the ridge hike | remote andes mountains, ecaudor

I trembled as I straightened my legs. I inhaled deeply, and I caught myself thinking that I could really die up here. As though my fear were a pesky fly buzzing nearby, I shook my head to shoo it away. I placed my hands on my thighs, took in another deep breath, and willed my legs to stand tall and to please god stop shaking. I balanced one foot in front of the other; the trail was too narrow to stand with them side-by-side. The not quite foot-wide trail dropped precariously off on either side. It was sheer cliffs down either. For a moment, when I finally rose to my full height, for one minute the danger gave way to the sight of verdant mountainsides and downright breathtaking scenery. At somewhere between 11,000 - 13,000 feet in the air, with mountain peaks that shrank beneath me, and a heavy sky weighing down on top of me, I felt like I'd reached the top of the world. Like I was standing on the very point where earth and sky meet, and were that the case, I can promise you that it's a sight to behold and worth the death-defying climb to reach it.

Zan bellowed from 40 feet below me, his voice stricken with fear that camouflaged itself as anger. HOW MUCH FURTHER?

My legs started to shake again. I'd taken in the view, and for that one instant of total clarity, my fear had receded, but his voice brought me back into the moment, the physicality of our situation, the responsibility that weighed on me. In search of where the trail led, I made the mistake of looking down.

I'm not afraid of heights. I love the feeling of flying while barreling down a 100 foot drop on a roller coaster, and I learned to rock scramble just for the thrill of jumping off cliffs 30 feet above swimming holes below, but this. This was a different sort of height. To my right, the drop was vertical. To the left the drop was vertical. And all that was between me and those vertical drops was this narrow dirt path and the wind, that was unfortunately picking up.

I pulled the hand drawn trail guide out of my jacket pocket. I unfolded it carefully; it seemed like every move I made in those few moments was calculated, was exact, was more cautious than I have ever been. My heart raced trying to read the map standing on this ridge. I reminded myself that Edmundo, the owner of our guesthouse, had discovered this hike when he was 8 years old. Eight. If he could do it then, I could certainly do it now. And then I thought that 8-year-old feet were much better suited to this sort of thing and got flustered all over again.

But I read and re-read the guide.

You will squeeze through a gap in the rocks and come out on the other side of the mountain. I flashed back to the narrow crevice we'd crawled through 20 minutes earlier. Check.

The path splits, with the left heading downhill. Take the less developed path on the right... We'd seen that and gone right. Zan had been leading at that point. We pointed it out and checked it off the map. But early in the hike we'd thought we'd finished one instruction, and we hadn't. We had to retrace our steps. What if we turned the wrong way?

Continue on top of the ridge. Well, there was no doubt we were on the ridge.

Once you get to the plateau, keep along the left edge. What plateau? I couldn't see any end in sight. The ridge was just a balance beam of dirt.

I thought about turning back. Could we scale down the ridge? That seemed as dangerous as moving forward. I read back through the guide and went with my instincts: we had followed it correctly, and this path would - it had to - eventually come out to a plateau.

I moved onward.

Zan, terrified of heights, followed behind me, yelling ahead every few minutes to ask about my progress, what I could see, and for the love of god to stop taking pictures!

I couldn't. The thrill of the ridge hike paralleled my fear, and every time I found large shrubbery to grasp onto or a skinny rock to squat nearby, I took the opportunity and  kept snapping photos.


I repeatedly told Zan I was stopping to catch my breath and that all was fine, and the trail was great to keep encouraging him to move forward and to stay calm. The truth is that every 10-20 feet I re-read the guide, prayed a little that the plateau was ahead, and tried to swallow the pit in my stomach.

At one point, I laughed at the handwritten note at the top of the guide, Warning: If you are afraid of heights, you may not enjoy this hike. So much for that!

Five minutes later, out of nowhere, the ridge emptied into the plateau. It was a large, open area covered in beige reeds and spindly shrubs. Zan fell to the earth and lay there recovering, practically hugging the security beneath him. When we had reached the ledge, he could have asked us to go back, he could have said absolutely not, we don't even know that this is the right path, and I'm terrified of heights, but he stayed on the ridge. And I think that when you find a person that will walk across a foot-wide trail to stand on top of the world with you, that you have everything you'll ever need.

My legs finally stopped shaking, and the adrenaline-laced euphoria eventually subsided until my heart beat normally again. The rest of the hike was less harrowing but only the tiniest bit less beautiful.

