Didn't happen

New Thing December has been delayed following the change of the spin class schedule without my knowing. Try walking to the back of the gym to round the corner to the room where you think you remember the woman showing you on that day in July when you first got the tour and when you last went past the weight room. Somewhere down that long hallway past the mirrors is a locker room, a big exercise room, and a room for spinning. That spinning room was exactly where I thought it would be, yet, through the window, I saw dripping faces peddling in the dark to "ouonce, ouonce, ouonce" on the stereo. They had already started. They were even almost done. I was 40 minutes late.

But, in a minor new thing, that was my first ever evening visit to this gym. I normally never stay past 8am. Between 6 and 7am are my favorite times. It was a different crowd. The tvs were tuned to ESPN--all of them--and not FoxNews. There were people under 30 other than me. I felt out of place.

But if things work out for me, (fingers crossed) I'll have the option of going in the evening more often. And, now that I know spin class starts before 6, next week might bring my first class.

In the meantime, I'm trying to schedule appointments for my car, my hair, and my self in the next two weeks before Jedsen gets here. It's so unbelievably strange to think that I will see him--after nearly four months--in two weeks. His body will be standing here in this room with me. I will take him to my places, I will show him my sky. I will tiptoe around in the mornings, I will brew four cups of Cafe Verona. I will be held, held again, loved again in person.

New Thing December

It is my new mission to write here three times a week. Doable, I say.

It is my new mission to do one new thing a month. Thus, this is New Thing December. Tonight, I try my first spin class. Scary.

It is my new mission to cook things. Like in a crockpot. And in the oven. Like, with real food.

It is my new mission to make sure everything has its place and is in its place. Clutter clutters all.

It is my new mission to sleep through a night. To sleep well. To wake well. Waking is very important.

Close

I'm moon-gazing. There it is, shaded white, with romantic whisps of slow-moving clouds drifting from south to north. No one is in a hurry. No one but me. And to the right, there's my friend the BB&T building, lit. I pan for you. I pan my huge windows across east Spartanburg for you because this is what I know, this is what I see, this is what I feel.

The moon's outline is crisp. It is defined. Its edges do not blur, do not halo, do not speak of rain, even though it may rain tomorrow night. It is only bright. It is all that it is. It is more than a surface.

It is strange to think that tomorrow is Thanksgiving. There has been no homecoming for me this year. It has been a lead-up to a pause, tomorrow, between madness. I have been stressed, with life piling up for me to finish. I will not hug my grandparents tomorrow, and I don't like that. I will not tug at my mother to finish her cooking faster so we can get in the car and head to one of said grandparents' homes. I will not eat serving after serving of stuffing and sample three pies. I will not be cold tomorrow in Kansas.

But, instead, I will be in the East, in sixty degree weather, with my friends and this new city that, I must say, is just adorable all lit up for the holidays. You should visit. I'm grateful that I have a place here and I'm grateful for my place here. Snickers will get extra wet food tomorrow, and I'll let her scratch her claws into the hallway carpet a little longer tomorrow. And I'm going to walk/jog a Turkey Day 8k in the morning to benefit the food bank. I wish I could walk dogs, too, but the humane society is closed to volunteers.

Though I'm lonely, without Jedsen, without brother, without parents, without grandparents, I'm so lucky to be where I am. And I'm not really without. Just separated by a thousand miles.

Distance

I say "good morning" to the mountains. I tell them "hello." I say, "There you are." I breathe a sigh and smile.

How tired I am

After falling asleep on the couch while reading and watching Halloween specials on NBC, I made the conscious decision not to call Jedsen and say good night as I heavily moved from the couch to bed, electing begrudgingly to change into clothes that would be comfortable to sleep in. I didn't feel like I had the energy to speak. 

And so I fell asleep at 10pm on the night before Halloween. And this is what followed, transcribed by Jedsen in the moment because he knew what was happening, though I have absolutely no recollection of ever talking to Jedsen at all that night. None.

 

Saturday, October 30. After midnight.

 

Transcript

 

Jedsen: Hi, dream.

