USA | Allegheny Mountains | Trout Season | Ramps

Trout Season opened last Saturday. A local Waltonian stopped by my Retreat and dropped of two rainbow trout he had caught. True, they were hatchery-raised and stocked in a stream for sports fishermen, but who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Rainbow trout and ramp leaves (click on photos for enlargements)

I also pickled the bulbs and the lower stems of some ramps in a solution of one-half water, one-half vinegar with one teaspoon of turbinado sugar, one teaspoon of pink Mongolian sea salt, and two freshly picked sassafras leaves (used as a substitute for bay leaves; both sassafras and bay belong to the same botanical family). 

Picked ramps

As a side dish to the trout I made some lentils and Basmati rice with steamed (not boiled) ramp leaves and pickled ramp stems and bulbs as a garnish. 

USA | Allegheny Mountains | Ramps

Ramps Season has begun! For many foragers ramps (Allium tricoccum) are the Holy Grail of edible plants. I located a dozen or more small colonies of ramps along a small tributary of the Casselman River.

Tributary of the Casselman River (click on photos for enlargements)

A nice colony of ramps next to a convenient brooklet for washing them.

A small colony of ramps

Another colony of ramps

Ramps

Ramps

Most ramp plants have two leaves. One leaf can be harvested from a plant without killing it.

The whole ramp plant. Authorities recommend harvesting no more than 10% of a colony to ensure its long-term health. I never harvest more than 5%. The leaves and bulbs can be used in any way you would use onions.

Iran | Yazd

Wandered by Yazd, a city of about one million people located near the middle of Iran. It is known as one of the hottest cities in the country. As with many cities in the desert water is held in high regard. 

 Main square of Yazd (click on photos for enlargements)

 Main square of Yazd

 Main square of Yazd

Kids playing in the main square of Yazd. The city’s famous wind-catchers, which catch cool breezes and funnel them down into the buildings below, can be seen in the background. The wind-catchers were an early form of air-conditioning. 

 Skyline of Yazd with more wind-catchers

Wind-Catchers

Streets of Yazd

 Mosque in Yazd

 Detail of mosque in Yazd

  Detail of mosque in Yazd

 Hotel where I stayed in Yazd

 Courtyard of hotel where I stayed in Yazd

  Courtyard of hotel where I stayed in Yazd

Courtyard of hotel where I stayed in Yazd. The perfect place for sipping a saffron tisane as the air cools off at twilight. 

Iran | Esfahan | Abbasi Hotel

Wandered down to Esfahan, south of Tehran. I was especially looking forward to visiting Esfahan since I had booked a room at the legendary Abassi Hotel, which if not the city’s best hotel is certainly the most historic and picturesque.

Location of Esfahan (click on photos for enlargements).

The Abbasi Hotel was originally a caravanserai built during the time the the Safavid Sultan Husayn (1668—1726). It was restored and remodeled in the 1950s into an upscale hotel. Film buffs may recognize the hotel as the set for the 1974 movie Ten Little Indians starring Oliver Reed and German bombshell Elke Sommer. I had read some on-line reviews that groused about the small size of some of the rooms at the hotel. This was certainly not the case with my first floor room, which opened directly onto the courtyard. A troop of dancers, had one been available, could have bivouacked in the room with space left over for a camel or two. 

This etching was made in 1840. 

The basic layout of the building itself has changed very little since 1840. The two-story arched alcove near the right edge of the etching now hosts a charming little snack shop. The dome and minaret of the mosque seen looming over the top of the building are unchanged. Oh how I would have loved to have been in that courtyard when it still hosted camels! Note that the camels shown are Two-Humped Bactrians, the most noble of the world’s four-legged creatures, and not one-humped dromedaries. I would have had second thoughts about staying at the caravanserai if they had allowed in dromedaries, unless, of course, dromedaries were restricted to their own watering troughs.

Camels (Bactrian). You can’t help but love them.

Lobby of hotel. I took this photo at five o’clock in the morning. During the day and evening the lobby was a madhouse of milling tourists from England, Germany, Italy, Spain, China, and elsewhere. As far as I could tell I was the only American. 

