Mohonk Mountain House
I began my Tuesday morning at Mohonk mountain house early in the morning. I had arrived late Monday afternoon and there seemed to be too many things to see and do so I wanted to lose no time.
I wanted to run a lap around the lake but I found that it was less than a mile around and I would need to run five laps to get a decent work out. I dislike doing laps round the same path. I prefer long runs with one unique path so instead I opted to make a morning of it and hike all around the property.
I emptied out my leather satchel and put in some things that I thought would be essential. A couple bottles of water, my Swiss army knife, some twine (can never have enough twine), my cell phone, my room key, a sweater, and my tablet.
As to my tablet, I had recently begun using it for sketching and I had the ridiculous idea of hanging my feet over a tall granite cliff overlooking a majestic scene and doing some sketches of the horizon. More on that later.
So I started off pretty much just ambling along and exploring whatever struck my fancy. I saw some “closed” trails signs here and there but considered these to be more suggestions than anything else and proceeded anyways.
Closed trail
After getting lost a few times and “discovering” the employee parking lot. I just headed off into the woods. I got far enough into the woods that I could not hear or see anything man-made. I sat down on a rotten tree stump and just existed.
It was everything I expected and more.
After a few minutes of silence the chipmunks all around me either decided that I had left or that I was no danger to them. They came out and went about their business. It was a Tuesday, around mid morning. Back home I would be swamped with emails and phone calls. Everyone I knew would be doing the same thing. Here I was alone, the world didn’t exist. After a while even the chipmunks went silent. Leaves drifted down seemingly in slow motion and I could feel the rotation of the Earth under my feet. It was wonderful.
Feeling a little bit more sane after that I got back on the trail and began climbing. I found my lofty pinnacle to sketch from.
Eagle’s nest
Of course the hotel staff had over a hundred years to explore and “improve” every scenic vista. So they had installed this little tree house on the cliff edge. Tour groups were hiking by on a regular basis and were taking and posing for pictures so I would never be able to get anything done. So that part of my plan went out the window. I took a few pictures of the horizon and walked on.
Up a ways I found a curious signpost with an arrow pointing down and the caption that read “eagle’s ascent”. I had read about this in the hotel literature as a sort of rock climb activity. I hadn’t planned on this at all. I just wanted a long nature walk that morning but this beckoned to me. By pure luck I had on some shoes that although they weren’t meant for mountain climbing were well suited for it so I decided “why not?”
As I wasn’t really prepared for this, at first it was a bit of a challenge particularly as I had decided to be an amateur videographer and used my cell phone camera to document it all. The hotel staff had spray painted arrows as to where to go so it was all fairly straightforward.
I got through that trail fairly quickly and easily but I felt I wanted a better challenge so I climbed back up the mountain and climbed even higher looking for one of the better challenges called the “giant’s path”. It was as if some giant child had strewn boulder sized legoes all over the side of a mountain. Just looking at it made gave me pause to think.
I pushed on regardless. I found that I had to use my fingers, the tips of my shoes, my butt, just anything I could to keep myself from tumbling over the edge. My entire body got involved into the climbing activity.
I descended down under giant boulders into dark tunnels with barely any hint that there could be an exit on the other end. Crawling on my belly sometimes and trying not to think of what that slimy thing that my hand had just brushed across really was.
I took a few wrong turns and once jumped a small chasm almost sliding down the slippery rock face. My shoes barely gripped the rock and held me in place just before I would tumble into perpetual inky darkness.
I began to think to myself when was the last time that I had purposefully exposed myself to this much danger and had to rely only on my body to get myself out of harm’s way? Years if not decades. Was this the literal “life flashing before your eyes”?
I pushed the thought out of my mind and pressed on. Determined to finish this and get out alive. I squeezed and pulled and finally found the end of the rock climb and could not believe that I had just done that on my own.
I lay down on some nice flat gravel and found myself positively beaming with joy. I had done that. Middle aged, out of shape (sort of), me.
If I had done that, what could I not do?
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