 

Kari: (inaudible)

 

Jedsen: Oh no, I didn't mean to wake you.  I just wanted to say goodnight.

 

Kari: (pause) Do you need something?

 

Jedsen: No, I was just saying goodnight.  You never called.

 

Kari: Oh.  I didn't know if you needed me to read something somewhere.

 

Jedsen: Say again?

 

Kari: I didn't know if you wanted me to read something somewhere.

 

Jedsen: (laughs) I think you’re asleep, dream.

 

Kari: (long groan)

 

Jedsen: (laughing) Well, I love you.  You get some sleep.

 

Kari: M’gay. 

 

Jedsen: And I do love you.

 

Kari: I love you.

 

Jedsen: Goodnight.

 

Kari: (groans)

 

Jedsen: (laughing) Mmm, bye-bye.

 

Kari: Bye. 

Creation

I'm getting back to it again. Writing. But I've been considering what it means to "write" lately. Writing. Is it a mindset, a goal, a verb? Is it creation of new or recreation or re-creation of what has already been written? Is it sitting down with a new mind every time, or is it returning to that which can work and discover? Is it love, surprise, a chore?

When you are no longer in a writing program, when you no longer have thesis, thesis, thesis, dripping down your back, when your MFA diploma is leaned against the wall, still in its mailing envelope, on the top of your dresser, are you now, or still, or finally, a writer? I wondered that all along, whether my writing was real. Whether I was writing and meant to be writing or writing to do it and accomplish and accomplish and succeed. I knew this after would be the test. Would I write when I no longer had to? Would I write by choice? What would I create?

It has been difficult here. I haven't questioned my desire to write--only my ability and discipline. And here, in this whirlwind of a life, set here in the Piedmont of South Carolina, in the distant shadows of the Blue Ridge, in the deep starlessness of a city, amid two jobs and a fractured mind, writing has been a struggle. It has been that thing that scrawled itself on my desk, facing the double windows where I wanted it and needed it, under Snickers exposed belly and the heat of a computer set on Internet. Writing has shown up and hidden itself in notebooks all over--my writing is as scattered as my self. It wants to be writing but is sometimes journal. Journal sometimes becomes writing but more often becomes complaint, list, new deals with myself, with health and love. Writing sometimes becomes something--inspired--but then I walk away from it and start anew, unable to finish, to continue, to work toward a whole. All I have are pieces, and these old pieces--pieces from the thesis that are not what I want them to be--pieces that need put together, found and matched up, fractured and re-membered.

I have been here for nearly four months, and, at last, I am working on a whole. Revisioning a piece. I have merged two pieces and am trying to discover how they work together. They do, but how. Where. What do they mean?

This return to work, though I could see it coming, is a direct response to the fact that I have to read something in front of an entirely new audience one week from today. Spartanburg will hear my voice for the first time, these kind souls who publish and sell and love literature every day and asked me to be a part of it. And my voice, my rhythm, has changed slightly in the last six months since that thesis was turned in, since I really worked. What I read needs to reflect this newness, this fresh tinge of language.

Jedsen tells me I am no longer the nineteen year old he fell in love with. I have changed, he says. He no longer feels like he has to protect me, pity me in my smallness. He thinks I am a woman, a woman he loves. A woman whom he calls every day and talks about teaching, about writing, about loving, and missing, and tennis, and his parents who still make each other blush. I certainly feel different but not old enough. My brain feels stuck in fifteen, my eyes settled on a face of acne and fright. I have been trying to wear my hair differently lately, less straight, to feel less straight. To feel loose and open and alive and wise. Like a woman. Like one who knows. Like one who can.

Tell me, words, can I at least be free with you?

On waking

This morning I woke with a stomach ache, an ache that pushed into and from my back, to the sweet morning voices of NPR. They were raising money, I heard, and tried to break through to consciousness and press down into the mattress to exchange my ache for comfort. I heard that Tony Curtis had died, though I can't recall seeing him in any film other than the few minutes of Some Like it Hot that Jedsen showed me years ago. I woke to pain, fundraising, and death, and slanted my body toward the open window and the breeze, warmer now at dawn than it had been the night before.