Courtyard of hotel

Courtyard of hotel

Courtyard of hotel

Courtyard of hotel

Courtyard of hotel

Courtyard of hotel

Courtyard of hotel

I spent my late afternoons in the courtyard enjoying glasses of refreshing hibiscus tisane with rock sugar. Clinically proven to lower your blood pressure!

Hotel lobby coffee shop where I got my morning caffeine fix. In the afternoons it was jammed with Chinese tour groups.

USA | Allegheny Mountains | Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) | Flora | Coltsfoot

Biked from Meyersdale south to the Big Savage Tunnel. Still no word from the GAP panjandrums on when the tunnel will open. When I arrived at the rest stop a guy in his mid-twenties was just packing up his camping gear. He had spent the night at the rest stop. He wanted to continue south on the GAP and asked if I knew any detours around the tunnel. Actually I do. At Mile Post 23, less than half a mile from the rest stop, a steep road turns off to the right, if you are coming from the tunnel, and drops down to Shirley Hollow Road. This road crosses Laurel Run—a beautiful little babbling brook at this point—and proceeds another 2.2 miles (up 240 vertical feet) to the tiny hamlet of Pleasant Union on Route 160. Truly determined GAPers can take this route to travel from Pittsburgh or points east to Cumberland when the Big Savage Tunnel is closed. (For more on the detour see my Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage: Frostburg to Garrett.) At the intersection of Route 160 and Shirley Hollow Road turn right. After .65 of a mile the road drops down the side of Big Savage Mountain 3.7 miles to the Mason-Dixon Line (1,282 vertical feet) at the village of Wellersburg. The famous surveyors Mason and Dixon camped near here in June of 1766, the furthest point west they surveyed that year. They would return the next year and continue the survey of the Maryland-Pennsylvania border westward.

In Maryland the road, now Maryland Route 47, continues another 1.7 miles to Barrelville, on Route 36, the Mount Savage Road, with a drop of another 200 vertical feet. Turn right here and proceed .6 of a mile to Woodcock Hollow Road. It’s another 1.6 of a mile up the road, with a vertical altitude gain of 303 feet, to the GAP at the Woodcock Hollow Road Crossing. From here you can proceed on the GAP to either Frostburg or Cumberland. Doing this trip in reverse, with the 5.6-mile climb up Big Savage Mountain from Barrelville to the Shirley Hollow Road cutoff, with a vertical altitude gain of 1516 feet, is certainly doable on electric bikes (I did it), but it would test the endurance of Olympian athletes on regular bikes. If you are traveling south and are hell-bent on getting to Cumberland as fast as possible this detour is 3.85 miles shorter than the GAP between the same two points (Shirley Hollow Road cutoff and the Woodcock Hollow Crossroads), eliminating as it does the big loop around Frostburg, You can also make excellent time flying down off Big Savage Mountain, your speed limited only by how fast you dare to go.

I told the young man it was possible to this but that I was not necessarily recommending that he try. This is fairly easy ride on electric bikes but the climb from Laurel Run up to Route 160 might be difficult for someone on a regular bike. Also, I did not know the current condition of Shirley Hollow Road, which is unpaved. It might still be muddy and difficult to navigate. The guy said he was going to try it, however. I hope he got through.

I walked up upstream on Laurel Run, the stream the GAP crosses just north of the tunnel. I was looking for golden saxifrage, blood root, and various trilliums, all among the first plants to appear in the Spring. I found nothing in bloom. Jack-in-the-Pulpits also occur here, although not of course until the end of spring and the beginning of Summer.

Laurel Run

I rode back towards Meyersdale and was startled to see just before the Continental Divide several clumps of coltsfoot. I had scanned the right-of-way of the GAP very carefully riding south and they were not here when I passed by three hours earlier.

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot

These are the first flowers I have seen in bloom the GAP this year. Riding on I saw numerous clumps of coltsfoot the whole way to Meyersdale. None had been in bloom that morning. They had appeared in the space of three hours.

