Day 118, 119: It's not all dark.

118, 119 (are much the same):

I wake up unscathed, no beaver attacks just yet, and get an early start on the day.

The most noticeable difference between Vermont and the last 1000 miles is that we're finally doing significant climbs again. You'd think this would kill my motivation, but there's something about the pure physical endeavor of pushing myself up a mountain that allows me to silence my mind, and even my mind's worry about my body, and just embrace the task at hand.

And the pay offs are getting better.

The mountain tops, although not bald, are covered in massive pine trees, and the smell is immensely pleasant. But no mountain in the northeast is complete without a firetower, and in that regard, Vermont delivers.

The trees are insane green. The clouds, a fluffy white layer in an otherwise perfect blue. The mountains form various layers of silhouette across the horizon, promises of what's to come.

I know my posts have been dark as of late, but that's the reality of the situation, life is dark sometimes. I'm telling my experience as it happens, and what sort of adventure would it be if there wasn't hardship? If there wasn't suffering? It wouldn't be any adventure at all.

But it's not all suffering, it's not all misery.

Yeah, sometimes we slip on wet rocks and twist our ankles into oblivion and shit our pants and cry for no reason, but we also take off sprinting down mountains (when our pack weight is low enough to allow this), bounding off rocks, laughing like an insane person the whole way. Sometimes we can't hike because we laugh too hard at our own stupid inside jokes (Slender Mane, album coming soon), sometimes we make fart noises into the pure pitch dark of night just to see if anyone else is awake in their tent, sometimes we walk through fields after a rainstorm and the most massive rainbow is arcing across the sky hovering vibrantly above clouds painted orange and lavender by a setting sun while a small group of deer (and unicorns, sometimes) leap away through the tall grass and into the trees.

So you see, it's not all dark.