The Conquest of Liberty Mountain

Jack Deatherage

(2/2020) My youthful conquest of Liberty Mountain occurred in the mid 1960s- long after John Steelman settled in the area in 1718, and long before I picked up a copy of J.A. Hunter & Daniel P. Mannix's book - Tales of the African Frontier. What brought Liberty Mountain to mind was my rereading Hunter's book during the agonizingly unnecessary closing of the public libraries. (Gods! I've even begun reading The Short Novels of Dostoevsky out of lack of library access!) Hunter reintroduced me to the Europeans and Arabs who opened East Africa in the mid to late 1800s. Men and women who generally did not see themselves as out of the ordinary, yet walked into the wilds of a continent mostly unexplored by so-called ‘civilized’ peoples.

Middle Brother was likely 9 years old when visiting Town Cousin (probably 13 years old), suggested we pack a lunch and stop by 10 year old Neighbor Kid's house to tell his ma we were hiking to the top of Liberty Mountain. I was 11 that early summer when we set out across pastures and woodlots, across ditches and a branch of Flat Run Creek onto Pecher Road, which was still a gravel track. We'd been over the route before in late March or early April. We'd surprised a ski patrolman at the top of the mountain.

"How'd you boys get up here?" Suspicion turning to surprise at our answer.

"We hiked up the backside."

We were bringing food this second hike as we planned to walk the length of the mountain and come down onto PA-116 near the head of Lake Mae and walk along the roads back home. Not the smartest plan we ever conceived given we had to walk a cross-country mile before we made our way up the mountain. But Neighbor Kid had nearly knocked himself senseless the first expedition as he made the mistake of running down the mountain on the return trip and only stopped when he slammed into a tree. Still, we'd no idea following the roads would add about four more miles to the day- and a good quarter mile of that was up Steelman Marker Road which is nearly as steep as some of the backside of Liberty Mountain! Hell, the drive from the lake to home was less than ten minutes! How long could it possibly take afoot?

I can't find a record of John Steelman's remarks upon walking into the area and deciding to settle there. Ewart Grogan, who walked the continent of Africa - from the Cape of Good Hope to Cairo- did leave a record upon reaching the Sobat River in lower Sudan in the winter of 1899.

Grogan, his nearly starved porters collapsing around him, an unlit pipe between his teeth, face swollen with mosquito bites, flushed with a fever, a rifle over one shoulder, the other arm injured and hanging uselessly, asked a British officer, Captain Dunn (out hunting and fishing), "How are you? Had any sport?"

Our exhausted, limping return to the house on Crum Road wasn't nearly as interesting. I think Mom remarked, "You're late. Supper's over."

Mom had been as matter-of-fact when we told her our plans to hike the mountain. "Stay out of trouble. And be home before supper."

Oh the days before cell phones and helicopter parents! Of course Mom had four more kids under foot at home, so losing two to a fall down the mountain, or drowning in a creek, or an angry bull goring and stomping us probably would have been something of a relief- after the required mourning, for form's sake.

As I venture deeper into Hunter's tales (which are accounts of actual events) I find missionaries- men and women- walking from Mombasa, Kenya to Kampala, Uganda along Arab slaver trails. More than 400 miles of wild animals, insect inflicted diseases and often-hostile natives! Usually deserted by their native porters, sick with malaria, crossing regions controlled by cannibals, nearly starved to death, they stagger into areas few to no white people had ever seen. Why? To bring the word of their god to peoples as savage as any that had lived in pre-Christian European countries the missionaries hailed from.

Dr. Sir Albert Cook was both a missionary and a medical physician, a rarity when men of science were usually atheistic in the early days of Darwinism. (I suppose that hasn't changed much.) Working with the most primitive equipment, he managed to isolate the virus that caused relapsing fever and determine it was carried by a wood tick. He spent Fridays operating on any and all who needed his surgeon's skills. From sun up until it was too dark to see- he sliced, removed and sewed together in a building with a thatched roof and reed window shutters. And he preached the salvation offered by his Christ to all who would hesitate and listen.

When I reach The Scotch Family McQueen chapter I realize how lacking I am in any physical feature, skill or thought that would have gotten me through a day in the life of a white farmer in the midst of 1896 Nairobi, Kenya when there was no Nairobi. Only Kikuyu tribes, raiding Masai warriors and two determined Scot farmers eking out a life for the six children Mrs. McQueen would eventually birth without the aid of a doctor. The first child was born while the homestead was under a mock attack by a band of Masai warriors, though the McQueens thought the attack was real.

During an interview with the McQueen children, the authors were told by a son, "Mother looks as though a breath of wind would blow her over in this picture."

He went on, "Even when she was an old lady, I've seen her pick up a two hundred pound sack of oats and carry it like a peck measure."

I have to close the book and consider where I am right now. I wouldn't last an hour tossing hay bales from a wagon onto an elevator outside a hay loft. The farmers I know who do such work without complaint each summer couldn't carry two hundred pound sacks of grain- if they could find sacks large enough to hold that weight today!

I sit and listen to people (as they "shelter in place") speak fearfully of the deadly Wuhan flu (that leaves over 90% of it's victims recover without serious harm) and consider nearly forgotten people hiking hundreds of miles through hostile country while suffering reoccurring attacks of malaria and worse. I wonder what the likes of Steelman, Grogan, Cook and the McQueens would think if they were to see us now.

"What has become of the race of Man?" I imagine they'd mutter.

Best I could do would be offer them cushioned chairs and glasses of handcrafted bourbon. Hopefully, the bourbon would impress them enough to forgive our physical weakness and craven behavior.