Mirror mirror, on the floor
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When Pittsburgh’s North Park was created, a waterway called Old Pine Creek fed into a marsh hereabouts. The Great Depression era engineers got busy, and created the largest manmade lake in the State of Pennsylvania with the help of hundreds of Work Projects Administration laborers. 75 acres in size, with trails around it, Marshall Lake (aka North Park Lake) is annually stocked with game fish, and there’s at least a couple of Bald Eagles which form the top of the littoral food chain here. The licensed citizenry can fish here, as it’s considered public land.
These shots are from about 6:30 in the morning, and there were already hundreds of people jogging on the trails, and I also spotted two fishermen casting their lines.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a warm morning, with little to no wind, so the lake itself was pretty much a perfect mirror. I set up the tripod and got a few shots of the rather bucolic scene. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to see here at North Park, which is some 3,300 acres in size. There was a giant Pterodactyl sized Heron flying around, but I didn’t get a shot worth mentioning of it.
The camera was set up for landscape style shots. Lately, I’ve been considering bringing along a second camera body geared up for ‘catch as catch can’ shots, for use when the main camera body is purposed towards and busy with these sort of photos.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The lake is shaped somewhat like a boomerang. The water flows out to a spillway on the eastern shore, which maintains its level. That’s where I was heading next, because ‘infrastructure.’
The spillway feeds into a waterway called Pine Creek, which is ultimately a tributary of the Allegheny River, joining its parent at the Borough of Etna section of the Pittsburgh Metro several miles distant.
Back tomorrow with a very cool chunk of infrastructure!
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Trees and… y’know… Da Effin Woods
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These photos aren’t actually from ‘the effin woods.’ To me, this is woods, as I’m from Brooklyn and spent a not insignificant portion of my adult life wandering around the concrete devastations of Newtown Creek. This location is instead within the borders of North Park here in Pittsburgh, so by definition – thereby – not ‘woods.’
Actual wilderness, with critters and hunters and an opportunity for your body to never be found, that’s about 50 miles from here. Sasquatch sightings are apparently a big thing thereabouts.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned yesterday, one found himself drawn to this side of the Pittsburgh Metro by news of there being a ‘Fountain of Youth’ on the property. As is my habit, I did a bit of ‘research’ on Google maps to find a few other interesting things to point the camera at while in the neighborhood. I try to maximize my efforts.
Currently, I’m planning a day trip for the end of this week to the Panhandle of Western Maryland which sits along the border to West Virginia. That’s an 86 mile/2 hour drive, as opposed to the 30 minute journey to North Park, so the researching I’m doing for that one is a bit more in depth regarding my itinerary.
One has also bookmarked a few sites along the southeastern route from Pittsburgh I’ll be traveling along, including stopping off at a place called Dunbar’s Knob, where a 60 foot tall crucifix is on public display. Said monument is dubbed ‘The Great Cross of Christ.’ Should make for an interesting set of photos, I reckon, if the skies are right.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just like the trip to North Park, I plan on being in the car no later than about 5:30 a.m., in order to take advantage of the utility of angled daylight, and won’t be returning to HQ until well after dark. The town I’m heading for is in Maryland, and is a historically important one, with several points of interest. You’ll be seeing that series of posts in a few weeks. Additionally, I’ve got a series of wooded spots which I plan on visiting as soon as the leaves start turning color. I’ve heard the term ‘the burning hills of Pennsylvania’ is used during the autumn hereabouts, due to all the yellow and orange.
More from North Park tomorrow…
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Da Fowntan a Ute’s
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Checks me out yo, I’m’s like a reg’lar Ponce De Leon wit dis… Bruh!
So, I received the good news that the Fountain of Youth is actually found right here in Pittsburgh, rather than in Florida where the legends embraced by the Imperial Spaniards indicated it as being. Seriously, how could I not wake up at 5:30 in the morning and drive there, after having just heard about it’s existence?
After piloting the Mobile Oppression platform onto the appropriate land mass just north of Pittsburgh proper, and parking the car in an informally designated area along the side of a road, I walked down a muddy slope and then across a smelly stream, and then up a muddier slope. There were many, many angry bugs forming buzzing clouds.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The past is always predicate, so… Pittsburgh has nine municipal parks which together occupy a land mass of some 12,000 acres. North Park accounts for some 3,075 acres of that total, and it’s the largest of the nine. North Park dates back to 1927 when the County Commissioners of Allegheny County, in an effort led by a fellow named E.V. Babcock, voted to create a North and a South Park. They hired an landscape architect named Paul B. Riis to design North Park. The place opened to the public in 1931. ‘New Deal’ Works Projects Administration workers completed several additions to the place throughout the 1930’s, including the ‘Fountain of Youth’ spring house pictured in today’s post.
Click the following link for a cogent governmental description of the park’s history, here for a people’s history of North Park at the fantastic uncoveringpa.com, and for a fantastic historical write up by a high school student(!) check out “The Uproar.”
It wasn’t quite daytime yet when I arrived, and the scene was shadowed by the tree canopy anyway. One deployed the tripod and got busy… ruins to shoot, ruins.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I added the usage of my little but super bright Nitecore flashlight into the recipe for these shots for some fill light, but what you’re looking at above is a mere portal. Within the pictured facade is an interior room, once whose wall sports a metal framed aperture built into it. Beyond this rectangular framing is the famous, and often mentioned, fountain of youth itself.
Gingerly, one approached the edifice, in the awestruck manner of Moses moving toward the bush that burnt. Here I am, said I.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Within… well, first I should mention that when I stepped inside the chamber and turned on the flashlight, the walls were positively crawling with enormous insects. I’m talking “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” sized creepy crawly bugs. Big black eyes, and large enough that you could hear their feet scratching along the wet rock while they retreated to their hidey holes… and finally… one gazed with palpitant enthusiasm at the aperture leading to the fountain itself.
