Deep in the Wilds (Part Two): The Gathering Grounds of Kylertown

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Deep in the Wilds (Part Two): The Gathering Grounds of Kylertown

06 May

Here we are, in the heart of the Wilds. Folks from Potter and Tioga counties might dispute that. Truth be told, when I was planning this leg of the Journey, I was aiming for a coffeehouse in Tioga County. It was located in the tiny town of Liberty. It no longer appears on a map when I search for ‘coffee’ in that vicinity. I can only assume it has closed. Thus began my search for alternative coffee in the wilderness, which ultimately took us into forested Clearfield County.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the initial coffee target had vanished on me. Whenever I did a search for coffee in any part of the Wilds, including around the town of Liberty, I needed to push the ‘minus’ sign on the map function a few times. Coffeehouses are few and far between out here. Oh, there are plenty of places to get coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts is immensely popular. A few family restaurants double as coffee spots, including a cute one in Liberty. But in terms of a ‘coffeehouse’ as we’ve come to think of it on this blog (a place that considers coffee an art while making space for other arts), that’s vanishingly rare here. That’s because the Wilds is often a place people drive through on their way to somewhere else. Route 80, for example, runs directly south of Kylertown, winding its way through endless forested hills and farmed valleys. Shockingly, Kylertown also has a small craft coffeehouse to call its own.

Kylertown is only a few miles south of the vast Quehanna Wild Area. Once you’re out of Centre County, the ridge-and-valley system gives way to a rolling, green plateau. As you can see in the photo below, a belt of farmland surrounds the gathering of homes and small stores constituting the town. Interestingly, The Gathering Grounds isn’t in Kylertown proper. To be fair, there isn’t much of a ‘Kylertown proper,’ and we’ll get to that later.

Instead, The Gathering Grounds is in a small plaza just off Route 80, directly south of Kylertown. On the outside, Gathering Grounds looks like an especially cozy section of a small travel plaza. Inside, it’s keeping coffeehouse culture alive. It looked like an art space, or at least the beginnings of one. The interior was a bit spare, but a comfy couch and a wall festooned with crayon-drawn pictures, Bible verses, and fun pictures gave glimpses of a local love of art finding expression here.

After talking with a barista, I know I’m not far off on my estimation of this cafe as the beginnings of an art space. Gathering Grounds has only been in existence since November. The barista told me she was trying to start an open mic night, but ran into problems this winter due to the extreme cold. Indeed, Pennsylvania had been hit with a few polar vortices driving temperatures well below zero. I don’t think she’ll be giving up, though.

The coffee came from a surprising place: Aegis Coffee of nearby DuBois! DuBois is a pretty large town for the Wilds (one of the reasons I purposely avoided it and Bradford…we needed a taste of the deep country, after all). I got their signature blend. There’s no telling what’s inside because it’s their signature blend. It’s proprietary. Here’s another coffeehouse sourcing coffees from a professional roaster and requesting a specialty roast. I surmise it was a Central American blend. The nutty notes advertised on the label of the coffee bag came off as more of a caramel to me. It was smooth and refreshing, an excellent fuel for the ride home.

I didn’t just come all this way for coffee, though. I came here for context. What’s the town like? Who lives here, and why? A short trip up north via Rolling Stone Road takes you into Kylertown. I looked in vain for a definable ‘downtown’ here, but the town simply sprawls through the isolated valley it’s nestled inside. A little league field, a senior center, a Presbyterian church, and a meeting hall were all I could find, and they were spread out apart from each other. Even so, the backdrop of rolling green hills makes me want to park somewhere and learn where the good hiking spots are. There have to be a lot of them here!

I’d have loved to have learned its history. Someone had to have founded Kylertown. If there’s a senior center, it means people are living their entire lives here (or else moving away and coming back). If there are active farms, people make, craft, sow, and harvest. It’s not a decaying coal town. I could live in a place like this, but only if I met my true love or found my perfect calling. Maybe they have. Now I definitely want to hear the stories that make Kylertown what it is: Unknown to most. Dear to a few.

This puts a few fascinating aspects of the coffeehouse in context. For one, the background music playing in the coffeehouse was almost certainly Christian. We’ve seen that before, though. Country culture makes its own peace with the modernity intrinsic to the coffeehouse as a phenomenon. This coffeehouse looks quite modern inside, though not thoroughly so, and it’s not as urbane as the one in Phillipsburg. There’s a feel of potential energy here. It’s waiting to happen. I think these people can make it happen, whatever the ‘it’ of this cafe’s future might be.

Regarding the last, I wonder what the artistic underground is like in this area. Who showed up to the attempt to have an open mic? What did they want to get off their chests in verse? Were their thoughts innocent or edgy? In a world of institutionalized edge and government-sponsored revolt, by all sides, against all sides, innocence is avant-garde. Authenticity is a function of the assumptions and ideologies it rejects, not the ones it condones, since any a priori (presupposed) belief system insists upon itself as complete fact, and thus it brooks no dispute. Coffee culture asks the questions. It’s carried the torch of truth for five hundred years. Reasoning minds finding truth wherever it lies is the only real rebellion. Those thinkers can be found everywhere.

On the way home, I was struck by the contrast between Clearfield and Centre Counties. The Penn State machine touches everything in Centre County. Massive buildings and cranes can be seen as you crest the hills surrounding Happy Valley. I’m more certain than ever that Phillipsburg is touched by the cosmopolitanism thrust upon it by the flood of college students into what is otherwise wilderness. Clearfield County borders Centre, but they’re far apart in culture. From lifestyle to architecture, Clearfield has kept its bucolic, backwoods nature intact.

This is not the end of the Journey: Far from it. I’ve been doing this for about twelve years now. I see no reason to stop. When we set off on the all-day round-trip into the Wilds, I couldn’t help wondering: Is this the beginning of summer, or is it the end of winter? The date of this expedition was April 21st, and cold was just giving way to warmth. Trees were just going from totally brown to slightly green, the verdure creeping up mountainsides as the days wore on.

Upon reflection, this day wasn’t the first or last of anything. It was just another day in a string of them. So, now that this segment is formally at a close, we find that it really isn’t. The Journey goes wherever we want it to as long as there’s gas in the tank and caffeine on the horizon. Tomorrow is sooner than you think.

Until then, stay caffeinated.