The Highland Trail — the Ancient Forest

Take a breath and enjoy this part, because you've climbed out of the gorge and up onto the plateau, and the trail goes gentle and flat for a stretch — this is the Highland Trail, and it's the quiet, green hinge that connects the top of Ganoga Glen to the top of Glen Leigh. After all that roaring water and wet stone, the hush up here is lovely.

And look at these trees — really look. This is no ordinary Pennsylvania woodland. You're walking through one of the great old-growth forests of the northeast, protected as the Glens Natural Area, a place so special the federal government made it a National Natural Landmark back in nineteen sixty-nine. Some two thousand acres up here have never been logged — never. These hemlocks and white pines and oaks are ancient. Many of them are more than five hundred years old, and when giants have fallen and people have counted the rings, they've found trees that stood for nine hundred years — trees that were already old when Columbus sailed. Put your hand on one of these massive trunks as you pass and think about that. This forest is the real reason all these waterfalls still run clear and cold: the old trees hold the mountain's water like a sponge and let it out slow.

Somewhere off through these woods, up on the plateau, lies Lake Jean, the park's big lake — that's the swimming and boating side of Ricketts Glen, for another day. Our trail keeps on through the old timber to the head of Glen Leigh. Boone's got the story of how this ancient forest came to still be standing. Then we start down the other side — and I'll warn you now, the downhill is its own kind of hard.