My fall vacation to western Pennsylvania and Maryland ended Monday. It included four days of backpacking, followed by four days exploring the old National Road, the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, two Frank Lloyd Wright houses and half a dozen forts from the French and Indian War.

I’ll write about a few of those things next week. Right now, my thoughts keep turning to a gray, cold, windswept field a couple of miles north of Shanksville, Pa. It’s where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, killing all onboard, including the four hijackers who had planned to crash the Boeing 757 into the U.S. Capitol or the White House.

Thanks to on-board telephones and calls to loved ones, the passengers learned about the simultaneous terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, also using passenger jets.

Facing certain death, the unarmed passengers shouted “Let’s roll!” and broke through the cockpit door to try to regain control of the plane. By attacking their captors, they died as heroes.

I had never heard of the memorial before. The other stops on the trip had been planned months in advance by an old friend of mine (and fellow hiker) Greg Pierce. He lives in Silver Spring, Md., and writes for The Washington Times.

We were heading east on U.S. 30 (the old Lincoln Highway), en route to Bedford, when we saw a sign: “Flight 93 National Memorial, 5 (miles).” The arrow pointed south, toward Shanksville. As soon as we saw the sign, we knew we had to go there.

Lambertsville Road twists and turns through typical Pennsylvania countryside. At Skyline Road, you take a left, past a gritty recycling center full of heavy equipment and mounds of scrap metal. A little further, to the left, is the “Flight 93 National Memorial,” now owned and operated by the National Park Service. More than 150,000 people visit each year.

The temporary memorial consists of a sign, an American flag, a parking lot, a building the size of a one-car garage, and hundreds of little mementoes left behind by visitors and the families of crash victims. Volunteer curators tell the story of the flight as they flip through color photos that fill a three-ring binder. They show aerial photos of the crash site, of the burned and twisted wreckage, and of emergency personnel who rushed to the scene.

About 25 people were there when we were there. They listened silently, then looked out across Skyline Road to another American flag that marks the actual crash site. That area is enclosed by a fence, and only family members of the victims are allowed in.

It’s sacred ground. Thirty-three passengers, seven crew members, and four hijackers were torn to bits there, on land that had once been a landfill. The jet was en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco when the terrorists entered the cockpit and took control over eastern Ohio, then turned the plane southeast, toward Washington, D.C.

According to one phone call, passengers and crew took a vote and decided to try to retake the plane. The cockpit voice recorder, later recovered at the crash site, recorded the sounds of the assault on the cockpit door, loud thumps, shouts and breaking glass. The hijackers crashed the plane seconds before the passengers would have taken over the controls.

Flight 93 was traveling at 580 miles per hour when it hit. The impact was so tremendous that the nose of the plane went 40 feet into the earth; the fuselage instantly crumpled like an accordion and broke into a million pieces, taking all those lives with it.

Our guide, a woman named Connie, said that nearly all of the pieces of metal found were no bigger than a sheet of typing paper. Two-hundred recovery experts from the FBI spent weeks on their hands and knees, looking for anything they could find that could be used to identify the victims. Remarkably, DNA, clothing, credit cards and other bits of evidence identified every single passenger. Some of the pieces were found in nearby trees.

Later, the massive impact crater was covered over and planted in grass.

By the year 2011, the 10th anniversary of the crash, an access road will be built directly from U.S. 30. Engraved plaques will tell the story, a monument will be built listing the names of the dead, and a shaft will be erected to show the height of the plane. Two long walls will show the flight path of Flight 93.

The temporary, makeshift memorial moved me deeply. Next to the little building is a section of wire fence that serves as a display board for the little things that people leave.

There are lots of rain-soaked messages: “We love you.” “Never forget.” “They may have killed your bodies, but not your spirits.” There are bunches of flowers, some fresh, some artificial. People have left rosaries, St. Christopher medals, crucifixes, embroidered patches, baseball caps, firefighters’ helmets and photos of individual passengers. There’s a memorial plaque installed by a Boy Scout troop, and others donated by individuals, motorcycle clubs and the like. There are some angry messages for the hijackers, too: “Those cowards!”

In an instant, an anonymous field in rural Somerset County, Pa., became hallowed ground.

The unarmed passengers saved the nation’s U.S. Capitol Building, and possibly the White House. They saved the lives of countless government leaders, federal workers and rescue personnel.

They deserve whatever tribute we can give.

Danville native Kevin Cullen is a former Commercial-News reporter. Reach him at irishhiker@aol.com.