USA | Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) | Spring Flora and Fauna

Rode from Meyersdale westward on the GAP to Rockwood and then rode back to Meyersdale and continued south to Big Savage Tunnel. Still no word from the GAP panjandrums on when the tunnel will be opened for the year. Anyhow, the trail is totally snow and ice-free from the Big Savage Tunnel to Rockwood. Saw the first robin of the year back on March 1—oddly enough the same date I saw the first robin last year—and have been seeing more and more of them every day. For my love affair with robins see Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage: Frostburg to Garrett.

Also saw half a dozen wedges of Canadian geese winging it north for the season. A few took a break on a frozen pond just north the Sand Patch Crossroads.

Canadian Honkers

I also stopped to collect bark from the yellow birch trees south of Sand Patch. I got a whole garbage bag full. There is nothing better for starting campfires.

Yellow Birch

Not much vegetation yet, but I did see the young leaves of dandelion

Dandelion

Also the early leaves of ox-eyed daisies. 

 Early leaves of Ox-Eyed Daisies

USA | Allegheny Mountains | Stonycreek Glades | John Croner Sr. | John Croner Jr.

 Recently my thoughts turned to my ancestor, John Croner Jr. (Jan. 5, 1779–Dec. 17, 1848), who lived in the Stonycreek Glades just north of the town of Berlin, the Cloaca Maxima of Somerset County, Pennsylvania.  According to one history of the Brethren Church in Brothersvalley Township, where the Glades are located, John Croner was a practitioner of herbal medicine:

It was said that he traveled all over the mountains and glades collecting herbs and flowers for his medicines. He was one of the two doctors in the area and was busy all the time in his practice. Not much is known about either Dr. John Groner (old spelling of Croner) or his father Elder John Groner.

In fact, very little is known about the elder John Groner (Croner), and what we do know is confusing. Efforts to document his life are complicated by the appearance of what appears to be two different John Croners around this time. According to One Source:

When John Croner was born in 1753, in Pennsylvania, United States, his father, William Croner, was 20 and his mother, Dama Croner, was 18. He married Elizabeth Magdalene Speicher on 3 January 1774, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, British Colonial America. They were the parents of at least 3 sons and 4 daughters. He died on 17 December 1806, in Brothersvalley Township, Somerset, Pennsylvania, United States, at the age of 53.

According to this chronology, however, he would have been only seventeen or eighteen years old when he turned up in the Glades as a settler. This seems unlikely.  Five of his children are listed: Barbara Croner (1774–1841); Dr. John Croner (1779–1848; Magdalena Croner 1781–1866); Leah Croner (1783–?); and Abraham Croner (1785–?). Thus according to this source the John Croner named here was the father of Dr. John Croner Jr.

Another genealogical Account maintains, however,  that the elder John Croner. was born “about” 1728 in Lancaster County, just west of Philadelphia. This would have put him in his early forties when he settled in the Glades. According to This Version of events he was not married to Elizabeth Magdalene Speicher but to two different women: Elizabeth (born c.1730), last name unknown, and then to Magdalene, last name unknown. It is highly suspicious that the wife of the first John Croner was named Elizabeth Magdalene, while the two wives of the second John Croner were named Elizabeth and Magdalene. In any case, since divorces were frowned upon, if not forbidden, by the Brethren Sect to which the Croners belonged, it seems safe to assume that his first wife Elizabeth mentioned in this account died and John Croner Sr. later married a woman named Magdalene. It is not clear from the account which of this John Croner’s wives was the mother of John Jr., nor how many other children they may have had. Although it would appear that we are dealing with two different John Croners, both are credited with being the father of John Croner Jr. born in 1779, and both reportedly died on Dec. 7, 1806. This leads to the conclusion that the compilers of the genealogies somehow conflated the two John Croners into one.

John Croner Sr., in all likelihood the one born c.1728, arrived in the Glades in either 1770 or 1771, when he was in his early forties. As we have seen the John Croner born in 1753 was married in Lancaster County in eastern Pennsylvania in 1774, further evidence that this was a different person. The second John Croner, the one born c.1728, “built a log house over a small spring,” in the Glades in 1771, according to one account. Another account maintains, however, that an early settler by the name of Francis Philippi actually built the log cabin sometime prior to 1771, and that John Croner Sr. somehow, perhaps by purchase, acquired the dwelling and took up residence in 1771.