Apparently, Allegheny County advises against sampling the waters of the Fountain of Youth as they are somewhat contaminated with sewage, and chemical fertilizers which leach into the ground water from a nearby golf course.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s it, right there, the fountain/spring. Kind of underwhelming, I must say, but as mentioned above – it’s a ruin. Regardless, I can tell you that my gray hair had suddenly returned to the luscious dark brown coloration of my youth, and that my tonsils seemed to have autonomously regrown themselves. That process reversed itself on the drive home, and I’ve since returned to looking like a shocking caricature of that younger fellow. It must have been the fountain’s vapors which triggered the temporary condition, no doubt due to the miasmic fumes one would expect in such a place. Feeling satisfied with what I had gathered, I headed back to the car.
Luckily, a humble narrator had done no small amount of planning before leaving HQ, and another interesting site in North Park awaited.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In accordance with the title and first line of this post, I will resume the attempt to phonetically translate my native Brooklyn Brogue into written English for the sum up to my tale:
Sose, I’s drove overs ta ‘effin Nord Pahk in Piddsboig causin I hoid that dey gots one a dem Fowntan a Ute’s type tings ovah dere. I seens a buncha bugs and shit, and somebody coulda – y’know – easily fell on his ass and cracked his melon opens cause dere’s no sets a stairs or sidewahk or nuttin, and youse gots to walk in the effin doit and a crosses a friggin streams which gets your kicks all effin wets.
Back’s tommorahs wit more of this kinda bull – at guess what – your effin Newtown Pentacle, like an icehole.
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From West End Overlook
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One has mentioned, and offered views from, Pittsburgh’s West End Overlook Park in the past. This spot is about a 15 minute long and quite easily executed drive from HQ in the nearby Borough of Dormont, and the overlook provides commanding views of the city center. You’re actually executing about a half mile of change in altitude while driving through three and change miles horizontally – it’s a thousand feet down to the level of the river from Dormont, and then around a thousand feet up through the neighborhoods of West End and Elliot. Proximity means I find myself heading up there periodically to wave the camera about.
This time around, it was that interval of the day during which the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself disappears behind Ohio.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the juncture, right in front of the fountain at Point State Park, of the three rivers – where the Monongahela and Allegheny combine to form the Ohio River. I’m told Lewis and Clark left for their famous adventure on the Jeffersonian mission to examine the western territories gained via the Louisiana Purchase from somewhere nearby. I’m also led to believe that the stand of tall buildings on the right hand side of the ‘point’ used to be a rather busy rail yard.
Moe the Dog was along for this excursion, and so was Our Lady of the Pentacle, whom he was hauling about at her end of his leash. This spot is absolutely infested with Spotted Lantern Flies, I would mention, and as Moe considers the pests to be flying popcorn… let’s just say Moe did his part to combat the infestation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you’ve probably discerned, I was playing about with various methods of capturing the scenery. I shot a few panoramas as well, such as this one. A humble narrator really likes this spot for several reasons.
There’s ample parking, and a Port A Potty is found in the parking lot at the entrance to the place. There’s lot of strollers, pot smokers, and dog walkers who frequent the spot and on more than one occasion, I’ve seen and chatted with other members of the tripod and lens crowd as well as Drone pilots, and even a broadcast television videographer up here. It reminds me of the scene long enjoyed along the East River along Long Island City’s piers during Manhattanhenge.
If I’m coming here though, it’s always at the bookends of the day – very early or nearly late. I haven’t done the ‘dead of night’ here. Yet.
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Whiskey Boys Trail
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I find myself having to head over to Home Depot about once a month for some needed gizmo or material or tool or ‘something random.’ The drive to the nearest outpost of the retail giant takes me from the Pittsburgh suburb of Dormont through another town, dubbed Scott Township, on my way to a third community called Bridgeville (which counterintuitively doesn’t have all that much going on in the way of bridges). About midway through the 20 minute drive from Dormont, where HQ is located, I’ve been noticing signage indicating the presence of the “Whiskey Boys Trail” and “Kane Woods.”
Normally this sort of thing ain’t exactly my bag, but Moe the Dog prospers in natural areas. I still can’t let him off the leash, as he’s a puppy and thereby a total idiot, but part of his training and development requires trees and dirt. I don’t like taking him places that I haven’t checked out first, so… Hence.
A good dog is a tired dog, that’s the mantra.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are basically three or four paths set into a fairly steep hill here. Every now and then, you’ll find a visual break in the ‘sylvania’ thing and see a road, or as in the case of the shot above, a bunch of utility poles. An hour’s drive from Pittsburgh will land you in actual, real woods, the kind people go hunting in and which are known for Sasquatch sightings. This ain’t that, but after shlepping around this trail for about an hour or so I realized that the little bastard would love this spot.
I’ve since returned with Moe, who proceeded to pull me up a hill at running puppy speeds. He ate about 25 pounds of spotted lantern flies, composted a few cubits worth of sticks and branches with his snapping puppy jaws, and was generally exhausted after we returned back home. He slept for an hour, puked lantern fly parts, and was a bit calmer than normal for about 24 hours. Then he bit me in the crotch again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Moe has the advantage on this sort of substrate, I would mention, with his quadruped stance and pointy toes. I was wearing a pair of Merrel hiking boots with nearly bald soles, and he more or less was able to drag my fat butt anywhere he wanted to. If I had a sled with me, we could have delivered presents to orphans.
Back next week.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
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The Newtown Pentacle 