Nostalgia: How Revisiting Spaces Has Helped Me Grow
I’ve been hiking Devil’s Courthouse for almost five years now. Technically, the first time I went was with my mom and dad before I was even grown enough to speak. I have an old picture of my mother standing in the parking lot with my father dangling hundreds of feet off the ground by ropes – this was my first recorded adventure. Often I’m told how similar I am to my dad when he was my age. We’re both incredibly adventurous, we both have a deeply-engrained sense of work ethic and perseverance that makes us push our limits in everything we do. Interestingly enough, however, is how this picture connects he and I to the outside world.
Neither of us ever really felt that we connected with people on more than a casual-social level. We could find ourselves in incredibly engaging conversations with fascinating people or be shoulders for others to lean on. We both love helping people, and we’ve both been involved in different community service positions throughout our lives, but there was always something that made us feel disconnected, something lingering in our minds that had us questioning the permanence of others in our lives. We wondered if they would call sometimes just to talk instead of needing the helping hands we both adored lending so much. Sometimes it felt inescapable, this feeling of being alone, but I believe that it is this same feeling that drove us to testing our limits. We wanted to know if we could climb that mountain, know if we could rise to the top of our class, beat the bigger opponent in a fight, push into new, often uncomfortable areas of growth – we wanted to know if we could learn to feel ok being alone.
Fast forward through school. I maintained a position in all of the advanced classes, AP, college prep, and so on. I was a semester of college ahead of most people at my school by the time I graduated, and I made it my goal to be the first one with a degree. This was the first real memory I have up at Devil’s Courthouse. We went on Labor Day as a family, and seeing that rock pillar shoot out the side of the mountain over the landscape below was an incredible moment. The climb is steep but not long, and it feels as if the world itself opens up to you when you take those final steps out of the forest and onto the observation clearing. Cars in the parking lot are only twenty-minutes away but appear as specks down below. Dad and I broke away from the family to climb on a nose feature that juts out by the hundred-plus-foot face. I felt that rush of intense focus sweep over me as I placed my hands in little water pockets in search of a place to dig my fingers into. The climbing wasn’t really hard at all, but a slip almost certainly meant falling into the valley below, so it felt very satisfying to throw yourself over the last move and stand on your feet once more. This was the day I rediscovered my love of adventure.
I went back so many times that year. I took a few high school buddies to the top and looked out at the valleys below. Sometimes I even went up their to run laps for wrestling. Occasionally we would bring girls up their at night and make out with them under the stars. We’d climb over the ledge and stand against the cold, winter winds that seemed to cut through the soul itself cleansing us of the concerns we had about growing up, and they still often do.
I had two good friends that I would frequent the courthouse with late at night. We loved meeting there every couple of months to drink whiskey and talk about life. Ultimately what we found is that none of us knew what we were doing, and it seemed to us that no one ever did. I followed my heart away from college and fell behind my peers, and I still haven’t finished my degree. One of us is trying to cope with one-sided relationships. One of us has finished college and is trying to find their way. Some others we used to go with has a wife now, and he has a new life in another state. All of us are trying to figure out what comes next, and none of us seem to know for sure – that can really make someone feel alone.
Recently I went back again with one of the two friends. We spent the whole afternoon on the parkway, and we met some pretty interesting people along the way. Folks were getting married and had their families take pictures with them atop Black Balsam. One man was hiking alone deep into the woods for a weekend of solitude. We even saw two great friends tell each other goodbye the night before one had to move away for work. As night fell we decided to make that journey atop the courthouse as we had tens of times before, but this time things were different. We weren’t kids anymore, and our worries about SAT scores and finding a date to prom were inconsequential now. We were concerned about life, real life.
We talked about how we could make a name for ourselves one day. We wondered if anyone would ever care that I thought I had some knack for writing that would allow me to continue adventuring. He carried with him the burdens of a fractured family and ponderings of how he could use his degree to not just work but contribute, really contribute towards something bigger than himself. We questioned how long it would take to start writing the next chapters in our lives and how far away we’d have to go from each other to make the most of the talents we possessed. Life can be scary, and it can often leave us feeling alone, but one thing we found to be true time and time again, is that everyone else seems to feel alone as well. When we’re dangling from ledges and taking photos, when we sit together through those bitter cold winds, when we sip scotch and cider atop that mountain, just human beings being, we find that we are alone, but maybe we’re alone together. Maybe everyone in our lives is trying to be alone together, and that really doesn’t sound so lonely after all. Nights atop that rock have taught me many things about myself, and whether I get to keep writing for everyone or not, whether my life forces me into becoming a weekend hiker or allows me to keep pursing this dream of navigating the more solitary places of this Earth, it’s my life, and I’m not alone.
Adventure On!
-JGM