Hiking: Climbing Berlin's Mount Jasper

It is always nice to combine two activities when you are visiting a town further afield, and that’s what I did a few weeks ago in Berlin. In the morning I went to Mass at the Russian Orthodox church, a cultural experience a couple friends had recommended, and that I have been meaning to do for a while. In the afternoon I climbed Mount Jasper (1,597 feet).

It was an interesting day where a doorway to the past seemed to have been left ajar. The Russian church was founded in 1915. There were 300 Russian men who had left the old country to work at the Brown Paper Co. and had settled in the town with their families. Thinking of the family’s spirituals needs, the Brown Co. donated land below the cliff of Mount Forist on the edge of town where the church was then built, onion domes and all.