When I look back on Ecuador, it's the ridge - that moment of nothing but the sky and the earth and me, and the adrenaline of hiking a tightrope trail - that fill me with every feeling I could ever feel. That hike... every traveler searches for that hike. Every traveler has those few and far between experiences that, like an addictive drug, keep you exploring to the ends of the earth for another.

cooling off at glen manor vineyards

 

We passed the entrance the first time. The winding road led us around another bend before we found a turnoff to head back the way we came. Only one car drove behind us, and we hadn't seen another one in a few miles. The Blue Ridge Mountains rose and fell in the near distance, and the sun blazed in all its mid-afternoon glory. 

This time through the small town of Front Royal, we spotted the sign, and turned onto the gravel driveway. I noticed an advisory posted at the entrance prohibits buses and groups larger than six. As the SUV bumped along, I pulled hand wipes out of my bag and scrubbed my face, my arms, and my neck. Zander came to a stop in front of a remodeled, small modern wooden lodge. 

I reached for baby wipes in my bag, and scrubbed my face, neck, and arms. As I stepped out of the car, I stopped to kick mud off the bottoms of my shoes as best I could. 

"We look okay to be at a winery, right?" I asked. 

 

The staff at Glen Manor Vineyards didn't mind our trail clothes or sweaty faces. They welcomed us in and asked us where we'd been hiking. We talked shop about our favorite trails in Shenandoah, and they sold us on a few nearby with deep swimming holes. Then we got down to wine tasting business.  

Named for the "glen," or sloping mountain foothills in which the vineyard sits, the small winery grows a handful of grape varietals on site. The weather and harvest determines the wines they make and sell each season. It's a small, family-owned and run winery that rarely carries more than four wines at any given time. 

On our visit a few weeks ago, the tasting menu included four vintages: 2012 Rose, 2011 Cabernet Franc, 2011 Vin Rouge, and the 2012 Petit Manseng. Missing from the list is Glen Manor's most popular wine, their Sauvignon Blanc. The owners explained that last season was abnormally dry, negatively impacting the grapes. They do hope to release a limited number of bottles later in the season. 

We enjoyed each of the four wines. In particular, I liked the careful, thoughtful descriptions of the wines themselves. As someone still relatively new to wine tasting and developing my palate and vernacular, a detailed description helps guide me through the tasting. When I diverge from their description, that's okay, too, but I appreciate the nudge in the right direction.

The Rose is a balance of light and refreshing with a medium-weight, long finish. The Petit Manseng surprised us the most. It smells of tropical fruit - pineapple, guava, and mango - and though it has a sweetness throughout, it's crisp enough to warrant being labeled off-dry. While it's still too sweet for me to drink regularly, it pairs perfectly with a hot summer day after a long hike. 

We ordered a glass each and purchased a bottle of all four wines we tasted. We made ourselves at home on their patio to enjoy the fruits of our labor. I could sit all day in a setting like that, looking out over vines and mountains, sipping on a glass of cold, crisp wine. Couldn't you? 

The winery itself is sparse but beautiful. Come for the wines and stay for the company, scenery, and staff. 

if you go...

Glen Manor Winery Fort Royal, Virginia

No food for purchase, but picnics are encouraged

Fido (cough, Theo!) is allowed but must be leashed

wine info and vintages

Tasting fee: $7

5 {travel} things!

(in rhodes, greece. i live for the chance to jump for joy.)

Mel passed the torch on to me. Here are five {travel} tidbits about me! 

• I was 21 the first time I stepped foot out of the country. It was my senior year in college, and I boarded a jet plane to study abroad in South Africa. Go big or go home.

• I've pooped my pants on two continents. I mean, what can I say? When you go big or go home, you also just go, a lot. (They're both epic  stories. One you've heard, and one involves skinny dipping, bandits in the night, and Cormac McCarthy - it's quite the tale/tail.)

• I'm really outgoing in my every day life and get a lot of my energy from being around other people. But secretly, I'm a closet-introvert who loves reading, writing on my own time, exploring remote places far away from the big cities, and who one day wants a house in the mountains or country near great hikes and beautiful vineyards.

