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The mountain seems unending, stretching up as far as the forest will allow her to see. The ground is littered with rocks, pebbles, and downed limbs, and it’s all that she can do to keep her footing on this unrelenting hike up the side of this eternal mountain. She can see each of her rapid breaths condensing in the cold November air, but despite the chill, sweat is building up under her winter hat. The monotony of the trail and the physical exertion allow her mind to drift back. Until now, she hasn't really taken the time to think about how all of this started. As her body struggles with each step, her mind begins an examination of the addiction and the choices that have placed her on this unmapped densely bordered game trail with everything that she is going to eat and wear for the next three days stuffed into a huge, heavy pack strapped to her back. She believes that the seeds were planted at the party that her friend threw for the basketball team last year. Her parents were out of town as were her friend’s parents. After the game the kids started ringing, knocking, and finally bothering with neither because the party had spilled out into the circular driveway in front of the house. She remembers the cute blonde skater dude and his dark older friend and her friend’s parents’ bedroom. She remembers the pot and the beer and the overwhelming desire to seem hip in the eyes of these two boys. She remembers the pale, cream-colored powder and the $100 bill rolled into a straw, the nausea, and the bliss. She remembers how that night changed it all. Her love of animals and her desire to become a vet were replaced, with astounding rapidity, by a love of this powder and the desire for that first high. Her life became a futile and devastating dance with a vicious addiction that culminated in an overdose and 90 days in a locked rehabilitation facility.
And, now, here she is in a wilderness program for at-risk youth in Georgia; nearly a thousand miles from her home in that sunny city beside the sea. She nearly slips on a damp patch of rock, and she is on the verge of screaming in frustration until one of her teammates, stumbling along behind her, steps up and catches her under the elbow, arresting her fall. She notes the true concern in the boy’s pink-cheeked face, and she thanks him, and it dawns on her that her gratitude is heartfelt and deeper than any feeling that she has experienced in a while and, with strange suddenness, her frustration leaves. This insight fortifies her against the cold and the climb and she carries on with a renewed sense of purpose. The mountains and the trees become stepping-stones and guideposts leading toward a new life with real freedom and possibilities, instead of obstacles and symbols of the loss of her old life. These thoughts are overwhelming, but they do not stop her hiking, and, as she tops the ridgeline to catch the mountain sunset, tears well in her eyes. The sun is a huge glowing orb sitting on the hump of a distant mountain on the horizon of this sea of mountains, painting the sky orange, red, and violet and, though her vision is clouded and her cheeks are damp, she is seeing clearly for the first time in her young life.
These small, sudden, life-changing moments are common in the mountains of north Georgia. They are simple instances of clarity that are frequent in the wilderness and rare in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of urban life. They happen daily at programs like Ridge Creek School and to many other folks, who find themselves in the seclusion of the wooded slopes of the Appalachian Mountains.
For more Info: www.ridgecreekschool.com
www.appalachiantrail.org
www.hikenorthgeorgia.com/
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