Mongolia | Zanabazar | First Bogd Gegeen of Mongolia

Zanabazar (1635–1723) was, according to most reckonings, the sixteenth incarnation of Javsandamba. The first incarnation is believed to have appeared around the time of the Buddha. As a small boy he was recognized as the spiritual leader of Mongolia and awarded the title of Bogd Gegeen. He would go on to play a role in the religious and political life of Mongolia analogous to that of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet. Zanabazar built temples and established monasteries, including one at what is now the site of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, and was a polymath who invented new scripts for writing the Mongolian language, designed new clothes for monks, studied the medical properties of hot springs, and much else. He is most famous for his bronze statues which are now the centerpieces of three museums in Ulaanbaatar. “During his lifetime, he was the greatest Buddhist sculptor in Asia,” opines art historian K. Youso about Zanabazar.” Indeed, he is often called the Michelangelo of Mongolia. Zanabazar was the first of Mongolia’s nine Bogd Gegeens. The Ninth Bogd Gegeen transmigrated on March 1, 2012.  During a visit to Mongolia on November 23, 2016, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama announced that the Tenth Bogd Gegeen had been born and that attempts were being made to identify him. Update: The Tenth has now been named. 

See The Life of Zanabazar

USA | Allegheny Mountains | Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail | Flora | Artemisia

Almost 500 species of Artemisia (Artemisia sp.) occur worldwide, around fifty of which are native to North America. The genus was named—big surprise!—by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. Some suggest that he named the genus after Queen Artemisia II, the fourth-century BC ruler of Caria, a kingdom on the southwest coast of what is now Turkey. Later Roman writers credited her with knowledge of botany and medicinal plants, which may have led Linnaeus to name a genus after her. (She is perhaps better remembered for the monumental tomb, once considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World, that she built for her husband Mausolus. Thereafter large tombs became known as mausoleums, named after Artemisia’s husband.) Others maintain, however, that the genus was named after Artemis, the Greek goddess of the Moon, and this interpretation is now the most popular. Linnaeus himself apparently never elaborated on the source of the genus name.

One of the best known—notorious even—of the European species of Artemisia is Artemisia absinthium, or Wormwood, one of the main ingredients in the psychoactive alcoholic drink absinthe, long banned in the United States because of its alleged hallucinogenic properties but now once again legal. One of the better known native North American species, Artemisia ludoviciana, or White Sagebrush, which occurs mainly in western North America, is famous for its use in Native American smudging ceremonies and is also used in witchcraft and pagan practices. Perhaps the species now most prevalent in America is Artemisia vulgaris, a native of Eurasia and North Africa, commonly known as Mugwort. It was probably brought to the New World by early settlers who valued its medicinal properties and by practitioners of arcane arts attracted by its alleged magical attributes.

Five or six species of the genus Artemisia have been identified along the GAP. Mugwort—Artemisia vulgaris—is one of them, but GAPers are probably more likely to encounter Artemisia verlotiorum, sometimes called Chinese Mugwort or simply Artemisia. A native of China and neighboring parts of eastern Asia, it eventually spread to Europe. Originally considered a variant of Artemisia vulgaris, in 1876 the French botanist Martial Lamotte formally described it as a species distinct from Artemisia vulgaris and named it in honor of Jean-Baptiste Verlot (1816–1891), who first noted the difference, and his brother Pierre Lazare Bernard Verlot (1836–1897), both renowned French botanists. It too spread to the North American continent.

Admittedly, the identification of the Artemisia that grows along the GAP is controversial. Some authorities maintain that the Verlot brothers were full of hooey and that Artemisia verlotiorum is not a separate species but just a variant of Artemisia vulgaris. At least one authority, while acknowledging the existence of Artemisia verlotiorum, maintains that it does not occur in Pennsylvania at all. Others hedge by saying that Artemisia verlotiorum is probably a different species and probably does occur along the GAP but that further study is needed to settle the matter conclusively. There is also the possibility that the plant that occurs along the GAP is a hybrid of Artemisia verlotiorum and Artemisia vulgaris. Such hybrids have been identified in Europe, but it is not known if they occur in America. While all this uncertainty has led to a lot of head scratching, beard pulling, and gnashing of teeth on the part of professional botanists, most GAPers will probably be content with calling any member of the genus they find along the GAP simply Artemisia.

