Where would you go?

I’m starting to think that opportunties like this don’t happen that often in a lifetime and when they do most people are usually too complacent to take advantage of them.

When he asked me Friday if I was up to a three mile hike before hand I said yes again. Three miles isn’t a very long distance. Three miles seemed fairly easy.

When we arrived at Bear Mountain Inn, with green as far as the eye could see and mountains ascending all around us, he explained that we’d be traveling on a valley between the two nearest mountains and a short hike up one to the “shelter” where camping was permitted. I felt prepared ready to conquer the world.

Within the first half hour it seemed we were only going up. Where was the valley?

That was when I realized that Rhodie was not to be trusted. Rhodie was a professional masochist that was deriving pleasure from my pain. I tried not to complain. Sweat poured down my face within that first hour. I lagged back. I let out a few “this is harder than I expected,” between ragged breathes. My legs started to burn. We reached a creek just as clouds in the sky began to gather. Rhodie consulted the map. “Its pretty much straight up from here.”

Wait…weren’t we already going straight up? Nope, apparently not.

“The thing about the trails along the Appalachian is that its more difficult, most of the other trails zig zag up to lessen the impact. Around here they just go straight up,” He explained. I’m paraphrasing because I couldn’t really hear him, all the blood was pounding in my ears. I was too busy focusing on not collapsing. Apparently we were going all the way to the top, I don’t believe these are minor enough details to leave out of the “would you like to go camping next weekend” question

When we reached the bottom of one such area that went “straight up”, comprised entirely of rocks and made more slippery by the beginning of the rain fall and the dampness in the air, he turned to me and asked if I hated him. I shook my head. I couldn’t actually form words at that point. I kept thinking back to before, when I could talk, how I kept saying things like, “Let’s do this” and “I’m ready if you are.”

I didn’t actually mean any of that. (maybe I’d been delirious).

When we reached the bottom of another such steep incline I said, “If the top isn’t after this, I’m going to punch you in the face.”

Later he said he thought that I meant it. I think that I did.

It wasn’t.

At some point after all the upwards bound movement I finally hit my wall and passed it. This was characterized by a fall to the ground and immobilization for a few minutes while I tried to figure out where I was, oh right, the side of a mountain. Hiking with a crazy person. Once I got up, took a short break and cooled down I felt like I had come out on the other side. I had come this far. I could do this (I was also a little doubtful that there was, actually, a top to be reach).

Not too long afterwards we did finally reached the top. I can honestly say that I haven’t felt so accomplished in a long time. The air had cooled down. We could see the lightening and the rain storms in the distance, but I can’t quite say that either of us cared (don’t worry it wasn’t soo easy for him either), we sat and enjoyed the views. We smoked a cigarette. We pitched a tent.

And then I exacted my own revenge. I drank him under the table.

I think his trek down might of been as bad as my trek up.

All in all, despite all my retroactive complaining it was a fairly fantastic weekend. Everything was lovely and amazing (I appreciated it all more on our way back down). Bunches of white flowers had bloomed all along the trail. Dragon flies whirled around us. Little toads hopped under foot. There were the trees and the grass and the moss and all of it greener than green. The kind of vibrant colors that I had forgotten existed outside of photographs.

There is nothing quite like nature to give your imagination a stir, to remove you from life’s problems and kick your ass a little to restore some perspective.

If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Virginia was by far the most beautiful portion of the trip, and at the risk of sounding horribly cliched I will describe the Appalachian mountains as best I can: There is no other way to see the country except by car, since everything is a blur and places have lost their significance, the reasons we go within the US seems to have all the wrong motivations to really experience and appreciate everything beautiful there is to offer. I have no friends that have made trips to Niagra Falls and the Grand Canyons as adults. Every one is off to gamble in Vegas or to the beach or to visit friends, but no one is going to see the mountains or stare at a gorge and to feel the immenseness of the country. So it is by road now that suddenly we can see and take in, when there is nothing left to distract us, the beauty of the mountains that we forgot existed. There on the roads, which wound up and down through the hillside like man-made valleys, yet marked by pavement instead of rivers, suddenly one could feel small and the force of history baring down and not forget the importance of things. Not forget the passage of time. I saw on my journey old and rusty shells of trucks and tractors sitting sloped on the hillside, almost forgot yet in front stood the mark of the modern age in the shape of a misplace billboard. The tree covered mountains rising up through the fog and hugged by clouds that looked as soft as dreams, more rounded than the Rockies, just like I’d learned in school. I saw it it all and it was enough that I wanted to sit down by the side of the road and cry, that all these things could be nearby and yet so far, and that somehow we’d lived our whole lives without seeing them.
  

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself… “Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.”…The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.-Henry David Thoreau, Walden