Jillian Daniel - Experience of natural setting blog 8

Over Easter weekend I went home to see my family. My brother and I got sick of hanging out with family so we decided to go to Old Rag Mountain and hike up the trail. To me, this seemed rather ambitious for what was supposed to be a weekend filled with simple things like easter egg hunts and dying eggs pretty colors. However, my brother really wanted to do it ever since I had told him about my trip there this past summer so I agreed. Old Rag Mountain is located in Shenandoah National Park and is about 3-4 miles up and 5 miles down. The car ride there was boring and all I wanted to do was sleep. With such a lack of motivation the hike up the mountain seemed to start off a lot sharper than I remembered. Not only the start of the hike, but the entire stretch was really challenging. The hike up consists of a few miles of "rocky scrambles" which entails jumping from boulder to boulder, scaling up the sides of rocks, and being forced to use practically ever muscle in my body to get pull myself up. At this point, it was cloudy and not all that warm, which put a damper on on my motivation. I was worried that once we made it to the top it'd start to rain. However, it ended up being the opposite. The top of the mountain was breathtaking and the conditions couldn't have been better. The clouds had scattered and after straining ourselves to get up the mountain I was glad it was cool out. My brother and I wondered aruond the top for a while looking for the highest place with the best view. We sat at the ledge of a boulder admiring our accomplishment. To my surprise the view seemed different even though I'd been there before. This makes me think that the my perception of the scenery was different because the experience on the way up was different. On the way, the chances of a good hike didn't seem to be all that big. The complete turn around of the circumstances seemed to make being at the top that much more rewarding. The thing I remember most about being at the top of the mountain was being above the birds, which I wasn't able to see the first time around. This part of the trip turned out to be my favorite part; watching down on an animal that in any other case would be above me gave me a great sense of satisfaction in my accomplishment.