Mountain Summits…

A great pleasure in life for me is being able to hike to the summit. After a morning coffee, we stuff our backpacks with granola bars and water and follow the signs to trails, places often visited many times before.

It’s not only the trail itself which guides us to new elevations, but all that surrounds us; the trees, the rocks and weather changes. One trail in North Carolina called Rough Ridge, I’ve hiked countless times. But each visit to the summit—only reached by a wooded pathway that intersects the Mountain-to-Sea trail and climbs wooden stairs and rocky boulders to an Appalachian high of 4,500 feet—feels new to us.

One trip begins in morning sun giving warmth to a chilled late Autumn day, leaving a color palette of golden yellow. Yet another trip brought high winds the higher we climbed. Dark clouds moved in over the nearest ridge and sent us scuttling for ponchos and moving quickly down to sheltered woodlands below. The day ending with the simmer of hot soup simmering in a slow-cooker back at camp.

A few week ago, my wife and I returned to this place. As our aging legs rose quickly to the challenge, we stopped for a sip of spring water and turned to see where we had been hiking so diligently. There again was something new. Today, it was the clouds. They drifted silently across the valleys below, the only sound was a bee working a patch of nearby flowers; a light wind across the valley.

I dropped my pack, captured the image and stopped to watch the scene unfold. Better than any book, movie or melody of music, this was like nothing experienced before. It was silent nature forming its own work of art.

No earbuds were needed.