Melissa Modolo "the quiet mountain"

Towards the beginning of the semester, I went to JMU for the weekend with some friends to celebrate my one friend's 21st birthday and to snowboard at Massanuttan. The first night of snowboarding and parties left us sore and tired the next day and so two of my friends and I decided to skip out on snowboarding again. We did some brief research about places we could hike and had little luck finding anything so we looked around outside, found the closest mountain and started driving in that direction. We eventually found this park that supposedly had a lake in it but we never got that far. We parked in a tiny parking lot on the side of the road into the park, got out and just started walking up the nearest path. The path was steep and rocky so it took us a good twenty minutes to get to the top. When we broke out of the trees, I had one of the most profound spiritual experiences I've ever had. The ridge we were standing on was by no means the highest point in the area. We were surrounded by mountains taller than us, however the trees were thin at the top of our ridge and an impressive valley of smaller hills stretched out in one direction. It was freezing cold and no animals were out. It was the deadest silence I've heard other than in my one caving experience. There was no moving except for the wind in the trees. And as far as I could see in any direction I chose to look were just rolling hills and tall mountains with trees and rocks and not a road or house in sight. I went of by myself to reflect and found a big rock with a craggly pine tree growing next to it. I sat on the rock and was overwhelmed with the power of the landscape. There is no describing the feelings that flooded me. I eventually moved back to my friends where my roommate and I engaged in a deep conversation. We sat there in the cold until the stars all came out and I was amazed by them. The moon was bright and so the valley was lit as well as our path down the mountain. No human can ever create something as inspiring and astounding as the scene I saw before me or for that matter any natural scene at all. There is some strong connection I feel to all the life that abides on earth. It's a supernatural feeling that I search for every day and in times such as that, I find it in overwhelming quantities.