Watching the sky change in the background of the BB&T skyscraper has become my favorite time of day. The few lights still glowing in the tower, and the pale beige of its stone, high, are transformed into this beautiful reflection or contrast or complement to the dawn. I cannot explain how it looks, only how it feels. It feels like this is the earth, new. There is this thing built by man first illuminated and changed, pulled out of the darkness through my bedroom window, each morning. It is in relief. It is surreal. It is the only living thing.

I want to stay in this moment all morning, swallow the image to keep it. But the sun comes, the blue lightens, and the tower becomes a mere tall building, its lights fading into the everything around it. It now longer glows, is distinct--beyond its height and still blinking red signals.

Snickers claws at my nose. Eats my hair. Stares. She has taken to licking me in the biting sort of way she does when she cleans herself. She leans down to my arm and pretends I am a kitten; I can feel the fronts of her teeth, her tongue pressed up against it and through for the more forceful cleaning. Perhaps this is a sign I should adopt another cat. Or a kitten. I would. And a dog, especially, if I could.

And this adoption thing, though it's been on my mind for some time now (again), is now forefront. I have just begun volunteering at the Spartanburg Humane Society, and last weekend was the orientation where we were told all of the statistics--incoming, outgoing, process, staff. I'm going to start out as a dog-walker, and training should be in a couple of weeks. I'm going to be a dog-walker for a couple of hours a week, though I don't know how I will stand to leave, how I will not have to compulsively walk every dog, how I will not, as I already have just by looking, fall in love with every dog that I walk.

I wake thinking of a morning walk with a dog, my dog. Up at dawn, at that best hour, walking for exercise, walking for happiness, walking for health and companionship. I would do it. But I already brush Snickers away at 6:30 when I should be getting up and ready for the gym. I already let NPR talk on and on without letting them complete, quickly, the job of waking they were sent to do. I already fail at going to the gym every morning now, and, mostly, making it by 7. I already lack the face of the man I love in the orange cast of morning, in the humid afternoon, in the shadowed clouds of sunset.

But I don't wake thinking alone. I wake smiling at dawn and its magic on the tower, the tower I have claimed, and grip the covers back under my neck, my head stretched up to catch the light.

We bring home

It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from. We bring home with us when we leave.

--Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Latte, White Mocha, White Mocha

My hands still smell like lattes. They smell like the waxy cups, like frappachino roast, like matcha. My hands just move and make and the fingers remember the grip of a cup, the heat of the steamed pitcher, the splashes of syrups.

Solitaire

Most of my wandering in the desert I've done alone. Not so much from choice as from necessity--I generally prefer to go into places where no one else wants to go. I find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too many others contemplating it with me, at the same time. However, there are special hazards in traveling alone. Your chances of dying, in case of sickness or accident, are much improved, simply because there is no one around to go for help.

--from Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

You'll be hearing from him again soon, here, for he resonates with me and what I'm doing out here.

In time he understood

In time he understood that nature was not something outside the human world. The reverse is true. Nature is the real world, and humanity exists on islands within it.

-from Anthill by EO Wilson

Literally

I can tell you that, in the last week, I've been to Kansas and back. Just like that. And it feels like it, too. Like just five minutes ago I was walking from the economy parking lot down the sidewalk to the entrance of the tiny and wonderful (though suspiciously lacking in water fountains) Greenville-Spartanburg Airport. A few seconds later I was in descent to Kansas City International Airport, watching the clouds thicken and thin from my window seat. I had been watching the clouds all afternoon, the texture of the upper surface, some tall, some fast, some grey, and the way the sun hit and colored. I had been thinking about the difference of below, how the earth below would be in shadow, under white and lacking sun, while, geographically, I was in the same place yet in an entirely different place. There was sun, blue sky, white only below. I had also been thinking about how wonderful it is that on a plane ride your only job is to gaze at clouds and ponder the earth.

