Summer Summits

Apologies for the cobwebs you may see hanging from this page. It’s been a hot second since this blog has gotten some fresh text, and as I’ve said before, the main reasoning for slumps in posts is mainly due to periods in my life without traveling, as this is what inspires my purest and most enjoyable form of writing.

However, the end of my summer was jam packed with family gatherings, chasing eclipses, mountain peaks, and a lot of good music. I’ve also had the extraordinary privilege to teach poetry and tie dye art, as well as assist in clay arts for eight weeks as an instructor at The Village of Arts and Humanities at my new home in North Philadelphia. That time spent teaching helped prepare my mind for the final few semesters of my a clinical counseling master’s degree.

One of the great experiences I had between witnessing the full solar eclipse with family in South Carolina, touring through Asheville, NC and a stopover at LocKn music festival in Virginia was summiting the highest peak East of the Mississippi; Mt. Mitchell, located in Black Mountain National Forest in North Carolina. With a full load on my back it took me just over four hours on the climb up, and just over half that on the way down, stopping to setup camp on the descend.

The summit of Mt. Mitchell was quite the paradox, because while some like myself were just arriving from a day long hike, others had opted to drive up to the parking lot that sits at the top of the mountain. While they took pictures and ate concession stand food, I sprawled out on one of the flat spots to catch my breath and take off my hiking shoes. I stayed up there for about an hour, just enough time to take in a three hundred and sixty-degree view of the sunset across the Great Smokey and Appalachian Mountains.

At the top I thought about all the different people at the top of that mountain, how we all came from different walks of life, but managed to meet at this one moment. Some may have taken the easy route, some of us the harder, potentially more fulfilling route. Whatever the path, we all have the opportunity to experience the great awe of what nature has provided us, and we realize this is an innate pursuance, to explore the beauty that surrounds us.

The one thing about being on the road and being away from technology, the news and masses of people is you see yourself and everything for what it is, without some blurry political lens or amped up coworker trying to convince you one way or another. You get to view your own life from a literal distance, and this often is the best way to see clearly. If your able to successfully separate yourself from devices and other attachments back home you may realize you can still be happy without them, and that truly, you lack nothing to do so.