• The first mountain I ever summited was Stellenbosch Mountain in South Africa (I don't count Stone Mountain in Georgia - no way, no how!). I hated outdoorsy things, especially climbing up large hilly things and things that generally involved sweating, and I don't even remember if we really made it to the top. But I do count it as my first foray into hiking. Here's how that first hike went:

• I studied karate in Japan....... with black-belt elementary schoolers. And a few incredible adults. My sensei went with me to be fitted for a gi (women's sizes were too small, men's were too large - I was so awkward there!). She surprised me with having my name inked onto my uniform in kanji - Chinese characters. Culturally, kanji names are treated with reverence and used only for Japanese-born. She translated my name, "Cynthia," as forest, poem, and Japan. It's one of my most treasured memories.

 

Now that I've shared my five things, I want the dirt on Jess, Noe, and Paige!

melvin hazen trail | rock creek park

The last few weeks have been some of the most stressful of my life. I don't say that lightly. In bold, open truth and probably too much disclosure, the only things I've ever faced that have left me as emotionally distraught, stressed out and overwhelmed are when my stepfather passed away last year, and fighting to afford to stay in college my freshman year (another story for another time?).

In fact, I hesitate to talk about it at all. I haven't been blogging much lately because I don't exactly know what to say. On Thursday, I wrote about trying ScratchDC, and within that, I talked a little bit about my housing situation - namely, that my roommate Matt and I haven't had heat. That barely scratches the surface of the whole story. Where to even begin?

Matt and I moved into our apartment in September. The rent and the space were both incredible, and we were in the very neighborhood we'd wanted to move. In the first 24 hours after moving in, we knew it was a mistake. The place was a mess. There is a pigeon nest outside of my bedroom window. There's no windowsill on that window ledge. A piece of cardboard was wedged between the AC unit and the remainder of the window to keep it stabilized. Pigeon poop, dirt and leaves covered my floor. Water leaked from the AC unit.

In every room, electrical wiring is exposed and windows hang loosely in their frames. There are cracks in the walls, and the bathroom floor is rotted beneath the tiles. The shower drips constantly, so mildew builds no matter how often we clean it.

We made a list of every problem we found that first weekend. We read through the DC tenant-landlord laws and DC housing code. We highlighted half a dozen housing code violations. We sat down with our landlord for a meeting. We ran through the list wit him, and he laughed at us, physically laughed. "You get what you pay for," he said. He continued to bully us - saying if we "worked" with him, he'd "take care" of us - like, maybe if we played nice, he'd replace the refrigerator that leaks and has two broken shelves.

Total strangers began to tell us that we messed up moving into one of our landlord's buildings. No less than three people said, "Take your rent and go. Get out if you can."

We persevered. 

We were scared. Professional bullies, and slumlords, in our case, are good at it - they're intimidating. And also, Matt and I are used to adversity. That's the only way to say it. I grew up with a single mom. She worked three jobs, and there were brief times where electricity was turned off or we waited a few months until we could afford to have the leak in the living room repaired. "It's life," I kept shrugging. We do what we can with what we have and move on.

Then winter arrived, and the heating source promised to us since we moved in never came. Men arrived at random hours of the day and evening without prior notice to install gas heaters. They ran a gas line from another unit in the building. We didn't feel safe. It was 50 degrees. We finally called in DCRA - the city's housing authority.

We've now had two DCRA inspections, and they want to schedule a third. The second inspector came from the illegal construction unit. He deemed all of the electrical wiring and gas connections illegal. There's even a sewer pipe behind our stove --- ew. He told me off the record that on the path the inspections are on, the building very well may be condemned.

It sounds like a happy ending, kinda, but working with DCRA brought a whole new set of problems with the landlord. He demanded to know why I have gone "guerrilla warfare" on him. Which, come on guys, was kind of a total compliment. But really, it's awful. I panic every time he calls, knowing it's going to be a fight. Matt and I have withheld rent since December, since we don't have adequate living conditions. We've spoken with a tenant advocate, who advises us to take him to court immediately and have the court hold the money.

court? we can't afford that. we can't afford a new apartment. we can't afford to fight him. 

We found out in the midst of all of this that our slumlord? That creep? He's a well-educated, influential lawyer at a big firm here in D.C. There are pictures of him with the president. He contributes to national publications. It just keeps getting better.

So. Last week we did find an apartment. It turns out finding a two-bedroom apartment in D.C. city limits that allows dogs in January, well, is a fairly impossible task. So we found a large one-bedroom apartment with a big enough common space to partition a second bedroom. It is what it is.

It's more than we can really afford. It'll be a stretch. And require sacrifices. But at least we'll be out of this place.

We sold our souls to the slumlord - made a deal that we owe him nothing, can keep the rent we've withheld to afford to move out, if we stop talking to DCRA. I cried. And debated. And had no clue what to do. Ultimately, we had no choice. We don't have the resources to fight him.