It was in this mindset that I looked for the familiarity of Kansas. As I studied the clouds, we passed through them and, just below, they parted. I fixed on a football stadium below and tried to match the layout with stadiums I have known. First I thought Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, but it wasn't large enough. Then I thought a high school, but it seemed too large. I picked up on the southside building, bright sand, without stands and surveyed its surroundings. Green with more buildings of the same hue. Red roofs on some. Scattered yet close. And then I realized. It was Lawrence.

I searched East for Massachusetts street and found a clustered, lined road. Then North to where the Kansas River should be, flowing East, and found the seemingly still brown mass curving above the town. Just above the Kaw, I followed I-70 from Lawrence to the service station in the middle of lanes to the toll booth farther down yet before Exit 410 and the Speedway. The young UMKC student sitting next to me had been shifting restlessly throughout the short flight from Dallas, occasionally peering forward to see out our window. As we passed over my former home, I pointed down with my left thumb, grinning.

"That was Lawrence," I said, and he nodded, for we had already shared our brief back stories. I smiled and followed the lines of fields and farms, highways and rays of light from the scattered clouds as we closed in on the airport. Kansas only gained this beauty, to me, when I knew I was leaving. And now I was setting down again on this ground that I had left nearly three months before, relieved in the simple curve of the earth and the plotted paths of trees, if only because I missed it and what it still held for me.

Taxiing up to the gate, I texted Jedsen, "I'm here! I'm here! I'm here!" and looked out the window once more to trace the sun down to the ground. A rainbow had formed in the few minutes since we had landed. The right side touched down, centered in my window.

"There's a rainbow," I said to the boy next to me, pointing out again that which I loved.

"There must be a pot of gold down there," he said, shifting his backpack on his shoulders, ready to be on his home ground after three months in Mexico.

I nodded and wanted to walk with him out the terminal to where I hoped to find Jedsen waiting and point to him and say, "There's the man I love."

Blown: Kansas

Radial Home-Making

Light

From bed at night, as I try to sink my neck between the two pillows and wash my hips into the mattress, I gaze through the open blinds to the building that rises above the bank on the corner, above the library just beyond. The BB&T building, Spartanburg's lone skyscraper, stands as my nightly beacon. Rectangle with a rounded top, blinking red bulbs at either end, with jutting sculpted ledges near the top on each length, the building is the last face I see before sleep.

Always, there are lights high in the stories peeking out in the dark, somehow shaded and sketched into curves and, with eyes, a face. The first night I noticed him, from the horizontal angle of my bed, the face grinned, eyes steady and bright, with even a crease on the left side made by a phantom cheek. I smiled back. This friendly and familiar face warmed me, and I slept. Spartanburg seemed to be saying, you're not lonely, you're not alone. In the morning, at dawn, the eyes were gone but the grin remained, awaiting the sun at its back as the orange deepened. 



My first weekend in South Carolina was Jedsen's last, and we spent that Saturday on the French Broad River in a raft. Neither of us had been white water rafting before, and we decided that we wanted to live our last days together until our next visit (not thinking it would be a full ten weeks) among water and trees and mountains--all of which we had little of in Kansas. In Arkansas over New Years last year, our fifth anniversary, we had stayed in a cabin on Petit Jean Mountain in Arkansas, walking along Cedar Creek and hiking in our winter coats down to Cedar Creek Falls after breakfast on our last morning. We had been at peace there, in the cool but not cold, and among the ledges, cliffs, and water flowing downhill into more water and over falls. The water had been a wonder to us, a force that calmed and excited, bellowed and hushed, and, of course, claimed Jedsen water bottle.

On the French Broad, allegedly the third oldest river in the world, we rooted our feet in creases of the raft, seated across from each other and between two other couples and, at the back, a ten-year-old and Lilly, our guide. Lilly had been our entertainment on the bus ride down from the Nantahala Outdoor Center to the river, telling jokes about the road, the tobacco growing in rows, and the way the bus driver took the switchback turns. Though she instructed us perfectly--"All forward." "All back." "Forward 3." "Rest."--she didn't stop the jokes on the water.