That said, taking all the available evidence into consideration, the Artemisia shown here is probably Artemisia verlotiorum. In any case, Artemisia verlotiorum and Artemisia vulgaris have much the same medicinal and magical qualities. Artemisia verlotiorum is said to be more aromatic than Artemisia vulgaris, and the Artemisia shown here is indeed very aromatic.

Young Artemisia with the previous years stalks

Immature Artemisia

A colony of Artemisia. Much of the colony has been destroyed by the lamentable practice of mowing the verges of the GAP. Artemis would not be happy.

Artemisia

Artemisia

Artemisia

Flowering panicle of putative Chinese Mugwort, Artemisia verlotiorum. The arching main axis carries many pendent, leafy branchlets crowded with small green, nodding capitula—a useful field character for separating it from Common Mugwort (A. vulgaris)

Artemisia

Artemisia

Artemisia

Dried Artemisia

As noted, the genus name Artemisia is widely attributed to the Greek moon goddess Artemis, who is also associated with hunting (she and her twin brother Apollo are credited in Greek legends with inventing the bow and arrow) and with wildlife and wilderness places. She is often portrayed with a deer. 

Artemis with her quiver

According to legend she never entered into any relationships with men and remained a virgin her entire life, going to great lengths to protect her chastity. Once she caught the human Actaeon spying on her while she was bathing nude in a forest pond. Outraged by this Peeping Tom behavior, she used her magical powers to turn Actaeon into a stag and then sicced his own pack of hounds on him. Not recognizing that the stag was their former master, they tore him to pieces.

As a moon goddess, Artemis is associated with all things lunar, just as her twin brother Apollo is associated with the sun and all things solar. The first NASA crewed lunar program was of course named Apollo, which offended many in the Lunar Community, who accused NASA of outright misogyny in not affording Artemis this honor. Happily this oversight has been corrected in the form of NASA’s current lunar program, Artemis, which hopes to put humans back on the Moon for the first time since Apollo 17 back in December of 1972. One of the stated goals of the Artemis program is to place the first woman on the Moon. Artemis must be pleased.

Despite her own status as a virgin and her love of hunting and wild places, Artemis was also thought to oversee childbirth and the care of children, and she was regarded as a protector of women in general. Mugwort—or Artemisia—the plant named after her, became known as the “Mother of Herbs” and was viewed as a traditional aid for women at all life stages—easing menstrual pain, aiding childbirth, and supporting menopause. The menstrual cycle’s rough correspondence to the 29.5-day length of the lunar month reinforced the perceived connection between the Moon, the Moon Goddess Artemis, and the plant’s gynecological applications. The Moon governed women’s bodies, Artemis governed the Moon, and Artemisia—Mugwort—was Artemis’s gift to women. The herb was and still is used as an emmenagogue, promoting menstrual flow and helping to regulate irregular cycles. It is believed to strengthen the uterus, stimulate blood flow to the pelvic region, and ease menstrual cramps through its antispasmodic properties. However, these same properties indicate that Mugwort should be strictly avoided during pregnancy, as it can stimulate uterine contractions and potentially cause miscarriages. Apart from strictly feminine concerns, Mugwort is known for its strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and is also used to treat high blood pressure. Mugwort is widely sold in health food stores and online, including by mainstream retailers such as Amazon, in capsules, in tea bags, and in loose-leaf form. Korean skincare companies—part of the so-called K-beauty industry—market worldwide skin creams based on Mugwort said to soothe and heal sensitive, irritated, or eczema-prone skin.

Considerable research has been done by pharmaceutical companies and government agencies in attempts to isolate the compounds responsible for Artemisia’s medicinal properties, and a huge collection of scientific literature on the subject has been published. Some of the most significant research was done in China. In 2015 Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, a pharmaceutical chemist and phytochemist at the Institute of Chinese Materia Medica of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences (formerly the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine) in Beijing, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for isolating artemisinin, an antimalarial compound, from Artemisia annua, an Asian species of Mugwort.

