I went on a hike yesterday with my daughter. She’s 32 and lives in Ohio, but her best friend lives here and has kids so she came to enjoy Halloween with them and she’s the kind of outdoorsy lots of us aspire to be. So she invited me to go on a hike. At first it was going to be a hike in Virginia, but her brother couldn’t come so we decided to stay local and just go to House Mountain. I had been there before when I was much younger, but I had never hiked up to the top and if I had, I definitely forgot.
I’ve hiked 1.5 miles many times. I walk more than that in a day, but this 1.5 mile hike was pretty much the equivalent of walking up a mile and a half of steps.
I think my daughter said the elevation from where we started to where we ended was about 1000ft. It wasn’t quite as extreme as climbing up a ladder but definitely like a stairway to somewhere. Not heaven, although, the view at the top was heavenly.
The thing that was really surprising was that there was sand at the top. Not pebbles, but true beach-like sand. I picked it up and let it run through my fingers while I quietly mourned leaving the beach. And then I started wondering why. Why would there be sand at the top of a mountain? Was it from people walking on the rocks and breaking them down? Was this mountain underwater at some time in history. It was so fascinating, once I got home, I couldn’t let it go.
So, I went to Google to find out and it turns out that Tennessee was, in fact, underwater over 400 MILLION years ago. How crazy is that? It pretty much said that Tennessee had been a tropical beach and was close to the equator, at some point tectonic forces pushed and folded the rock layers into mountains. The sandstone is part of that “beach” and is slowly eroding back into sand. Or something like that. I’m not a geologist and not everything on the internet is true. Either way, fascinating. The internet also said you can find fossils from prehistoric water creatures at the top of the mountain. If I had known that before we went, there probably would have been some sort of fossil hunt, but now I’ll just have to go back.
Which I think I will do soon. Getting out and walking/ hiking always makes me feel so much better. Of course, doing it with one of my kiddos multiplies the joy, but movement in general is something I definitely enjoy doing and I’ve gotten so down in my little bubble of despair that I’ve not even tried to enjoy what’s around me.
That goes for my neighborhood, too. Now that we know we are staying, it’s time to start making the best of things. Our neighborhood is built on the edge of a lake. I can walk from the house to the water and put a kayak in easily and its less than five minutes of my time. I can get in the car and drive 5-8 minutes in either direction and be at gorgeous parks and trails. It’s not like I wouldn’t enjoy that. I would. I do. I think I was so focused on getting closer to the things I enjoy about downtown…the vibe, the art, the culture, the food…that I didn’t give the burbs a fair chance. I know that I won’t find the electric feeling that I get by going downtown, but maybe I can find some kind of peace and maybe that’s more important in this season of my life because I can’t keep unraveling.
It’s not good for me and it’s not good for those around me. So, here’s to forward motion and a somewhat positive attitude…and 400 million year old sand!
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