The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Found on the north shore of the Monongahela River, opposite the community of Homestead, one will find the Duck Hollow Trail is laying in wait. I’ve spotted this trail – in the past and onboard a boat – and as I’m always looking for someplace new to go (luckily, everything in Pittsburgh is pretty much new to me) for one of my walks, decided to drive over on a recent afternoon and check this public facility out.

There are markers embedded in its path, indicating that this is part of the Three Rivers Heritage trail network of interconnected paths, but one is at a loss as far as finding the connection at its western terminus to the rest of the trail. On this particular day, which was a ‘short walk’ occasion of around five miles, one scuttled down about half of the trail.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s parking, so I positioned the Mobile Oppression Platform – pictured above – with a nice view of the Homestead Waterfront across the waters of the Monongahela. Why shouldn’t the MOP enjoy a nice view? On a related note… I really have to get the car washed sometime soon.

After donning my camera, bag and affixing a 28-105 zoom lens to the camera, one leaned into it and sallied forth.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

That’s the Homestead Grays Bridge pictured above, named for the famous ‘Negro League’ Baseball outfit, and that’s one whopper of a bridge – which opened in 1937. It’s 3,750 feet long with its approaches, connects the Squirrel Hill section on the north side of the river with the Borough of Homestead on the southern bank, all the while providing some 108 feet of clearance over the waters of the Monongahela. It’s also the first built example of an engineering feature called the Weichart Truss, something you can read up on along with all its nitty gritty, at this page at aisc.org.

The trail itself had more of those ‘high slopes and difficult to get to the water’ setups which I’ve described in previous posts along the Ohio River, but under the Homestead Grays Bridge I was able to scuttle right down to the shoreline. Again, I have to figure that this built up banks situation is about flood control during spring thaws.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Most of the trails in the Pittsburgh area that I’ve been visiting are ‘rail to trail’ implementations, where the footprint of a defunct right of way for a rail company that’s out of business or no longer needed have been converted over to civilian usage. These rail lines used to service the steel mills which infested these shores, and in the case of Homestead, served the largest steel mill on the planet. These rights of way have seen their tracks pulled up and have been surfaced with either asphalt or crushed limestone, but occasionally patches of soil are encountered along them. The rail grading standard of one foot in elevation per every hundred feet horizontally makes them a fairly easy walk or bike ride, and they’re very well used by surrounding communities.

For one such as myself, this sort of grading allows me to vary my walking speed consciously and get to optimum ‘heart beats per minute’ levels which provide a curative to the various health issues I enjoy. Advice from the team of doctors has always revolved around this concept, which boils down to ‘slow and steady wins the race.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Somehow, I always manage to navigate myself to a spot where I’m happily standing in front of an open sewer. This one looks like a storm sewer, to me. Presumptively it’s draining off of the bridge’s vehicle lanes above, but there are also communities and residential developments lining the shoreline here so it might be performing ‘neighborhood’ based combined sewer duty as well.

I kept an eye out for homeless encampments and signs of morbid habitation along the shoreline when I’m shlepping along, but didn’t observe any signs of homeless villages nor vagabonds. I literally have zero fear regarding these encampments, instead I want to be respectful to folks who are already living through quite a rough time.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One continued along his way, with a predetermined ‘turnaround point’ in mind that’s nearby a small railyard. If you’re curious about locale, this shot was gathered roughly here. The wooded sides of the trails were pretty typical for the region. Lots of birds, signs and tracks of nocturnal mammalian presence (raccoons etc.), and while scuttling along I encountered a few humans who were riding bikes, walking dogs, and or jogging or just walking along.

It’s nice, and I stuck my headphones into the ear holes to listen to one of the audiobooks I keep on my phone. This time around it was a dramatization of H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘Shadow over Innsmouth.’

More tomorrow.

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