The story begins in 1967, during the height of the Vietnam War, when North Vietnamese officials asked Chinese researchers to come up with a new treatment for malaria, which was not responding to the usual drugs. Since a new treatment for malaria was seen as vital to the war effort, a top-secret military program, code-named Project 523 for its founding on May 23, 1967, was set up to investigate alternatives. In January of 1969 Tu Youyou was appointed to head the Project 523 research group at her institute. Her research into the medicinal properties of Mugwort led her to the fourth-century herbal Zhouhou Beiji Fang, roughly translated as Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One’s Sleeve, compiled by the Daoist scholar and alchemist Ge Hong (see Dandelion, above). Using the Zhouhou Beiji Fang as her guide, in 1972 she and her colleagues were able to extract the crystalline compound known as artemisinin from Mugwort. Artemisinin eventually became a frontline treatment for malaria, credited with saving millions of lives around the world, above all in Africa. Not until 2015 was she awarded a Nobel Prize “for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria,” in the words of the Nobel committee. Her Nobel lecture was titled “Artemisinin—A Gift from Traditional Chinese Medicine to the World.” She was the first Chinese Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine and the first female citizen of the PRC to win a Nobel in any category. She accomplished this without a doctorate, a medical degree, or any training abroad, which earned her the nickname in China of the “Three-Without Scientist.” In 2019 Tu Youyou was awarded the Medal of the Republic, the highest honorary medal given out by the People’s Republic of China. Her isolation of artemisinin is arguably the single most consequential drug discovery to come out of any plant genus named after a Greek deity.

Tu Youyou

The occult and magical lore surrounding Artemisia equals, and perhaps even surpasses, its renown as a medicinal plant. The association goes back to Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon. In Greek mythology her first cousin was Hecate, the Greek goddess associated with the night, magic, ghosts, and the dead, and the haunter of crossroads and liminal spaces between the worlds, areas which would often become associated with witchcraft. Indeed some scholars have opined that Hecate was originally just a manifestation of Artemis’s dark side, and only later became a goddess in her own right. In any case, Artemis’s association with the Moon would eventually resonate with witches, who often based their ceremonies on phases of the Moon.

Artemis and Hecate, either conflated into a single entity or separately, soon fell afoul of the new religion of Christianity. One of the main temples devoted to Artemis was located at Ephesus, on the western coast of what is now Turkey. A silversmith named Demetrius had established a lucrative business making miniature silver shrines of Artemis and selling them to pilgrims who had come to worship the Moon Goddess. Then, according to the New Testament (Acts 19:23–41), the Apostle Paul—he of the Road to Damascus fame—arrived on the scene and began preaching that “gods made by human hands” were not truly gods. The silversmiths of Ephesus and the pilgrims who had come to worship Artemis were deeply offended. The crowd that assembled shouted, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” and a riot broke out.

Passions eventually cooled and order was restored to Ephesus, but the rift between Artemis and the burgeoning religion of Christianity only deepened. The 2nd-century Christian writer, teacher, and apologist Tatian (d. c. 180 A.D.), a fierce critic of Greek religion and philosophy, denounced Artemis as a “pharmakis,” a poisoner or sorceress, which was a serious accusation. The Old Testament (Exodus 22:18) states flatly: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (King James Version). The Hebrew word translated as “witch” in the King James Bible refers to someone who practices sorcery, enchantment, or magical arts. An alternative translation would be “sorceress,” or a “woman who practices sorcery or evil magic.” From this point on Artemis and Hecate—perhaps Artemis’s alter ego—became indelibly connected with witchcraft and the Dark Arts, and the malignant seeds which later led to witchcraft trials and executions of witches were sown.

Artemis was the Greek name of the Moon Goddess. In the Roman world she became known as Diana, who, like Artemis, was associated with the wilderness, wild animals—especially deer—hunting, and also female fertility, childbirth, and protection of women in general. She was also known for her chastity and independent nature. Her connection with witchcraft and sorcery simmered for centuries and finally came to a full boil in the 10th century, when an influential Christian text entitled Canon Episcopi described “wicked women” who believed they rode through the night sky on beasts in the retinue of “Diana, goddess of the pagans.” Curiously, the document itself argued that such sightings were a demonic illusion, not literal reality, but many came to believe in “Diana’s night ride,” which became a recurring folklore motif across medieval Europe, eventually leading to the idea that Diana led a nighttime gathering of witches known as a Sabbath where the Devil was worshipped and black magic practiced.

During the witchcraft trials in Scotland from the late 16th century to the mid-17th century, witnesses denounced women who they claimed had “dealings with Diana, queen of the fairies.” Roughly 3,800–4,000 people, about 84 percent of them women, were accused of practicing witchcraft, and from 1,500 to 2,500 received the death penalty and were executed, usually by strangulation, and their bodies were burned. For example, Elspeth Reoch, tried in Orkney in 1616, said she had second sight and encounters with fairies from childhood (she was also accused of using Yarrow in a healing charm; see Yarrow, above). She was convicted and executed. Issobell Haldane, tried in Perth in 1623, confessed to consorting with fairies and was convicted and executed. As Queen of the Fairies, Diana was certainly suspect, but admittedly it is not clear how many, if any, of the accused witches were executed because of their direct association with Diana/Artemis.

