Sunday, November 02, 2003

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This summer, Herb Ohler wasn't doing so well.

The usually hyper 71-year-old retired steelworker, who lives in the Westmoreland County coal patch of Hecla, had come through a quintuple heart bypass and valve replacement around Christmas. Now he was back in the hospital with gout and complications.

As his 23-year-old friend Charlie Smith puts it, "He was at a low point."

	"Here" is a weekly feature produced by Post-Gazette photographers and writers who roam the region to capture close-up slices of life. Can you point us to a special person or place, experience or story? E-mail us at here@post-gazette.com. Link to past installments HERE.

Smith, who lives in Latrobe, is the brother of the woman who married Ohler's son. Smith and Ohler go to the same church. Smith clicked with the easygoing older man in part because of the way he tells tales about exploring his native southwestern Pennsylvania. So he felt bad when he went to the hospital and sensed how worried his buddy was that he might not be able to get out and about again.

When you're better, Smith told him, I'll come over and we'll go for a drive.

Well, the older man got better and the younger man got busy, and at church one day, Ohler gave Smith heck. So one fine October morning, Smith finally paid him that visit.

Ohler said, "Let's go for a ride."

They headed for the mountains -- the Alleghenies. They drove up and down the fall-painted hills, through Mill Run, where Ohler grew up in a two-room shack, and through other towns where he's played baseball, along ridges where he's hunted deer and past his favorite sights, including a covered bridge and a gushing waterfall.

Around midday, Ohler navigated Smith to drive the twisty, steep road up to Mount Davis, Pennsylvania's highest peak.

"Where is that sign?" Ohler muttered as they walked from the parking lot. He hadn't been up on Negro Mountain in at least 15 years, and was looking for the state forest sign about the black pioneer for whom the overall mountain was named. Its peak was named in 1921 for white settler John N. Davis, who once owned this land. A small round U.S. Geologic Survey marker atop a 5-foot boulder officially marks the summit of 3,213 feet above sea level.

You actually can go higher than Pennsylvania's highest natural point, on the nearby man-made steel observation tower.

"I'm goin' up there," Ohler said, and Smith fell in behind him.

Up, up, up they climbed, with Ohler pausing on the landings, though he didn't seem as if he needed to.

The incessant wind, whistling through the steel framework, picked up velocity at each level. At the open platform on top, more than 50 feet up, the men's clothes were flapping. Ohler grabbed his sunglasses, afraid they'd blow off as he gazed out. The vast wooded plateau roiled and roared like the ocean.

"We're up here," he said, louder than usual, holding onto the railing. "Yeah, we're up here."

A bronze relief map and marker explained how, "Except for the passing of an occasional hunter or explorer, the boot tracks of lumberjacks, geologists and miners, man has passed the mountain by" because of its inaccessibility, poor soil and foul weather.

Hardly a leaf was left on the stunted, gnarled trees. But the view was, as Ohler proclaimed, "Bee-yoo-tuh-ful."

He and Smith had been talking about what a spectacular state this is, even if it's underappreciated by people who "stay in and watch that squawk box" -- the television. While they were here, the summit also was visited by two moms and two kids, a couple and their dogs. Mount Davis is a popular destination for everyone from picnickers to members of the Highpointers Club, people who strive to go to the tops of all 50 states -- from the highest (Alaska's 20,320-foot Mount McKinley) to the lowest (Florida's 345-foot Britton Hill).

Ohler and Smith just quietly soaked in the vistas and the brisk wind and each other's company.

Smith snapped a few photos with his digital camera. At one point, he aimed it at his buddy and said, "Give me a smile, Herb."

Herb did.

Bob Batz Jr. can be reached at bbatz@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1930.

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