One of our applications for the new apartment was denied. In order to live together, we had to find a co-signer.

DCRA has called twice - bless them for following up. City government is good. I don't know what to do. I feel like this is a moment, an issue, a time that is self-defining. I'm between a rock and a hard place. I don't want anyone to ever live in that building like we have. I want to stop him.

I packed up Theo this weekend and went to Zan's. He has been my rock and forced me to realize that sometimes I need help, sometimes I have to accept help, and sometimes I even have to swallow my pride and ask for it.

There's a trail below Zan's apartment. It's the Melvin Hazen trail - part of Rock Creek Park here in the city. I took Theo for a short hike on it, tears stinging my face in the biting cold on Saturday afternoon. It's only about half a mile long. Twenty feet in, I let Theo off-leash. Traipsing through the snow-covered woods that felt much further away from the city than in reality, I let go of it all. I found some peace. And when Theo slid around in the snow and got soaking wet in the stream and ran with wild abandon up and down the hills, I couldn't stop laughing. The only thing better than being in the woods is being in snow-covered woods.

For better or worse, we move into our new apartment on Saturday.

Learn more about the Rock Creek Park trails here. Come hike them with me - they'll practically be in my backyard at the new place!

sugarloaf mountain northern peaks trail (blue)

I've been thinking about the woods behind my childhood home. Newnan, Georgia is one of the biggest metro-Atlanta suburban areas now. When my family moved there, way back in 1990, it wasn't like that. It was downright rural then. My subdivision was sprawling, the nooks and crannies filled with uncharted nature that seemed endless to a kid. They were eventually filled in with houses, and the woods became short paths to visit our neighbors. But for most of my childhood, the woods were the woods, and there was a lot of them back there. 

Directly behind my house, the woods went back and back and back for as far as I could imagine. I explored them by day, and tip-toed a step or two into them at night, before running back to my house scared. My brother and I, and my friends and I, bushwhacked through them, creating our own trails we remembered by the broken limbs and eventually well worn paths. I learned to suck on honeysuckle and spot poison ivy, and we built forts out of tree covers and played hide-and-seek and foxes and hounds in the bush.

When we first moved to Newnan, we lived with my uncle down the street for a few months, while my mom closed on what would be our home. My Uncle Mike lived only 7 houses down from where we would live for the next 15 years, but the woods behind his house were a whole other world. His woods were even vaster. There were rolling hills and large rocks that seemed like boulders to my little eyes. There was a stream that ran who knows how far. My brother trekked the length of it more than once. I thought he was the strongest and bravest. I was maybe six or seven years old.

I jumped from rock to rock, and in the creek played leap frog on the pebbles, trying to never let my toes get wet, else I lose the game. I balanced with my arms outstretched on fallen trees, walking on my tip-toes the entire length of them, pretending I was an Olympic gymnast like Shannon Miller. 

In 1993, Atlanta had a blizzard - the "storm of the century!" Really, they called it that. Even wikipedia remembers. I'd never seen snow, and my mom woke my brother and me up early, so so early, as the wet, white stuff came down in sheets. It covered our lawn, probably only inches at most, but I swear it went up to our waists. 

Of course, all of metro Atlanta shut down, and that meant no school. We bundled up as best we could - there's a shortage of winter coats when you live way down south, and we convinced our black lab puppy, Shadow, to come play with us. We threw the first snowballs of our lives, wrestled in it, sledded down the sloping hills of our neighborhood streets, and tried to find the trails we'd blazed in the in the snow-covered woods. 

All of these childhood memories came flooding back to me this weekend when Zander, Theo and I went hiking at Sugarloaf Mountain in Dickerson, Maryland. It was a quiet day, cold and icy. The first quarter mile of the Northern Peaks blue-blazed trail we attempted was iced over and treacherous. Fortunately the trail cleared up after that, the snow provided a beautiful back drop, and we were able to finish the 5.5 mile loop. 

After passing the White Rock Overlook, about 2.5 miles in, we descended until we passed a unique tree formation. One tree arched over like the top of a swing set, and another intersected it like a jungle gym. I had to stop (for the millionth time) to take a picture. Growing up in the woods hit me so hard, and I had this thought that if I were ever a playground contractor, visionary - this is what would inspire me. Then I thought I wouldn't have a job for very long, because I'd tell kids to come play in the woods. They're the real playgrounds. 

