marcicat | mountain story

Last weekend when I totally did not get lost walking around the state park, the path I was on took me up a mountain. Now, the trouble with low-ish mountains in wooded areas is that it’s kind of hard to know when you’ve reached the top. After walking for a while, I reached a sort of clearing, and there were a few of those geological marker things and a clever sign:

It says “WELCOME TO THE SUMMIT” with a smiley face. Whether I had actually reached the summit wasn’t hugely important, since I was on a loop trail — it wasn’t like I was waiting for the summit to turn around or anything. So I had a snack, and kept going.

About fifteen minutes later (let the record show there *was* a slight downward sloping-ness to the trail), I came upon a nice overlook occupied by what seemed to be a troop of Boy Scouts. And the troop leader says to them, “Congratulations, you’ve now reached the top of the mountain!”

Now, it’s entirely possible that he was correct. It was a much more impressive stopping point than the one I’d found, at least in terms of view. (No sweet sign, though.) But from the little I overheard, it sounded like they were planning to go back the way they’d come up, and I have a sneaking suspicion that he may have just been 10,000% done with hiking with a group of young boys and ready to call it a day.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.