"What's the difference between a raft guide and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family of four."

I would slowly turn my head around to her and smile, but my eyes rose with the tips of trees. I wanted to tell her to hush, let us hear the water and the leaves. I could tell Jedsen felt the same way. His chin jutted out from the strap of his helmet as if he were grinding his teeth while smiling. At once annoyance and peace.

Before each rapid, Lilly explained its name, its class, and how we might have to get through it. I learned to yearn for the Class II rapids, the biggest on our trip, and the rush of a small wall of white aimed at me. I wanted to be hit by the crushes of water, dip into them at the edge of falling over and rise, wet and beaming at the living.

Then again Lilly would speak, during the quiet between rapids, when the water lapped lightly and I watched the wash of boulders affect the surface of the water.

"How do you know when your raft guide is lying to you? When her lips are moving."

That much we had learned on the way down, that the stories were largely false and the knowledge of the river itself, the way it pursed and swayed, was the only truth.

About halfway down our stretch of the river, a five mile wrap through ancient pines, we ran our rafts to the side and stopped for Jump Rock. A skinny path of wet rock led up to a small ledge, jutted out over the river. The young ones were the first to jump. And Jedsen, who cannonballed off without much thought. I hung back in the water, walking chest-deep with my life jacket on and waiting in the pulse of the river. I have never been a jumper--fine and please at heights but not experiencing the distance between the height and below. Jumping wasn't really an option, the purposeful suspension of weight and the give in to gravity. But then the guide at the ledge, pushing people off and counting down to release, called for second rounders. And Jedsen said, "You're going to do it, right?" "No, no, no." "Well I'm going again." And then that feeling of life returned, that one that soaked my $5 canvas shoes from Walmart on that one spot on the French Broad, with Jedsen, and at the start of this new Southern life. So I climbed.

It was much higher from the ledge, and the water looked like thirty feet below, a muddy and unforgiving surface licking the rocks. I felt like if I jumped I would land instead on the rocks below, impaled or gasping for breath. The guide started counting. Three. "Oh God." It was one of those times, yes, of anticipation and fear and doubt and the knowledge that in two more counts something would happen, you didn't know what, and you would feel what you have never felt before, whether it be pain or laughter or love. And by the last count you know you're going, his hand is on the small of your back, and you might scream but you don't know, and you don't feel his push, but you see brown and more brown and then hear the clap around your ears and the turmoil of turning over in the water to again see the sky and the next person on the ledge as you shake your head of water and flap to find a balance and flap to get out of the way of the next jumper whom it takes a few seconds to realize is the man you love jumping too, after you.



Tonight the smile in the dark has no eyes, has left before the moon. And there are no stars here, here in the middle of the city of kudzu and crape myrtles, only parking lot lamps and the frequent blast of swirling red from neighboring firetrucks and ambulances. But the two warning lights still blink together, in unison though apart, above the limestone and asphalt, above my heart and his heart too, until I leave this week, in the air once more, to land Kansas, the rude, beautiful surface of my youth.

The Belleville Outfit

The headliners and organizers of The Music Camp, The Belleville Outfit (originally from Spartanburg but now out of Austin) rocked last night. I'd really just never seen live music like that--a big band with a fiddle, lots of instrumentals, big voices. It was a wonderful night, and now I have a few new bands to delve into--and a new genre of music.

Warren Hood and the Goods: So Good!

Hear this band. Hear Warren Hood. Hear and smile. The fiddle--the fiddle!

Definition

Like minds

Marsh Boardwalk

Marsh, with crabs by the thousands, clicking and popping upon the mud and boardwalk, their one larger claw white and folded as they floated sideways. No alligators, though I looked for eyes. I looked for eyes and the texture of tail. I waited for a strike but found none. Alone, I didn't go far down the trail, afraid of the snap and no one to hear. I was content with the tickle and rustle of crustaceans on the edge of the ocean.

