Mt. Beacon

Mount Beacon is one of the best vantage points in the Hudson Highlands. Approach from the west and you can also get a fun rock scramble similar to nearby Breakneck Ridge on the way up. On a clear day, from the open rocky summit or the cabin of the fire tower, you'll see, going roughly counterclockwise, starting with the west:

• Schunnemunk Mountain directly opposite the Hudson River, formed into a wedge shape by whatever intersecting tectonic forces caused the Appalachian Mountain chain to bend at this spot.
• A birds-eye perspective on the Hudson Highlands: the river itself coming in and out of view between the rounded but rugged small mountains it has cut through. Rising from the opposite bank are Storm King’s steep profile and, further south, the fun hiking terrain around Bear Mountain.
• Down the river, getting hazy with distance, the curving Palisades ridge, its cliff face reaching the shore near the Tappan Zee.
• NYC’s skyline marking the mouth of the Hudson and the opening up of the invisible Atlantic Ocean.
• Rolling wooded terrain in Fahenstock State Park.
• The rocky, scrubby ridge you are on top of extending to the northeast, the horizon behind it almost flat but marked with a few shapes of the New England uplands.
• The bridges at Newburgh and Poughkeepsie over the Hudson stretched out in its long valley.
• The west bank of the Hudson with distant mountains: the street grid of Newburgh extending inland from the water’s edge, a wide open space behind it framed by the Shawangunk Ridge, bulky and white cliff striped and trailing off into the distant southwest exurban farm country of Sussex County, NJ, and the Catskills far away.
• The Catskills hazy and distant, the Slide Mountain area hidden in fog but the south slopes of the Devils Path range (Indian Head, Twin and Sugarloaf Mountains) illuminated in their white snowy contours, seeming part earth, part sky.
  

Consider this quote from The Great Gatsby, but replace “city” with “Catskills” and “Queensboro Bridge” with “Hudson Highlands”: “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world.”

I write now in my NYC apartment, the reality of the day’s experience fading, to understand my desire, in an attempt through understanding to possess at a distance. In the Hudson Highlands, I want to explore every acre of rock, stream, swamp and mountain laurel covered hillside, especially in Harriman. I could live nearby, maybe Rockland County. I plan to venture to the Catskills occasionally, but mostly to catch them on the far horizon as a spiritual more than a physical reality.

Why, reader, do you think it seems so important to come back to these places?