A few miles from Wolf Rocks Overlook is this place, known as Beam Rocks Overlook. This is just off the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail. It was a perfect day to be in the upland forests, blustery, crisp, and clear, with just enough clouds to keep the skies in constant motion. The bright Octoberlands stretch out many miles below.
It's a completely different kind of place from Wolf Rocks for two reasons. First, you can see a lot further from here than from Wolf Rocks. The view is much broader. But from Wolf Rocks, all you see is woods. From Beam Rocks, you look east out over the undulating farmland of Somerset County. It's out in those woodlots and fields that Flight 93 went down. Click on these photos to enlarge them.
Much of the trail from Wolf Rocks to Beam Rocks is a former public roadway once known as Old Rector Edie Road. It starts off grassy, but soon becomes almost impassable with mud from logging trucks. The nearby village is a picturesque little place called Rector. My guess is that the road runs from Rector to another hamlet named Edie.
But the name "Old Rector Edie Road" created a pleasant visual image in my mind. I imagined that the road got its name because it once ran past the home of a village rector named Edith--"Edie" for short, an elderly woman with wire rim glasses and a single silver braid wrapped around the top of her head like a crown. Of course, there haven't been female rectors in the world for very long, certainly not long enough to have disused Pennsylvania lanes named after them. There could have been a Rector Eddy in former times, but not a Rector Edie, like the clergywoman I dreamed up. Too bad, I liked her.
Beam Rocks are only one mile from a segment of Old Rector Edie Road that's open to public motor travel. If you didn't want to hike as far as I did, you could park on the roadside and hike a mile to the rocks and a mile back.
No comments:
Post a Comment