August Staff Picks

So, one of the perks of working in a new bookstore is the monthly "staff picks" where I get to tell everyone what I think they should read. My July staff picks were A Conservationist Manifesto by Scott Russell Sanders, At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman, The Big Ass Book of Crafts by Mark Montano, and I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley, all of which I've talked about on here.

This month I chose The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth, Peace by Richard Bausch, and Reality Hunger by David Shields.

I love love love nonfiction and read and lust for it more than fiction, but Erin tells me we can't fit another nonfiction book in the store. Alas, I need to choose contemporary fiction but don't know where to start. Help? What would be your staff picks if you were me?

She sings along with her favorite songs on the radio

Carolina on My Mind

In relationship

The Latin root religio means "to bind fast." There are lots of ways that our modern religions attempt to bind us. Ritual, collective history, mythology, and social dictates all serve to solidify our attachment. My question here is, To what? If the purpose of an organization is to help us conjoin with God on a profound inner level, then I'm all for it. If instead its objective is to tie us more firmly to identification with a particular group, tribe, or set of opinions, excluding all others, then I'm not sure I want to be bound.

--from Us by Liza Oz

I gave up religion and the Christian God three years ago. When I had been in the religion, Methodist, for twenty years, I was bound up in it as a member of a community. I loved that community, the common bond of praising and serving with friends and family. Then I moved away and lost that community and, though I tried to replace it in Manhattan, couldn't find it. I realized that my faith had been entirely wound in my own church--that I didn't actually have faith without it. It was a slow realization, and one that I'm not entirely comfortable with still.

I don't believe in a God but in some natural spirit--something tied to nature that isn't a god but an energy. But not mystic or transcendental. I don't know how I would describe it, and I honestly haven't gotten back to trying to discover what it is I feel. All I know is that I'm closer to spirituality in nature--the mountains, the ocean--than I am around other people or a city or near a church.

I don't want to be bound. But I admit I need something on an inner level. Something inside to love.

Greek

Article no. 2 in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal today: "Author plumbs his ancestry."

Darius & the Clouds

You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad.

--from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Oh, Grandfather Mountain

 

Hello from what was Grandfather Mountain. Well, it still is Grandfather Mountain, of course, but, unfortunately, I'm no longer there. I left Spartanburg around 8am on Saturday (full day off #4--see, I told you I go to the mountains on my day off) and drove some back highways--rather disappointing in their lack of mountain views at times--to just outside Linville, North Carolina. I can't remember how I found Grandfather Mountain on the map, but I decided on visiting pretty instantly. A Mile High Swinging Bridge--who can reject that?

  

I first stopped at the Visitor's Center about halfway up the mountain and ate an expensive lunch of pork bbq sandwich, fries (really good!), coleslaw (really dry), and coke before checking out the habitat areas. The animals in the habitats--black bears, deer, cougars, otters, and eagles--are all wild on the mountain but were in large enclosures here. It was about time for "bear enrichment" when I arrived, so the bears were very interested in the onlookers.

  

The one above, Carolina, stood. The worker who threw them frozen peanut butter balls said that the one with her tongue out used to have a mouth problem and would stick her tongue out to relieve the pain. Well, of course they fed her when she did that, so now it's her little trick. They want her to lose it, though. These bears shouldn't have tricks.

 

The clouds hung over us, moving quickly but lingering. 

  

And then, after buying some chocolate peanut butter fudge from the fudge shop, I drove up to the lower parking area for the Swinging Bridge so that I could hike the rest of the way. It was a rocky but fairly moderate .4 mi. hike. I had my backpack, all decked out.

  

I first passed under the bridge and touched the springs and cables that held it.

 

And then I crossed it, and it giggled and swing slightly. It swing slightly from the weight of the people walking across it both ways, and slightly from the boys who gripped the sides and tried to make it move. Their mothers usually squealed. On the other side, I made my way over rocks, all natural and unpaved, without steps, to the ledge, the outermost ledge where I could be on the edge, near nothing, above everything, and sit. The picture below is the view of the outcrop just beyond my feet, and beyond, that I couldn't get to. And what follows are the views from my seat, alone, except for the man who briefly sat behind me and worried about getting vertigo. I told him I only kind of felt like I was floating, like I wasn't sure if there was anything below me, but that it was worth it. I was not scared--only felt that feeling of doubt of ground.