Jorg Frantz Phillippi, later Francis Phillippi, was born on October 1, 1729, in Alsace, France. On September 15, 1749,  he arrived in Philadelphia on the ship Phoenix and first settled in Lancaster County, west of Philadelphia. A French citizen when he arrived in the New World, he took an oath to the king of England and by 1753 was serving in the Virginia Militia under George Washington during Washington’s ill-fated march on Fort Pitt (current-day Pittsburgh). His religion is unknown, but he was probably not a Brethren, who were strict pacifists. This would soon get them trouble when they even refused to fight against the British in the Revolutionary War. In 1755 Philippi served as a wagoner in the army in General Braddock, whose march on Fort Pitt also ended disastrously. Philippi reportedly was shot in the leg and escaped on his own across the mountains into what is now Somerset County. At some point between 1755 and 1771 he built a log cabin in the Glades. Like many who first settled in the Glades, included a contingent of Amish, he eventually moved to the rich lands bordering the Casselman River to the south, settling in the village of Casselman.  He crossed the River Styx in 1798 and was buried in New Centerville, four miles north of Casselman village. An inscription on his Tombstone says, “He was the first white man to see Somerset County.” This is almost certainly inaccurate. Hunters, trappers, and traders dealing with the Native population had penetrated into Somerset County during the first half of the eighteenth century and explorer Christopher Gist had passed through the Glades in 1750, just a year after Philippi arrived in the New World. 

Tombstone of  Francis Phillippi. An inscription on the tombstone claims: “He was the first white man to see Somerset County.”  

By 1773 the log cabin in which John Croner Sr. lived was also being used as a meeting house for local Brethren. His son, the doctor John Jr. born in 1779, eventually took over the cabin. While living here he also turned it into a doctor’s office. Here he kept the medicinal plants he gathered in the area. The doctor also practiced blood-letting or blood-cupping. The cabin eventually became known as “Old Schweppy.” The word schweppy derives from shreppa, which is turn is a corruption of the German word schröpfen, which means cupping, or drawing of blood through suction over lanced skin. In Pennsylvania Dutch (Dutch being a corruption of Deutsch or German), the language spoken by early German settlers, the standard German ö regularly shifts to e, and so schröpf would naturally become schrep in local speech. The final a in shreppa is a common Pennsylvania Deutsch feminine/neuter noun ending. Eventually shreppa was further corrupted into schweppy. 

An historian who examined the cabin in the late 1950s wrote:

In talking about it (Old Schweppy), there is an air of mystery cast about it. As well as this author can get its meaning, it seems to indicate that it was the doctor’s office or laboratory, or place for operations, or a place for “bleeding” or “blood letting.” It was here where the doctor kept his herbs, etc. The medicine cabinets are still in the walls.

The same historian gives a detailed description of the cabin as it appeared in the 1950s: 

In the] back of the house was the oven that baked the coarse bread. The basement once had a huge fireplace in it. There was an opening to the good spring just outside the wall. The water flowed through the basement. This was for protection against the Indians and wild animals. The wall is high and made of thick stones. The upper wall is logs with wide rough clapboards covering. The main floor is really the second floor with steep steps that indicated that they were once hanging. There on the west wall is the built-in cabinet for the medicine bottles and books and instruments. There are many ancient tools strange to this author. The windows are ancient in design and material. Heavy oak shutters once hung there with rifle loop holes in them. The sleeping loft is most interesting. One enters it from a ladder type stairs, also indicating that it might have been hanging. The steps or ladder was lifted up each night for protection. The interior is dark save for a small window at each end, high in the ends beneath the steep roof. Four candle sconces were in the room, one on each wall. There are flax “Skutching” machines and ancient flax spinning wheels much as they were left a hundred years ago, in the attic.

The cabin still existed as late as 1977, when one Local History claimed it was “the oldest remaining house in Somerset County.” The current owner of the property allowed the cabin to fall into ruins and now no trace of its remains. 

Old Schweppy, as of 1977 “the oldest remaining house in Somerset County.”