With my entire family out of the country, I fled to the hills and did my first-ever overnight on the Standing Stone Trail. Arriving at about 6:30pm on Tuesday and heading home at about 12:30pm on Thursday, Independence Day.
The evening views out over the wide farming valleys of central Pennsylvania were well worth a three-hour drive from Pittsburgh. This is looking east toward the tidy, quaint little borough of Belleville, where all the houses are stately and as big as high schools, and there are nearly as many Amish buggies as there are pickup trucks.
I took a little gravel lane out of the hamlet of Allensville and up onto the mountaintop to meet the trail. But the trouble with Stone Mountain is that, though it's state forest land, and you’re allowed to camp almost anywhere on its ridge line, the pitch is so steep and rocky that there aren’t many places you could pitch a tent. I did manage to find a level area with a fire ring just north and downhill from a rock feature known as The Wall—which commands a nice view westward and is a good place to watch the sunset.
An even better westward panorama can be found at Sausser’s Pile, the enormous heap of boulders pictured here. As evening came on, both nights, a number of wood thrushes and one distant owl sang their benediction over the dark. The evensong of the forest. No night in the woods is completely satisfying without it. Otherwise the woods up there on the mountaintop was hushed, almost reverent. It got quieter the later it grew. The many flies and mosquitoes seemed to go to bed early. There was none of the usual weirdness about sleeping out in the forest alone. You know, the nighttime thoughts that solitude brings on--is there a bear nearby; is someone watching me from behind a tree? This place has a profound peace to it.
Even though I was here over July 4, and the nearby state parks seemed to have attracted crowds (with the exception of Penn Roosevelt, to be mentioned in a future post), I met not another soul on the Standing Stone Trail. I do not go to the woods to meet people, and it was glorious to have this magnificent place all to myself. But it made me wonder a bit. Where are all the people? Shouldn't there be more than a single hiker out on the 4th of July weekend?
Again, this is the view from Sausser's Pile, which might have been my favorite spot on that stretch of trail. I loved the way the clouds cast shadows over the canopy of the forests in the valley below. It was hot, crazy hot, though far less hot up on the summit. The clouds didn't seem to move at all. They just hung there like formless sculptures in the sky.
I did break a backcountry rule by spending two nights in one spot, since camp sites are so hard to come by on this steep and rocky terrain. I want so badly to do the whole trail, but I'm afraid. Even just two nights out there were pretty grueling in the kind of heat we're having. I wanted a brook-bath so badly both nights, but had to use disposable bath wipes for the absence of any streams. (Those little wipe-things couldn't begin to wash away the dirt and smell!) And because water is so scarce on ridges, I had to pack it in, which added a lot of weight to my pack. I was shocked and dismayed to learn that it's only two miles from Allensville Road to the Little Vista (first photo). It truly felt more like five miles to me. It's not just age. I'm only 49. It's an old family banshee that I'll just call "the palsy," eating away at me more rapidly than I'd expected. I wonder if I'll ever do this whole trail.
No comments:
Post a Comment