Diana’s connection with witchcraft reached perhaps its apogee in Charles Godfrey Leland’s 1899 book Aradia: or, the Gospel of the Witches. Here Leland claimed that Diana was not merely a Roman huntress or moon-goddess, but the supreme deity known as the “Queen of Witches” who “was the first created before all creation.” Diana mated with Lucifer, resulting in a human daughter by the name of Aradia, who was tasked with teaching witchcraft to other women and men, especially the poor, the outcast, and others on the fringes of society. She instructed witches to meet monthly on the night of a full moon and worship in the nude “the potent spirit” of Diana. During these meetings the deeper, still-unknown secrets of sorcery would be revealed to Diana’s followers and their own power would be increased. Understandably, Leland’s book was controversial and its authenticity was questioned. One scholar has dismissed Leland’s account of Diana and Aradia as a “myth found nowhere else,” but the mythologem he propounded in Aradia: or, the Gospel of the Witches took on a life of its own and has helped shape contemporary ideas about witchcraft and pagan practices. Diana remains the central goddess in many occult traditions. (The goddess is also connected with the late Diana, Princess of Wales. In the eulogy at her funeral her brother Charles Spencer noted: “A girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.”)

Artemisia, or Mugwort, the plant associated with Artemis/Diana, is still known as the “witch’s herb” and has been called the “single most iconic plant in the Western witchcraft tradition.” (Most sources refer to Artemisia vulgaris and do not mention Artemisia verlotiorum, mainly because, as noted earlier, not everyone recognizes that they are different species; however, as far as witchcraft is concerned they have the same properties.) Mugwort is considered a staple in the cabinet of any witchcraft practitioner and is reportedly one of the best-selling herbs in stores selling witchcraft-related items. Witches stuff dried Artemisia into “dream pillows” or place it under their pillows, drink an infusion before bed, or rub the leaves on the forehead (the “Third Eye”) to induce prophetic dreams, facilitate lucid dreaming, and enable the recall of dreams. Artemisia is also burned as incense to sharpen intuitive perception during readings with crystal balls, scrying mirrors, and tarot cards, to aid in astral projection and spirit travel, and to purify spaces of negative energy. Bundles of Artemisia are also hung above doorways and in windows to prevent evil spirits and malevolent influences from entering a home.

Thujone, a chemical compound found in Artemisia, is believed to be responsible for many of the plant’s psychoactive properties. As with artemisinin, the compound in Artemisia used to treat malaria, an enormous amount of research has been done on thujone. In small doses it has traditionally been credited with elevating moods, enhancing alertness and awareness, and reducing anxiety, although modern research has found little evidence that it is actually a hallucinogen. In large doses its use can result in seizures and convulsions, vomiting, kidney failure, and in extreme cases, death. Thujone is a perfect example of Paracelsus’s Principle—“The dose makes the poison”—formulated by Swiss physician, theologian, alchemist, and herbalist Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, a.k.a. Paracelsus (c. 1493–1541). In the right amount the thujone found in Artemisia can be a stimulating, possibly therapeutic compound. At excessive doses, it’s a convulsant neurotoxin. The trick, presumably practiced by witches, is understanding that narrow therapeutic window.

Artemisia is one plant GAPers can collect without qualms. It is not found everywhere along the GAP, but where it does occur it grows in large colonies. An army of Artemisia gatherers would hardly put a dent in the population. In any case, Artemisia is considered by many to be an obnoxious, invasive weed, and some states take active measures, up to and including the use of herbicides, to eradicate it. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has Artemisia vulgaris (no mention is made of Artemisia verlotiorum, the Verlot brothers notwithstanding) on its list of Class B noxious weeds, which means that while it is considered an undesirable invasive plant it too widespread to be feasibly eradicated. Noxious weed restrictions in the state of Pennsylvania do prohibit the planting and propagation of Mugwort. GAPers considering collecting Artemisia seeds along the GAP and planting them in their gardens might want to take this into consideration.

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.

