Week Summary: Dec 3 - 12

We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm , making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh and bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun -- a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal. Just now I can hardly conceive of any bodily condition dependent on food or breath any more than the ground or the sky. How glorious a conversion, so complete and wholesome it is, scarce memory enough of old bondage days left as a standpoint to view it from! In this newness of life we seem to have been so always. Through a meadow opening in the pine woods I see snowy peaks about the headwaters of the Merced above Yosemite. How near they seem and how clear their outlines on the blue air, rather in the blue air; for they seem to be saturated with it. How consuming strong the invitation they extend! Shall I be allowed to go to them? Night and day I'll pray that I may, but it seems too good to be true. Someone worthy will go, able for the Godful work, yet as far as I can I must drift about these lovemonument mountains, glad to be a servant of servants in so holy a wilderness. ~ John Muir (My First Summer in the Sierra)

Piles of Falling Leaves

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute?  We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.  Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?" ~ Henry David Thoreau

It's amazing where one will find their thoughts if they truly allow their mind to freely wander. It's funny and peculiar that very few things in life, perhaps only a handful but some of the best of things, don't depend on anything of your will or persistence. They are best left to be what it was they were always drifting towards, just as leaves once on trees now fluttering and floating in shades of new color. There is a tense excitement to the uncertainty in the unknown moments of these things, an agitated but serene patience to what has yet to come. And it's not that you expect anything of it, or even that you are set in desire, but more so that there is some slight glimmer of hope in the what-if that catches your eye like the rays of sun on those falling leaves. Yet, you're not searching or grasping for anything. As long as you genuinely let the wind carry you in those moments it's bound to end up at that something beautiful.

That sort of lost in the moment, striding down a mountain, beautiful day, first kiss energy. Inch of Dust by Future Islands

Early Fall

Let your walks now be a little more adventurous; ascend the hills. If, about the last of October, you ascend any hill in the outskirts of our town, and probably yours, and look over the forest, you may see - well, what I have endeavored to describe. All this you surely 'will' see, and much more, if you are prepared to see it, - if you 'look' for it. Otherwise, regular and universal as this phenomenon is, whether you stand on the hilltop or in the hollow, you will think for threescore years and ten that all the wood is, at this season, sere and brown. Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them; for there is no power to see in the eye itself, any more than in any other jelly. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all our lives. The gardener sees only the gardener's garden. Here, too, as in political economy, the supply answers to the demand. Nature does not cast pearls before swine. There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, - not a grain more. ~ Henry David Thoreau (Autumnal Tints)


The AT is at its best in the fall, how anyone chooses to thru-hike it in the middle of the summer rather than sooner or later is beyond me; the colors, the wind drifting leaves as they fall to their resting places, the cooler nights, clearer skies, stiffening breeze. They don't compare to a summer in the Sierra, but they allow the common man a simple accessible escape, serving as a gateway to new places and a love for the outdoors.

Annapolis Rocks, view south

Annapolis Rocks, view south

Black Rocks, view northwest

Black Rocks, view west, peering over the edge at the boulder field below

All There Is by Gregory Alan Isakov. Very fitting to the season.

can you show me a sign, without your body

The sun has just burst through the fog, and I hear bluebirds, song-sparrows, larks, and robins down in the meadow. The other day I walked in the woods, but found myself rather denaturalized by late habits. Yet it is the same nature that Burns and Wordsworth loved the same life that Shakspeare and Milton lived . The wind still roars in the wood, as if nothing had happened out of the course of nature.  The sound of the waterfall is not interrupted more than if a feather had fallen. Nature is not ruffled by the rudest blast-The hurricane only snaps a few twigs in some nook of the forest. The snow attains its average depth each winter, and the chicadee lisps the same notes. The old laws prevail in spite of pestilence and famine. No genius or virtue so rare & revolutionary appears in town or village,  that the pine ceases to exude resin in the wood, or beast or bird lays aside its habits. How plain that death is only the phenomenon of the individual or class. Nature does not recognize it, she finds her own again under new forms without loss . Yet death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident - It is as common as life. Men die in Tartary, in Ethiopia - in England - in Wisconsin. And after all what portion of this so serene and living nature can be said to be alive? Do this year's grasses and foliage outnumber all the past. Every blade in the field - every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up. It is the pastime of a full quarter of the year. Dead trees sere leaves - dried grass and herbs - are not these a good part of our life? And what is that pride of our autumnal scenery but the hectic flush - the sallow and cadaverous countenance of vegetation - its painted throes - with the November air for canvas. When we look over the fields are  we not saddened because the particular flowers or grasses will wither - for the law of their death is the law of new life. Will not the land be in good heart because the crops die down from year to year? The herbage cheerfully consents to bloom, and wither, and give place to a new. So it is with the human plant. We are partial and selfish when we lament the death of the individual, unless our plaint be a paean to the departed soul, and a sigh as the wind sighs over the fields, which no shrub interprets into its private grief. One might as well go into mourning for every sere leaf - but the more innocent and wiser soul will snuff a fragrance in the gales of autumn, and congratulate Nature upon her health. After I have imagined thus much will not the Gods feel under obligation to make me realize something as good. Only Nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent.  ~ "excerpt of a letter" by Henry David Thoreau

