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I stumbled upon the name "Raftman's Path" as I was walking the river trail that traverses through the little town I live in. It was named during the days when lumber was a huge commodity in this area. The Susquehanna River was an industrial thoroughfare - bearing down loads of lumber from the northern reaches of Pennsylvania towards the Chesapeake. Marietta was a stopping point, a place for the lumber either to go to the mills lining its banks or shoot further downstream through pig iron smoke. Raftmen would guide the lumber down to the mouth of the Susquehanna into the Chesapeake - an estuary of salt, water, lumber, ore, eel and shad. When their job was done, they would walk the raftman's path back through the Susquehanna Riverlands of Lancaster County towards their homes and do it all over again. The path, now wooded and meandering through some of the only "wild" places in the county, used to have a few churches and a number of bars as stopping points for the raftmen on their way back home.
I'm an angler, writer, and teacher living along the Susquehanna River in southern Pennsylvania. My essays and poems have appeared in The Wayfarer, Gray's Sporting Journal, The Drake Magazine, Susquehanna Life Magazine, San Pedro River Review, Revive Fly Fishing Journal, Bicycle Times, Piedmont Literary Journal, Southern Culture on the Fly, and Dirt Rag Magazine. |
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