While very little is known about Dr. John Groner, we know even less 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, probaby 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 wagoneer 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 south to the rich lands bordering the Casselman River, settling in the village of Casselman.  He returned to the bosom of Abraham 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 what is now Somerset County during the first half of the eighteenth century, and explorer Christopher Gist had passed through what is now southwestern Somerset County in 1749, the same year Philippi arrived in the New World. He traversed the Stonycreek Glades a year later, in 1750, as is well documented in his Journals.

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, Doctor John Croner, 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.” 

USA | Allegheny Mountains | Autumn Equinox

Get that elk antler headdress out of the closet and shake the dust off your tambourines!

The  Autumn Equinox occurs today at exactly  8:05.07 pm, at least at my current location.

You will no doubt be reading in various media that today is the day when day and night are exactly equal. This is seldom the case. This year the day when day and night are most equal is September 26. This day is known as the Equilux, not be be confused with the Equinox. 

Autumn Equinox celebrant

Egypt | Cairo | Giza | Pyramids

Wandered down to Cairo from Istanbul. Another milk run on Turkish Air. The Airbus took off from the same remote gate as flights to Tabriz, Iran, and Ulaanbaatar. From the gate they ferry you by bus to the plane parked in the hinterlands of the airport. Just once I would like to fly somewhere that deserves a walk-on ramp. At first I thought I was at the wrong gate. At last three-quarters of the passengers were Chinese. Was I lining up for the Beijing flight? But no, they were all Chinese tourists. In Istanbul itself I would guess that at least half the tourists are Chinese. Many older Chinese couples on the plane, presumably retirees, plus the usual bevy of young Chinese women traveling by themselves. 

It is only a two hour hump across the Mediterranean to Cairo. I spent it reading Amelia Edward’s A Thousand Miles Up The Nile, a classic of Victorian travel literature (the Kindle version is $1.99; a fantastic bargain). I also dipped into Barbara Mertz’s Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs, a light-hearted romp through four or five thousand years of Egyptian history. Mertz, writing under the pen name of Elizabeth Peters, also wrote twenty novels featuring the indomitable Amelia Peabody, wife of Radcliffe Emerson, “the greatest Egyptologist of this or any other age,” at least according to his besotted spouse. Almost all of the Peabody books take place in Egypt and deal with the madcap adventures of Peabody and her husband. I am embarrassed to admit that I have actually read All Twenty Of The Amelia Peabody Books. This may sound ridiculous, but on the other hand I have probably not watched one entire TV program in the last twenty years. Everyone is entitled to one shameful vice. 

The Cairo Airport is very modern and extremely large. It takes probably twenty minutes to walk to Immigration. The guest house I am staying at offered a free pick-up at the airport if you stay more than four nights. I am staying seven, so before I even went through Immigration I was met by Abdullah, the representative of the guesthouse. Apparently in Egypt tourist guides can do this. He shepherded me through Immigration and then Customs. They knew him at Immigration and an official took only a cursory glance at my passport, even though I noticed they were thoroughly checking everyone else’s documents. Although people were lined up to have their baggage checked I was waved through without even a cursory glance at my portmanteau. The free ride to my hotel was also quite a boon, since the airport is on the east side of the Nile, and Giza, where I am staying in on the west side. It can take a hour to get to Giza if traffic is heavy. 

Abdullah it turns out is a history aficionado and while driving to Giza we had quite an interesting chat about the Mamluk period of Egyptian history. Unfortunately he was wrong in his assertion that Chingis Khan invaded Egypt. Chingis Khan died several decades before the Mongols reached Syria, where on September 3, 1260 they were soundly defeated by the Mamluks of Egypt at the Battle of Ain Jalut. He also insisted that the Mamluks were descendants of Mongol slave-soldiers. They are  descended from slave-soldiers, but mostly of Turk and Turcoman descent, according to what I have read. I am unaware of any Mongol Mamluks. Happily the discussion soon veered to Fourth Dynasty Egypt, during which time the three big pyramids of Giza were built. Indeed, soon after we crossed the Nile they could be seen looming above the Giza skyline.

My guest house is just fifty feet from the entrance to the Pyramids complex. It is a rather modest establishment actually, although my room is quite large and features a huge double bed. More importantly, the windows provide stunning views of the three Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx. There is also a roof top viewing area with even better views. After stashing my portmanteau I headed across the street to the entrance of the Pyramid complex and bought a ticket for eighty Egyptian pounds ($10.52)

View from my room at the guest house. In front of the middle pyramid can be seen the Sphinx (click on photo for enlargement).

