Clearing Brush: RAF Camping at Clarion

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Clearing Brush: RAF Camping at Clarion

As it turns out, I’d been training all summer for the Recreational Aviation Foundation work party at KAXQ.

Our front yard hosts an absolute tyranny of thistle that springs back into life each year, starting in April and not letting up until the frost hits the pumpkin. Just when I think I have it all pulled, down to the tap roots, a few miscreant spikes push through the mulch and taunt me.

The spines prickle and irritate, so my RAF-issued work gloves have had no less than four sessions already of bending and turning soil and pulling carefully to get the most noxious stuff out.

The path to the RAF work party took us 120 nm to the northeast on a pretty late August Saturday. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

The Cessna 182 has been here for camping fun before us. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

And that’s almost exactly the task assigned to me first when we taxied onto the ramp at Clarion County Airport, in western Pennsylvania. We secured the Cessna 182, walked through the FBO, and saw the wooded entrance to the camping site across the parking lot, not a football field length away.

RAF liaison for PA/WV Chip Vignolini hailed us from behind his truck, and promptly introduced us to co-liaison for PA Andrew Turner and sons Caleb and Josh, who would be working on building a lean-to for firewood, and splitting the logs piled up on the ground nearby. Right on our heels, RAF volunteer Doug Turnbull flew in and parked his Piper Cruiser next to us, and along with us was given the task of clearing the brush along the banks of the pond.

What pond?

Before the brush clearing around the pond, you would have no idea the pond was there! [Credit: Julie Boatman]

Andrew Turner, RAF co-liaison for PA, recruited his sons Josh and Caleb, into lending a hand, and they were awesome. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

You couldn’t see it through the thicket of black locust trees, ragweed, and other scrub that had sprouted up since the last time Andrew and crew had tackled the area. They all had to go. So we rolled up our sleeves, and Stephen grabbed a strimmer (a weed-whacker to non-Brits), and we went to it.

The bench with a newly cleared view at KAXQ, just in time to say hello to the birds stopping by on migration southbound. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

Kim Eaton, Andrew, Josh, and Doug Trumbull contemplate the utility of the wheelbarrow. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

Two hours later, we not only could see the pond, but the area around the bench was clean as a whistle. We took a break from hauling brush to the other side of the camping area and throwing it into the forest, and then S took on his next assignment: grilling lunch. I worked on finding and clearing the trail supposedly circling the area. I found an old tree stand…and a lot of marshy weeds. But with more of S’s strimming work, a semblance of a path came out of the woods.

Round about noon, the burgers and hot dogs were ready on Chip’s portable grill, and everyone took a load off to enjoy the lunch al fresco. The young men had the shelter framed up, placed nearly equidistant from the twin RAF fire rings already in place. All it needed now was the aluminum roof secured and the RAF sign placed at the entrance to the camping area.

A shiny new sign was posted near the entrance to the camping area, alerting pilots to its location, as well as its benefactor. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

The camping area at Clarion Country Airport hosts enough room for quite a few folks to pitch a tent. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

Caleb and Chip drive in posts for the firewood lean-to. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

And that’s the story of most RAF work parties. You don’t need special skills (though if you have them, you’ll be assigned accordingly), and the most important thing to bring is a great attitude, some perseverance, and a tough pair of work gloves. With just eight folks pitching in, we conquered the task list in just a few hours.

We departed right after lunch to beat the potentially building thunderstorms along the Appalachian spine between KAXQ and our home airport at Hagerstown. Once more, we were spent physically but emotionally filled back up from the shared effort.

As it turns out, the airplane had visited KAXQ before, bringing its owners to explore the biking and hiking trails that thread throughout the forest south of the airport, all the way to the Clarion River.

One of two RAF fire rings installed at the camping site for pilots at Clarion County Airport. [Credit: Julie Boatman]

The camping area at KAXQ is circled in RAF orange. [Credit: The RAF Airfield Guide]

Upon talking with Andrew and Chip, they filled us in on how unsung the place was, and mostly empty for much of the year. Though the camping area gets good use during the fall, there are still plenty of times when it doesn’t. And they’d love to see more folks take advantage of the easy access from the airport (which has lots of tie-downs, and self-serve fuel) and the quiet natural beauty that surrounds the place.

We’ve joined work parties before, twice at Moose Creek USFS in Idaho, and those strips get a lot of attention. But it’s the ones close by—Clarion is just 120 nm from home for us—that will entice us throughout the year.

They all deserve our loving care.

For more information on these incredible places, check out the RAF’s Airfield Guide. And to find a way you can help the RAF preserve and maintain airstrips and aircraft camping areas around the country, join them here.