Trail conference offers taste of past heading
SLIPPERY ROCK — While the 2013 Pyrotechnics Guild International convention was creating plenty of noise at Cooper's Lake Campground, a quieter, but still national event was taking place a few miles away.
The annual North Country Trail Conference and Trailfest was at Slippery Rock University.
Joyce Appel, event coordinator, said that people who have attended the event have had positive things to say.
“I've gotten a lot of comments,” Appel said.
She said 200 people participated throughout the week.
The weeklong event featured 90 programs, from one-hour workshops to half-day workshops to full-day workshops and excursions, as well as children's' and family activities. Additionally, entertainment and other programs were held during the evenings.
The event ends Saturday night with a banquet.
Although it was based at SRU, events are taking place throughout Western Pennsylvania, from Wampum to Titusville.
One of those events Friday morning focused on cooking on the trail and offered a tour of the Davis Hollow Cabin at Moraine State Park.
Stan Malecki taught the cooking portion of the program. Most of the food he served came from “The Food Journal of Lewis and Clark.”
Although Lewis and Clark's journey in 1804 started in St. Louis, Malecki noted that their boat was built in Pittsburgh and sailed down the Ohio River to get to St. Louis.
“So, Pennsylvania is a big part of Lewis and Clark,” Malecki said.
“This is what they made on the trail and this is what they had,” he said.
Malecki spent much of the presentation making cornbread in a Dutch oven. He said the recipe is from the 1840s and was not one of Lewis and Clark's.
He also had a pot of buffalo, turnip and blueberry stew simmering while cooking the bread.
Another item he served was pemmican, which is kind of like an ancient energy bar. Traditionally, it is made of chopped jerky, fruit, nuts and seeds and held together with beef fat. However, Malecki makes it with peanut butter instead of beef fat to make it more friendly to people today.
He also served buffalo jerky and hardtack biscuits, which are made only of flour, water and salt. He said that these biscuits could keep for a few years, and that it was common for pioneers and explorers to put it in their stew or coffee to soften them up.
“The trick is you don't bite it. Mothers hate it and dentists love it,” Malecki said.
Diane Winston, chairman of the Davis Hollow Cabin Committee for the trail, provided a tour of the cabin. She said that finding the exact history of it is challenging.
“We dug up as much history as possible,” Winston said.
She said that the original part of the cabin, made of logs and chinking, was built about 1780. A newer portion of the building, made of stone, probably was built between 1910 and 1920.The cabin was the summer home for Katherine Davis and her sister, Eleanor Holt, before it was bought by the park in the 1960s. It was one of the few buildings that the state did not tear down when building the park.The cabin was mostly abandoned until 1997, when hikers became interested in using it. However, years of abandonment left it full of dead animals and other hazards.“They came in environmental suits to clean it up,” Winston said.Today, the cabin has its original doors and fireplace. It is fully electric, has a modern kitchen and two bathrooms. It can sleep 11 people.The park owns the cabin and the trail association leases it. Winston said that the cabin is used by Scout troops, families and church groups.“It has been one of the jewels of the North Country Trail,” Winston said.In addition to all of the programs, a major part of the conference was trail maintenance. The national trail is 4,600 miles long and passes through seven states from North Dakota to New York.In the Butler County area, the trail goes through McConnells Mill State Park just over the Butler-Lawrence County line. After crossing over routes 19 and 422 and Interstate 79, the trail enters Butler County and goes through the north shore of Moraine State Park, and through the Jennings Environmental Education Center.After going through State Gamelands 95 in northeastern Butler County, the trail crosses the Allegheny River.Tom Baumgardner was in charge of trail work during the conference. He said that less than a mile of the trail was worked on this week, but much of that work was challenging.This included moving large rocks, fixing wooden steps that have disintegrated and fixing wet spots on the trail.Bob Roberts of Elm Grove, Wis., said that the weather had been good all week and there has been a variety of activities.“It's been great,” Roberts said.He liked learning about local history and he enjoyed trail building.“There's kind of a science behind it,” Roberts said.He said he gained a better appreciation of what goes into building and maintaining trails.The last time the conference was in the area was about 14 years ago, when it was at Camp Lutherlyn.
