A Great Place, Vultures Notwithstanding

This column appeared on Sunday, July 20, 2008

Spending time in West Caln is not something I have made a point of in the near three decades I have lived in Chester County, but given the events of earlier this month it might be something I’ll be putting on my free time agenda more often.

On July 10, the county commissioners ponied up almost $1 million to give to West Caln and the Natural Lands Trust so that the township can create a township park out of an area known locally as the Barren Hills.

It sounds like it’ll be a winner.

The Barren Hills make up a ridge that looks out over the farms that dot the still-rural landscape of West Caln. Township Manager Gary Dunlap, who apparently did not get the memo warning against excessive friendliness towards members of the working press, likened the hills to the bucolic Serpentine Barrens outside Oxford.

The 168-acres that will eventually be known as Birch Run Forest is prime woodland that screams for hiking paths, bike trails and places to sit in cool shade.

The park will also be adjacent to other areas of open space nearby that wind up at Chambers Lake and Hibernia Park, two spots on the map that don’t get nearly the attention they deserve when it comes to discussions of where to spend the odd recreational moments you find yourself having after finishing up the grocery shopping.

To get a sense of the place, purely in the interest of journalistic integrity and having nothing to due to the mid-July ennui that has gripped the Chester County Courthouse, I took a drive out to the Barren Hills last week.

To give you and idea of what West Caln is like, imagine a set of rolling hills that are populated by neat suburban ranch houses and occasional Mennonite farms. Picture a place where your new McMansion might not look out of place, but where your neighbors might have a fenced-in pen for their 20 head of cattle. Envision narrow country roads where turkey vultures gnawing their way through a road kill carcass are as common a sight as signs that advertise “Local Honey Sold Here.” See in your mind’s eye a place where old men cutting their lawns wear cowboy hats, without the slightest trace or irony.

Along the way. I remembered the few times I spent in West Caln and marveled at how your history always has a way of catching up to you.

When I first moved to the county in August 1980 from a coal-mining town in western Kentucky, I spent my first night at a house on Sandy Hill, not two miles from the Barren Hills. One of my first stories for the Daily Local News was about the contaminated Superfund site there has since been reclaimed into woodland. And I spent a memorable week house-sitting in the late 1980s at a place in Hibernia, wakened on a Saturday morning by the presence of hundreds of fishermen outside by the Brandywine. (It was Opening Day for trout season.)

West Caln isn’t around the corner, unless you live in Coatesville, of course. You have to drive some to get there. But it’s a trip I can see taking when the mood strikes me to relax. Vultures or no.