  

Then the next picture looks back at the bridge, where I started on the other side. This looks back at the upper parking lot (where I hiked up to) and, beyond, Macrae Peak, blurry in a cloud.

  

See the cable? I'm on the bridge, walking back across to the start of the crest trails. 

  

I just set out, by myself, with my pack and eagerness and determination, to go as far as I could in the time I had and with the bravery and skills I had.

It was wonderful, strenuous, rocky, with cables and slick rocks and high steps and roots to grab and clouds and overlooks. (Unfortunately, you always catch me in moments of exhaustion, when I don't have a chance to truly elaborate here. Trust me, it was work and worth it.) The first ladder came, and I stood in shock for a moment. This photo is no trick of the eye; the angle is accurate. I shimmied between boulders and climbed out, up.

 

And up. And kept going. With only two moments of hesitation. One, which you'll see later, at a point where the climbing got vertical and where, at the very bottom of it, I slipped while trying to get my foot up on a rock and scraped my left shin and knee. Blood. I thought that may be a sign to stop, considering I don't have health insurance. But, after a moment, I decided I couldn't turn back then, when there was the opportunity to conquer the spot of injury (which, after all, only barely stung). And so I climbed and climbed up rocks and ladders until I came to a spot where there was only rock and a ladder and a cable, diagonal against the rock, connecting to another ladder. It required exposing my body to the sky and trusting the placement of my feet and the strength of my arms. I doubted and descended the ladder and waited, saw the Swinging Bridge far to my right, farther than I'd expected, then disappear into clouds. A man then came down and told his wife, sitting below me on a ledge, that it had been worth it to make it past those cables to the peak. She apologized and said hated not going but that she thought she would pass out there and couldn't risk it. I thought not of passing out but of slipping, floating back down into trees. I thought of the exposure--me and the sky and the rock at my feet. But I knew I could do it because I had watched him come down the spot with rather ease.

 

And so I climbed again and reached over the rock and set my feet across rock and to the next ladder, and the next, and the rock crops beyond until I made it to the final ladder to Macrae Peak. And then I climbed that and was at the top, not alone (people, couples, were laying down), but by myself enclosed but completely open in clouds.

  

I again crawled out to the edge, this time over 700 feet higher than before, and sat in the white. I ate some of my fudge (I've eaten fudge at 5,939 feet!) and called Jedsen. I called Jedsen and told him I was calling from a cloud, with four bars (rightly so), and then took several feet down and dropped the call.

  

See the person on the behemoth rock? That's Macrae Peak, and I sat for ten to fifteen minutes on the edge to his right. That was my peak--my first peak.

 

 

And then I descended, following the blue lines and arrows that had led me up. I followed the ladders back down, the ladders that gave me doubt, and because I had used them, ridden my fear of them by passing them, I stopped and took photos on the way down. The following photos are of the vertical, exposed area of doubt, and the ladders that led to and from the spot. You are looking down, then, up, then out.

 

And then I was back to the trail head after a three hour round-trip, solo hike to a peak. It was only .9 miles but was largely vertical, and there were 1.5 miles to go to the second peak and the end of the trail--but I couldn't have made it back in time. And one peak was a good start for a beginning but all-too-eager hiker. I didn't want to be stupid in my excitement.

   

So I went back to the bridge to say goodbye. You can see my shadow on the slopes.

  

  

I took a different way home, hoping for more mountains. I had heard of the Blue Ridge Parkway but hadn't been on it, so I sought out the sign for the Parkway to Asheville and decided to take it home. I learned while driving on the driving road (not a highway) that it was built along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and so I drove, over two hours (way longer than I had anticipated or planned for) past countless overlooks and through borderless clouds to Asheville. It was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever taken, and the photos below can't capture it. Want to know the best thing? One entrance to the Parkway is only an hour away.