By tradition, and living in a post-COVID world, I feel that many residents of southern Ontario have subconsciously forgotten about the natural wonders which lie immediately across the border. I want you to imagine unprecedented wilderness beauty and rare species, less than two hours away — without Toronto traffic.
When you cruise a mere half hour outside of Buffalo, you are in black bear country. I like to use the presence of these large mammals as an indicator of deep woods and healthy ecosystems.
If you travel an hour outside of New York’s fourth largest city, you are on backroads of woods and corn without a lick of cellphone reception.
Just shy of two hours on the road, you cross the Pennsylvania border into a state with more forest per capita than most other regions of the U.S. I venture to deduce that much of Canada and the U.S. are unaware of Pennsylvania’s woodsy abyss.
Let’s consider an invisible environmental and cultural boundary. Everyone around here knows about Ellicottville, New York. This is largely thanks to its beautiful ski hills and quaint, yet vibrant entertainment on the main street, which is surrounded by the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. If your curiosity takes you even just another half hour south, you will see the foothills grow into gently rolling mountains coated in unadulterated greenery.
My girlfriend Maria and I decided we’d like to try an outdoorsy experience that would be entirely new to both of us. Before we crossed the Pennsylvania border, we visited a spot I’ve been eyeing for several years on Google Earth called Zoar Valley.
This mind-blowing sheer canyon was created by the hard work of Cattaraugus Creek, and it takes a lot of hard work to find it — thanks to the lack of cell phone reception in the area. Some life chats with local grocery stores cashiers and bumming WiFi off of a local store can make it happen. I personally love these fun travelling challenges. Some of the best things in life involve a little bit of vulnerability and creative processes.
The term Cattaraugus is a Seneca indigenous term referring to “bad smelling banks” within the Zoar Valley. Although Maria and I didn’t get a whiff of anything but fresh air and good times, it is noted that the exposed shale rock faces sometimes ooze a smell of natural gas. There is also an interesting history of nudists and bikers who used to congregate in this scenic old-growth forest valley. We saw none of either category. Our eyes only encountered snakes, a baby snapping turtle, and plenty of fascinating trees species.
Within the valley, The Confluence was a sight to behold. There is no way that such scenery is hiding out in New York, just over the border. A massive triangular protrusion of rock indicated where Cattaraugus Creek and Deer Lick Creek poured into one another, joining forces on a rugged mission fuelled by gravity and time heading toward Lake Erie.
We left one of the cleanest creek systems in western New York to see the even deeper woods of Pennsylvania’s section of the Allegheny National Forest for our two nights of tent camping.
This giant blob of green straddles the New York and Pennsylvania borderlands. The majority of the landscape is uninterrupted forest, minus a few sparsely populated villages who live along valley bottoms and the nearest road. Otherwise, you are in forests as profound and as thick as our famed “Up North” Ontario.
We got the canoe on the water for one afternoon, and the morning after. Cumulatively, these adventures were for perhaps five hours in total. However, it took only the first hour to spot a golden eagle — a “lifer” in terms of being a nature geek and seeing a species for the first time in the wild.
Picture a bird with the mass of a bald eagle, but mottled plain brown. In contrast to the blandness, it makes up for its ordinary appearance when in flight, as the bright yellow legs and vicious-looking talons make a striking appearance of evolutionary history and hunting prestige.
When coming across such an extraordinary sighting, I found myself recollecting a theme of natural magic. There is nothing scientific about this, but there have been countless incidents in my outdoor life when one unequalled species or incident presents itself, and then a series of other outstanding encounters unfolds shortly after. When it rains, it pours.
Or maybe there is a scientific concept about this.
The presence of rare or top predator species indicates ecosystem health at a larger scale. Animals like golden eagles are known to regulate and balance species beneath them. Therefore, biodiversity and species abundance are likely to be higher in the same area, meaning more encounters abound for the keen adventurer. We kept with this train of thought, and paddled across the massive Allegheny Reservoir to look for more wildlife.
Once pulled up to shore, I flipped over a piece of washed-up wood and found the glorious red eft, which is more orange than red. You might be wondering, “what the “eft” is that? The eft is a sub-adult phase of the eastern newt, who has a brief terrestrial phase before returning to the water to metamorphose into a dark green swimming adult. Hard to believe when looking at the picture, right?
A moment later, we found the more common eastern red-backed salamander. Nonetheless, including back in Niagara, this species is an indicator of a healthy ecosystem in terms of soil and water quality as they breathe and drink through their skin.
On our second paddling session, we approached an osprey nest. Her squeaks echoed across Pennsylvania’s forested bay as we canoed beneath her perch. We then observed a myriad of bird species in combination I have never seen in Niagara. Half a dozen green herons stabbed at small fish in the water while blue herons and wood ducks waded and waddled about, respectively.
Then, Maria spotted a bald eagle. Moments after, I identified another golden eagle in a tree 100 metres away, nearly directly above our campsite shore where we were destined to pull up. At this point, Maria said, “imagine if he interacts with the golden eagle and flies onto his branch?”
As if on cue for the world’s greatest unscripted performance from Mother Nature, the bald eagle jumped off its perch and began to fly directly toward the golden eagle. There was no chance they would interact, fight or share a branch, I thought. The heavy rain started on cue. The bald eagle bombed its way onto the golden eagle’s branch. Without question or hesitation, but perhaps a personified “fine, screw you!,” the golden eagle conceded and flew off explosively. The bald eagle was in charge, a beautiful yet uncanny representation of America’s prized national bird.
We remarked at the statistical and spiritual significance of this situation. What are the odds that these two uncommon apex predators would be located on the same shoreline, and then to see an interaction with them of that nature?
As this once-in-a-lifetime moment concluded, the rain morphed into a downpour, which violently washed down our bodies and camp gear in torrential fashion. After packing up our soaked belongings, we proceeded to wash down beer and chicken wings at a classic American-style backwoods pub, before returning home to Canada.
