Caleb's Hike...

We recently found ourselves on a trip within a trip. We decided to escape the primitive lifestyle of the Appalachian Trail and enter the contemporary existence that was New York City. Talk about your culture shock. On our visit we view historic landmarks such as the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and a pizza parlor claiming “Worlds Best Pizza”. While these sites were exciting and much deserving of a photo they didn’t seem to follow me back to the trail. In fact two discreet experiences seemed to reoccur in hiking day dreams. The first consisted of a girl I casually walked past on the sidewalk. She seemed to be slightly older than me, dressed for exercise, and had a physical deformity that restricted her natural fluid walking body motion. I noticed that when this stranger’s and my steps crossed she seemed to hide her eyes in the pavement opposite of my direction. The second experience was a very large very expensive personal boat docked in a Hudson River port right off the coast of Manhattan. Similarly while I was looking stunned at the sheer magnitude of this individual’s ship I noticed that a black curtain was drawn over already tented windows.

Once I was back on the trail I couldn’t help but to think of these two totally separate experiences and the similarity in defense, security, or protection. The differences seemed easy to stereotype: giant verses miniature, substandard verses luxurious, humble verses arrogant. In addition, I quickly developed a similarity between the two in both of their habits to restrict and hide themselves. To take my mind off the trail I decided to try and play a game. I had hoped to combine the two experiences under one word. This word would have to serve as definition which takes these two nonchalant happenings and hyperbolizes them into greatness. For some reason I couldn’t escape the idea of heroic. Over time this idea faded in and out of my mind during the hikes. I kept trying to twist and skew the two experiences into heroism. For some reason I was never really satisfied with my struggle. Something just didn’t seem right and I never grew comfortable with the idea of defining both under this word. Nevertheless I liked the challenge and stayed persistent.

One day I was walking along a detour marked path. The Appalachian Trail was under construction and the new blazes lead me down a road parallel a river. The sun had just dodged a cloud and warmed the constantly cool Ct. air. The architecture of three story houses and old large barns were a nice alternate site for my eyes. The day was developing nicely. A few miles into my walk a car pulled beside me and told me that there had been an accident earlier in the day in the area. A few miles after this conversation I realized that heroic was the wrong word.

And as I type now, in this moment, I have come to learn that greatness is already the experience.

and this one.