunters) in parks, preserves, refuges, and sanctuaries near my Madison, Alabama home. Like John Muir, I prefer sauntering in the woods…abhoring hurrying through the forest. I noticed that Oakley takes the same approach, sniffing and scenting her way within the woods, reading the signs, never missing an olfactory clue. My iPhone camera substitutes for scenting. So much of what I seek in Nature lies hidden in plain sight. I believe my own joy in discovery matches Oakley’s!

 

I can’t imagine Oakley concerned with steps, miles, time elapsed, or other metrics. For her, each sniff tells a tale. My objective is to learn from every Nature venture, intent upon constructing a meaningful tale in form of a photo essay like this one.

In fact, my retirement mission, practiced in these Posts, is to: Employ writing (and photography) to educate, inspire, and enable readers and viewers to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

I keep my nose fine-tuned for sniffing tree form oddities and curiosities. A living, deeply decayed, cankered intermediate canopy sugar maple forced me to snap photographs of both the canker and the brown mushrooms above. How long ago did the fungus (or fungi) infect the sugar maple? How long will the tree survive? Death is a big part of life in the forest, whether west-central Pennsylvania or Alabama’s Tennessee River Valley.

 

Again, so much in Nature lies hidden in plain sight. Oakley discovered untold olfactory treasures. Most un-attuned hikers would not have seen, understood, and appreciated the visual treasures I encountered in our brief morning excursion. Allow me now to superficially catalog the more notable main canopy tree species.

 

Diverse Species Introductions

 

With little need for extensive narrative, I offer photos expressing the forest’s dominant upper canopy tree species. Yellow poplar reigns supreme at Wolf Creek Narrows, just as the species rules the high canopy at my favorite deep forest stand along the Wells Memorial Trail in Alabama’s Monte Sano State Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I recorded this 59-second video of the forest’s mixed species.

 

I conducted my doctoral field research in the Allegheny Hardwood forests within 80 miles of Wolf Creek…forests dominated by black cherry.  I revere the species for its beautiful high grade furniture wood, superior height growth, straight form, and handsome bark and foliage. The white-trail-marked black cherry (image below right) delivered a message meant for me. The species marked my professional development re-route. I worked 12 years after earning my Forestry BS for a southern paper and allied products manufacturing company that relied heavily on loblolly pine, a utility species here in the Southeast. Black cherry is anything but a utility species. It’s the filet mignon of furniture grade timber. Black cherry served as the North Star for my second career launch. The big white-blazed cherry signaled that the species remains a major emblem and totem for my path well into retirement. Among my fellow Union Camp foresters, I chose the path less traveled…one lined by black cherry trees (the other edged by loblolly pine) leading to a PhD and 35 years at nine universities.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

(Robert Frost)

 

American beech and yellow birch reminded me of my love for northern hardwood forests.

 

Basswood (tree and leaves) also ranges into northern Alabama, but the entire mixed species forest package at Wolf Creek represents a special orchestration that strokes my psyche and lifts my entire body, heart, mind, soul, and spirit. The assemblage reached me as Art Garfunkel belting his full-bodied Bridge Over Troubled Waters!

 

Black walnut tree and nut.

 

 

Bitternut hickory.

 

And nut.

 

Cucumber tree and leaf.

 

Red oak, deep memories, and an older gent feeling young-at-heart experiencing a symbolic step into his past…at home in a place he’d never been before.

 

Forests like this netted me decades ago, never completely allowing release. I think of Robert Service’s The Spell of the Yukon:

The freshness, the freedom, the farness–

O God! how I’m stuck on it all.

There’s a land–oh, it beckons and beckons,

And I want to go back–and I will.

It’s the great, big, broad land ‘way up yonder,

It’s the forest where silence has lease;

It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

Some of me remains in the Far Northland of Alaska, where we lived 2004-08. Service nailed the place and my sentiment. In similar fashion, vestiges of these magnificent northern hardwood forests habituate my psyche. I want to go back–and I will, if only to the nearby Wells Memorial Trail, a suitable southern version of a rich upland forest.

 

Thoughts and Reflections

 

I offer these observations:

• The rich northern hardwood forest is an orchestral composition, a natural Bridge Over Troubled Waters. (Steve Jones)
• Black Cherry is a trail marker species, both a literal guide through the Wolf Creek Narrows forest…and a career/life path symbol and guidepost for me. (Steve Jones)
• Mine is a story of passion for place and everyday Nature. (Steve Jones)

Inhale and absorb Nature’s elixir. May Nature Inspire, Inform, and Reward you!

If only more of us viewed our precious environment through the filters I employ. If only my mission and vision could be multiplied untold orders of magnitude:

Mission: Employ writing and speaking to educate, inspire, and enable readers and listeners to understand, appreciate, and enjoy Nature… and accept and practice Earth Stewardship.

Vision:

• People of all ages will pay greater attention to and engage more regularly with Nature… and will accept and practice informed and responsible Earth Stewardship.
• They will see their relationship to our natural world with new eyes… and will understand more clearly their Earth home.

Tagline/Motto: Steve (Great Blue Heron) encourages and seeks a better tomorrow through Nature-Inspired Living!

 

Steve’s Four Books

 

I wrote my books Nature Based Leadership (2016), Nature-Inspired Learning and Leading (2017), Weaned Seals and Snowy Summits: Stories of Passion for Place and Everyday Nature (2019; co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Wilhoit), and Dutton Land & Cattle: A Land Legacy Story (2023) to encourage all citizens to recognize and appreciate that every lesson for living, learning, serving, and leading is either written indelibly in or is powerfully inspired by Nature. All four of my books present compilations of personal experiences expressing my deep passion for Nature. All four books offer observations and reflections on my relationship with the natural world… and the broader implications for society. Order any from your local indie bookstore, or find them on IndieBound or other online sources such as Amazon and LifeRich.

I began writing books and Posts for several reasons:

• I love hiking and exploring Nature
• I see images I want to (and do) capture with my trusty iPhone camera
• I enjoy explaining those images — an educator at heart
• I don’t play golf!
• I do love writing — it’s the hobby I never needed when my career consumed me
• Judy suggested my writing is in large measure my legacy to our two kids, our five grandkids, and all the unborn generations beyond
• And finally, perhaps my books and Blogs could reach beyond family and touch a few other lives… sow some seeds for the future