It seemed like a good day for nature, so I went looking for some. I didn’t have to go far, as Pinnacle Mountain is fairly close to where I live. It was after the 4th, but the mountain was jammed with others looking for an escape from electronics. I still had my phone, though, which takes pretty good photos I can post somewhere, so people will like me.
I go to the mountain often, but usually stay on the Base Trail, which is about three miles around the mountain. But every tenth time or so I get an itch to see for miles, so I trek to the top. This was one of those times.
As I’ve said, it was crowded on this day, but even when there are a lot of us, you can always find some solitude. I made it to the top, sweating and breathing hard. I walked around the guy carrying the little boy with the big hair, and the three teenage girls who had blown past me on the way up. I remembered one of them saying how hard it was as they jogged past me, and my fatigue.
One of the girls told me the gnats were bad. I got to the north side as far as I could go, found a flat rock and faced the lake as the annoying little bugs covered me. I stood it as long as I could – about ten minutes – and headed down. The gnats chose not to follow.
There were a lot of small children out with their parents and grandparents. Here are some of their comments I picked up on my way down:
From a little girl: “I will be the bravest person on the top.”
Another girl: “When we get to the top, I might fly down.”
Finally, near the bottom, a conversation between a girl and a man who looked to be her grandfather:
Girl: “How long does it take?”
Granddad – “Oh, awhile, but it’s worth it.”
“How many times have you done it?”
“Oh, quite a few. I’ve been on this mountain top too many to count.”
“So, we are on the top?”
“No, not yet,”
“So, we are just pretending to be on a mountain?”
“No, this is a real mountain; we’re on the side.”
“We’re on the side, but we’re pretending to be on the top?”
Give it up grandpa, I thought.
Fifty yards or so from the bottom, a man I recognized came toward me. I’d passed him earlier on his way down. He looked to be around 45.
“How many times?” I asked him.
He laughed and stopped, seemingly thankful for a reason to do so.
“Today, just two,” he said.
“Well, you’re a better man than me.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “When you do it a thousand times or more, it gets easier. I’ve been coming here since I was nine. I like it better than a treadmill.”
I asked if he always saw different things, and he said yes, having climbed it in ice, and in fire; there were many memories.
I told him about the gnats, and he told me they were worse in September and October.
I asked him if he’d ever encountered the ladybug swarm I’d run into back in March. He’d never seen them. So I had that going for me.
We bid farewell, and I began calculating how long it would take me to climb it 1,000 times. I came up with three and a half years – and I’m down to just 999.
Or, I could always pretend.