Fall is without a doubt, certainly my favorite season. The fragrance, the progressive change of the colors of the leaves decorating deciduous trees,  the dancing leaves drifting about, the cooling air temperatures, the vanishing humidity, the clearing skies, and the peculiar feeling of Nature's coming to life, though the leaves are  actually dying. I do believe all the characteristics of Fall's arrival above help remind us of pieces of our lives, and though significant and a breath of life, are much more a part of something grander and to the point of being, of life and death, as Thoreau so cleverly puts it.

just north of Turner's Gap looking south, the mountain shrouded in clouds at center is Lamb's Knoll. You can see it's spire at top when viewed closely, the AT runs only a few dozen feet from the summit

I can never abstain from Phantogram for any real length of time.

All Dried Up by Phantogram. Best when loud.

The Woods of Late Summer

Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was Aeolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never felt lonesome, or in the least bit oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I though no place could ever be strange to me again. ~Henry David Thoreau (Walden)

Mountain Laurel lined trail

Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes.

Eastern Hemlock

Let us spend one day deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry - determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet or shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business. ~ Henry David Thoreau (Walden)


Eastern Hemlock is a medium sized evergreen tree with slightly dropping crown leader. It generally grows 60-70' in height, and 1.5-3' in diameter, though many older specimens reach heights of 100'-150' with a diameter of 5'. The oldest recorded specimen was 554 years old, and tallest recorded specimen 173'. It inhabits the Appalachian mountains from northern Georgia north into Maine, and west into Canada surrounding the Great Lakes area. It can be found on moist slopes, in rocky areas, as well as narrow stream valleys, at elevations 0-5,900ft.  Its needles are 1/4"-1/2" long, dark green in color above, and white lined beneath. They form flat in cross section, arranged in two rows. Its cones are 1/2"-3/4" long, brown, ovoid, with round scales, hanging from the end of twigs. The invasive Asian insect pest, the hemlock woolly adelgid, infest these trees, killing them off in just a few years, threatening its population.

Eastern Hemlock can be seen on right

Ragged Wood by Fleet Foxes

The Priest, Maintop, Spy Rock & Three Ridges

 What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. ~ Henry David Thoreau (Walden)

The Priest defines the outline of the surrounding skyline, its summit 4063' preaching, standing ~3100' from the trailhead at its base. Not more than a couple hours from D.C. and it feels as if I reached another country, escaped a world of pavement, steel, material excess, and false comforts.

The ascent is ever changing. I float up the winding smooth singletrack, but the last mile is humbling, with brutal high stepping rocks and poor footing. I've been reduced to a fumbling power hike. 4mi, 3600' and 1:05 later I summit (avg 20% grade), and I suddenly feel the breeze and taste the air, as if my mind was too consumed to notice it in my wave of adrenaline. From the summit I can see Three Ridges Mtn, 3870', which ascends from the same trailhead, and I am over struck with the desire to simply sit, and stare off into the distant horizon.

I trot my way from the Priest's summit over to Maintop Mtn 4050', and down to Spy Rock 3860'. Standing, gazing out from Spy Rock all I can point my thoughts to is the under appreciated beauty, a lost but timeless front of american pastime. It is here that I can not help but look back. As I gaze I ponder, wondering the last time a Native American looked out, perhaps in this same location over these same peaks, and contemplated when the land on which he had built his life would no longer stand free . It is now I look to them, listening, searching for what preaching they have left, what broken words of wisdom they have yet to speak.

I pass small groups of day and weekend hikers, cringing under the 50lb+ packs that aesthetically define them as far from the minimalist ideal. Selfish that I want these mountains to myself during the moments I spend with them, when it is the divorce from such simplicity that people are sick from, though I am afraid that divorce implies that there was such a relationship between the mass of man and the natural world surrounding him, but it seems that this sense of Thoreauvian oneness is really only grasped and felt with such seclusion.

I leave with a sense that this place, and I, await my imminent return. Whether my feet grace the tops of these peaks again, or whether my eyes greet them from a far distant peak I cannot say, but what I am sure of is the sense of timeless being this place invokes.

This route's totals: 18mi, 3hr30min, ~6400' (last 4.3mi are all decent), on Appalachian Trail. Knee (IT band) felt surprisingly ok, and actually felt fine the next day, a good sign for a slow coming recovery. Over the next two weeks or so I'll really start to push and see how much I can up the volume in all respects.

Below is the elevation profile for the first half of the run: this was an out and then back.

The ascent of Three Ridges Mtn, is 6miles from the base to the summit. I ran a little past the summit to high rock vista, the pictures should more than show why.

Shape Shifter  by  Local Natives