Autumn Walk

It is impossible to convey with words or pictures the atmosphere, the feel, of a woods, particularly a woods in transition from one season to another. The decay of autumn in the Allegheny forest exposes the prevalance of pumpjacks and storage tanks and the odor of gas and oil that summer foliage obscures. In Warren county,"10,341 wells are actively producing. The vast majority of these individual wells are extremely low-yield, averaging less than 1 to 2 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day... Warren County produces a total of some 285,482 barrels of oil annually, ranking it as the second-highest oil-producing county in the state." Here off Brown Run road near Warren are old steel tanks and newer plastic tanks and new and old pumps-some active, some not. Most are on timers that run at a prescibed schdule that allows the oil to pool below ground rather than continuously running. As I hiked today I passed a tree that had fallen onto another and split it lengthwise. Falling trees is common in a woods and the stress of the weight of one against another does not always result in the death of the upright tree, but sometimes both die, as in this case.