Don't you want to swing from that arch, and climb and jump off and hang upside down? 

At White Rock Overlook, the view itself didn't take my breath away - it was the little red farmhouse, so proud and distinct in the distance, that did it. What is it about that iconic image that takes me somewhere I've never been, every single time I see it?

 

Hiking makes me feel young again, like we can all stop time for those miles we're breathing hard and sweating in the woods, convincing ourselves we can make it to the top. The peaks I summit and the trails I meander are longer and higher and tougher than the woods behind my childhood house, but my love for them started at 365 Freestone Drive, in the subdivision without a sign. You can spot it by the three giant boulders on the right-hand side of the road. 

Want to hike Sugarloaf? I recommend the blue-blazed Northern Peaks Trail. It's a less-traversed trail on the busy mountain. You'll be stunned by the green-moss covered rocks, giant oaks that shade your way, and views that include a certain little red farmhouse. Read more about it on LocalHikes.

oh hey, PS - I ran about a mile of this trail, too, just like I did after Old Rag. This is becoming a habit. I'm thinking of trying out trail running. Do you have any suggestions on routes, running trails, shoes, etc? Want to run with me? I'd love to hear from you!

hike | hemlock overlook

In my former life job as a TV news producer, my boss once told me, "It'll be a lot worse than this," as I hesitantly made repeated calls to the same retired government engineer, from whom we needed a quote. "When there's a tragedy, we'll be knocking on victims' doors, ambushing them with a camera. It's the reality of the job." I think I would've quit before doing that, on the spot, on location. Fortunately, I quit before I was ever faced with the decision.

I was reminded of all of this while taking in the abundant coverage on the Newtown shooting this weekend. I, honestly, avoided as much of it as I could. I didn't shy away from the truth of what happened, the horrific nature of it. I welled up with emotion and pain and hurt every time I thought about it and saw images from Connecticut. I felt unsafe. That bubble mindset, that shell of self-preserving protective thought, "It won't happen here, to me," disappeared for me this weekend, it disappeared for all of us. Those gunshots tore through our protective layers and left me raw and exposed. I felt like there is no cover, there is no bubble, there is no protective shield anymore - that's what it means to take the lives of children, of babies, of little ones. It means we lose our footing, our sense of safety, our source of pride in living in a good neighborhood, a protected house, a well-meaning community. It shatters that mindset that we so desperately need to stay sane.

So I went hiking.

Losing myself in the woods, somewhere picturesque with leaves un-raked, fallen how they fell and runners and fellow hikers stopping to chat and pet Theo, "hello," - I needed that this weekend, to reconstruct my sanity, heck - to find some sanity. The sun was shining, and the water was glimmering in that shine, and crisp air kept us rejuvenated but our jackets zipped. In the woods, with Theo running and fetching and sniffing like nothing in the world could be wrong and Zander and me incorrectly reading trail marks and wandering knowing we'd come out on the right side no matter which route we took - it felt like a piece of sanity and clarity and relief from the insanity on the other side of the trail.

We woke up tired and Zander sore, but something kept pushing us along, and I'm so glad we went, and I'm so grateful for the peace and tranquility and community of a set of woods and a well-worn trail.























Hemlock Overlook is an easy 4 mile loop with about 1,000 feet of elevation gain...... if you figure out the trail markings! There's a complicated set of blues, reds, yellows markings. The good news is that if you just start hiking, you can't get too lost, and if you do, you can make the loop and out-and-back and head back the way you came. It's beautiful - marshy on the river shore and rocky near the water. It's a very dog friendly hike, even off leash. I recommend LocalHikes for more information, including directions. Bonus! The hike entrance is mere steps from Paradise Springs winery - the makings of a perfect day.

old rag mountain | shenandoah national park

I did two crazy things while hiking Old Rag this weekend:

1. I threw a temper tantrum near the peak.


2. I ran the last mile.

Forget the first one, forever. (Let's never talk about it again, mmmk?) But did you read #2? I ran the last mile of the 9 mile hike that is Old Rag. As Liz Lemon would say, "I want to go to there!"

Wait. Wrong catchphrase.

"WHAT THE WHAT?!" There it is.

I can only claim temporary insanity (Zan would beg to differ on the "temporary." See: crazy thing #1 that I did).

So here's what happened...