The next morning I hired a camel and rode up to a ridge overlooking the pyramids.

Sunrise on the ridge

Camel wrangler

The pyramids from the ridge

USA | Allegheny Mountains | 9-11 Memorial Bike Trail From Garrett to Berlin

Bikers biking on the 150-mile-long Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, who pass through the town of Garrett may want to check out the beginning of the 21-mile-long 9-11 Memorial Trail from Garrett to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville. This stretch is part of the larger 1,300-mile September 11th National Memorial Trail network. After crossing the Casselman River Bridge watch for the marked bicycle path to the right on Lafayette Street.

Casselman River looking north from theCasselman River Bridge

Water Street. Just follow the bikes

Downtown Garrett

Follow the signs to Water Street and turn left. Continue north through downtown Garrett (don’t blink) on Water Street a little over a mile to the current terminus of the trail, just short of the new Route 219 Overpass.

The current end of the 9-11 bike trail just outside of Garrett

The first section of the proposed trail will follow the roadbed of the old Buffalo Valley Railroad, later known as the Berlin Branch of the B&O Railroad, 8.5 miles to Berlin. The Buffalo Valley Railroad was founded in 1871, the same year the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad reached Garrett, by enterprising businessmen in Berlin and farmers in the Buffalo Valley. The first president of the railroad was Samuel Philson Jr. He was the son of Robert Philson (c. 1759–1831), an immigrant from Ireland who settled in Berlin, where he became a storekeeper. 

Philson was one of the ringleaders of the Whiskey Rebellion (1791–1794), a protest against the tax imposed on whiskey by the federal government in 1791. Farmers in western Pennsylvania had made a business of converting their excess corn, rye, wheat, and barley into whiskey, which was much more easily transportable to eastern markets than the grain itself. Only four bushels of grain could be loaded onto a pack horse, but one horse could carry the whiskey made from twenty-four bushels of grain. Farmers and businessmen in western Pennsylvania viewed the whiskey tax as an assault on their livelihoods and armed protests soon broke out. 

President George Washington dispatched 13,000 federal troops to western Pennsylvania to suppress the rebellion. Washington himself led one of the detachments to Bedford, thirty miles east of Berlin, “down off the mountain,” as locals like to say. Washington then sent Alexander Hamilton—he of the musical Hamilton fame—to Berlin to arrest the instigators of the rebellion. Robert Philson and sixteen others were taken into custody. Philson himself was taken to Philadelphia and tried for treason, reportedly the first time anyone had been tried for treason in the United States. Twelve honest men acquitted him due to lack of evidence and he went on to a distinguished public career. He joined the army and served as a brigadier-general in the War of 1812, was elected to serve one term as a representative in the U.S. Congress, and eventually became an associate judge in Somerset County. 

So why didn’t George Washington himself come to Berlin and arrest Robert Philson? According to local lore word was sent down off the mountain to Bedford that if Washington showed his face in Berlin he would be shot on sight. To this day some people around Berlin like to claim that fancy-pants George Washington was too much of a chicken-shit to show his face in their town and instead sent his henchman Alexander Hamilton to do his dirty work for him. Of course Berlin is notorious for its popinjays, jackanapeses, braggarts, gasbags, and blowhards, so this story may well be apocryphal.

In any case, Robert Philson’s son Samuel became one of the area’s leading businessmen and was instrumental in the creation of the Buffalo Valley Railroad. In 1880 the B&O bought out the Pittsburgh & Connellsville Railroad that ran through Garrett and also acquired the Buffalo Valley Railroad, which then became known as the Berlin Branch of the B&O. Among locals it was affectionately called the Huckleberry Railroad. Huckleberries grew in abundance in the Allegheny Mountains near the headwaters of Buffalo Creek. They were packed into ten to twelve quart pails and transported to Berlin, where they were loaded on the Berlin Branch and sent to various cities on the B&O Railroad. American chestnuts (Castanea dentata), picked by the bushel before the chestnut blight killed almost all chestnut trees in the Alleghenies, were also shipped on the railroad, as were maple syrup and maple sugar. 

