Sheer cliff faces loomed ahead and I wondered if I wasn’t maybe just a little crazy to do this alone.
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My forty pound pack weighed heavier on my back determined still, I trudged up stone stairs, tripped over snaking roots, wiped the sweat from my forehead and neck.Ī warning sign: CAUTION: the next mile of trail is rocky and steep. Because of recent rain, this section of the Appalachian Trail included slick stone slabs, narrow wet ledges, and even dripping iron rungs affixed to the rocks to aid with the ascent. Where the climb grew steeper, the mountain’s gently sloping hem gave way to crinkles of her ruffled skirt more steeply inclined. The trail along Catawba Creek soon ascended higher, meandering away from the stream to follow a pine needle, leaf-littered path under a canopy of deciduous trees mingled with a community of conifers. On my way up, I passed several streams, healthy waters trickling, gathering, running down the valley cleft. Me with my newly formed drum…seeking connections between earth’s offerings and its limitations, while exploring my limitless thoughts, in search of insight and a wider perspective: the whole reason I had climbed this mountain in mid-May. Good reasons for climbing, for spending three days and nights alone atop the tooth (and jaw) of the Dragon. My perspective, the high wide-angle view felt definitely loftier, more hallowed, literally more insightful. So much of life is about perspective, our singular vantage point from which we view the universe, dependent upon so many variables, person by person.
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I planned to stay awhile The view from the aerie looks out over the Appalachian Mountains, blue-green ridges running like long trains north to south or south to north, depending on your perspective This quartzite molar was not the actual tooth, which I could see from where I sat, but the aerie was flat enough, and spacious enough, to hold a human comfortably seated in a lotus position thus, here I comfortably sat instead of balancing precariously on the jagged eye tooth of the dragon. The eagle’s aerie, a rock nest created by eons of wind and water, a bathing bowl for large birds, provided the perfect perch for meditating on the cragged mountaintop, Dragon’s Tooth.