Zan and I had reached the assumed summit and were starving and half-dead, ready to set up camp for lunch. We’d managed the 5 mile ascent without breaking off our limbs. We’d traversed the uneven terrain and navigated the extensive class 3 rock scrambling section leading to the top. We’d done all that without collapsing even once (there was that one rock that I hallucinated to be a bed, but that’s neither here nor there). We scrambled to the tip-top of a super duper high rock and took in the 360 degree view. For 20 seconds.

Snap.



Snap.



I took two photos, circling and cheerily announced, “Ready for my sammie!” and began the slow, painful descent to a sitting position, before I realized no one was listening. I think a few kind tree branches leaned in, lending a leafy ear. Zan was 20 feet ahead, hiking onward.

I called out. “Zan! (Zan! Zan!)” I yelled three times to create my own cool mountain peak echo.

“Where ya goin’?” I was casual, cool, laser eyes locked into the back of his pack, that held my sammie.

Grunt. Gruntgrunt.

Yes, I nodded. Sure, I see. He saw a higher peak that way (point). This isn’t the summit.

I grunted back.

“I don’t WANNA go. THIS is the summit. UGHHH SAMMIE GIVE ME SAMMIE.” Grunt. Grunt.

(Our communication talents are unique and should not be tried at home.)

He had the sammies, and so what could I do? I gave a reverential salute to my perfect peak and the breeze hugged me in return. We scrambled, climbed, scraped hands, skipped rocks, held on to branches, scooted through crevices...





...and finally arrived where Zan had grunted and pointed – to the “summit over there.” It was an astounding… clump of barren, brown trees obscuring the view on all sides.****



I HRMPHD, loudly, in his direction.

Zan HRMPHD back.

We HRMPHD and HRMPHD.

Two hikers passed us, probably thinking, “By golly, those two need a sammie.” That’s what I was thinking.

You know that point when you’re too tired to see the solution that’s right in front of you? We were so ungodly far beyond that point.

He grunted.

I grunted.

I broke off a branch and threw it.

He tore off the tree trunk and chucked it over the edge.

We beat our chests.

I cried.

He cried.

We slept standing.

We woke still furious.

We sighed.

I finally regained enough energy to properly stomp my foot.

I whined. “I just need a hug.” (And a damn sammie on a beautiful overlook, but I kept that to myself, in the name of compromise and conflict resolution. I truly handled the argument like a totally sane adult.)

We hugged.

I checked the time.

4.5 minutes had passed.

We walked back 50 yards, and alas, a perfect picnic peak shone bright and glimmering in the afternoon sun and we had a wonderful, quiet picnic... and then I played like a 4-year-old on the rocks and made Zander take 100 photos of me doing so.





Ahem, where was I?

Oh right, the time I ran a mile on a 9 mile hike (I thought we promised to never talk about that other thing?!).

We reached the fire road, finally, oh god, after Zan had destroyed his tendonitis plagued knees, and my body could not take one more single step downwards (seriously, I’d rather climb up than down any day any time any where – YOU NAME THE PLACE). The fire road is 2.5 miles. It’s the longest 2.5 miles of anyone’s life, or at least the lives of people who are not in spectacular shape and are very tired after summiting Old Rag.

This is the road that never ends... yes, it goes on and on my friends!

I made it through the first 1.5 miles without too much of a problem (except for a desperate need to pee that ended in a trail crouch - high five to all women!). We reached the trail head, were in the home stretch, had only a mile to go, and the damn fire road, it had the nerve to veer downhill. I don’t know what came over me. It was too much to place one foot in front of the other, baby step like, so I slowly picked up my pace until I was jogging.

It felt so much better to jog downhill than to walk. So I kept jogging.

And when the land flattened out, I kept jogging.

And when the trail turned into the paved road leading the way to the parking lot, I didn’t stop running.

A man walking his dog, white beard and all (does Santa have a mountain home in Lurray, Virginia?), laughed as I ran past. “Didn’t get enough of a workout on Old Rag?!”

I kept running, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

Then I was at the parking lot, and then I was at the car, and then, I fell down beneath a tree and fell asleep for 100 hours.

Okay, that happened 3 hours later at 7pm at my house.

But I did take weird photos of myself, in my deathlike state, post 8 mile hike, post 1 mile run.



Zan caught up after walking like a sane person, looked at me lying pathetically immobile on the ground, shook his head and said, “You’re crazy, and I love you.”



 ****I’d like to note that no matter what Zan says, we did not find the true peak 10 minutes after our lunch, and there was certainly not a sign leading that way, and it was definitely not an even higher, better view-affording outlook with picnic spots. NO MATTER WHAT ZAN SAYS.