Locals also harvested swamp grass, which was dried and sent to markets on the East Coast, where it was used as a filler to pack fragile objects like glass, china, and crockery. In the late nineteenth century, before the introduction of refrigeration, ice from lakes in the area was also shipped to cities, where it was in high demand. Whiskey and other alcoholic products, including medicinal alcohol, were shipped from distilleries near Berlin, including the famous Frantz Distillery, south of Berlin. Farmers in the Buffalo Valley and the surrounding area also sent their milk to a creamery at the terminus of the railroad in Berlin. 

All of these products were soon eclipsed by coal. Numerous mines exploited the fabulously rich coal deposits in the Buffalo Creek Valley. By 1927 one company alone, Consolidation Coal, had shipped 1,271,889 tons of coal from its mines in Goodtown, located on a short spur of the Berlin Branch of the B&O two miles from Berlin. The board of directors of Consolidation Coal included James Roosevelt, the father of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and F.D.R.’s maternal grandfather, Warren Delano II. Thousands of immigrants were brought in to work the mines, resulting in several mining towns in the Buffalo Valley. Locals usually referred to these immigrants as Russians, although very few if any were actually ethnic Russians. Most were Ukrainians, Belarusians, Georgians, Poles, and others from the fringes of the rapidly disintegrating Czarist Russian Empire. 

The Berlin Branch of the B&O shut down for good in the 1970s. Its right-of-way sat idle for the next five decades and will now be repurposed as the first section of the 9-11 Memorial Trail. GAPers who want to get a glimpse of the trail can proceed to near the current terminus outside of Garrett and then head up the Buffalo Valley on Fogletown Road. After a mile or so the road passes by the Burkholder Covered Bridge. Built in 1870 the 47-foot-long bridge is one of seven in Somerset County utilizing the one-span Burr-Arch type of construction. The railroad probably made a stop here. 

Burkholder Covered Bridge. The proposed route of the bike trail can be seen on the right

Burkholder Covered Bridge.

Another 1.7 miles up the valley Fogletown Road runs into Owl Hollow Road. On Owl Hollow Road is the Beachdale Crossing, another station stop on the old Buffalo Creek Railroad. Once a community of sorts, it is now best known for the Beachdale Brethren Church. 

Beachdale Brethren Church

The proposed route of the bike trail looking south from the Buffalo Creek Bridge on Owl Hollow Road 

The proposed route of the bike trail looking north from the Buffalo Creek Bridge on Owl Hollow Road 

GAPers can continue on Owl Hollow Road to old Route 219 (the Mason-Dixon Highway) and return to Garrett on the road, or continue north on Route 219 1.8 miles to Pine Hill Road. Turn right and proceed to the old village of Raineytown, named after W. T. Rainey, a coal operator who opened a mine near here.

Route of the proposed bike path looking south from Raineytown. There was once a Native American village to the right of the trail beyond the house. To my knowledge it has never been officially investigated, but numerous artifacts, including arrowheads and hatchet heads, have been found here. Every time the farmer plowed the field where the village was located new artifacts would turn up.

The village itself was established in 1898 and consisted of sixteen or more houses for coal miners. At first the village was called Red Raineytown because all the houses were painted red. The stop here on the Buffalo Valley Railroad was known as the Pine Hill Station, named after the village of Pine Hill about a mile to the south. Local farmers brought their milk here for shipment to a creamery in Berlin. There was a large company store in the village, but it burned down in 1903. In 1921, during the Prohibition Era, authorities raided a still used to make moonshine in the basement of one of the dwellings. Now only two houses remain in Raineytown. 

Route of the proposed bike path looking northeast from Raineytown. Berlin is about two miles from here.

GAPers can return to Garrett via the Mason-Dixon Highway. The truly daring can backtrack .15 of a mile on the Pine Hill Road and then take Weighley Mill Road 1.8 miles to the famously rough and tumble town of Berlin, where, if we are to believe locals, even George Washington feared to tread. The 9-11 Memorial Trail continues from Berlin 12.5 miles to the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville using already existing roads. On September 7, 2024, an organized bike ride took place from Berlin to the Memorial and back, starting at 9:00 a.m. and ending at 2:00 p.m. This is now an annual event. The next “Tour de Trail”, as the event is called—apparently a takeoff on the Tour de France—will take place in 2027.

As of this writing it is not known when the Garrett-Berlin section of the 9-11 Memorial Trail will be completed. 

For more see: 

Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP): Frostburg to Garrett Including the GAP Town of Meyersdale and a Preview of the 9-11 Memorial Trail from Garret to Berlin.