Foster Falls Part II: Mother Nature's Lesson

You know, that weekend up in the mountains of Tennessee was really really cold! The ground was frozen, my water bottle was frozen, the waterfall was frozen! When Chris and I left Jacksonville that Friday afternoon, it was 60, by the time we reached Chattanooga it was 20 and by the time we reached the campsite, about 2000 feet higher up, it was somewhere around 10. As a good Floridian, the warmest sleeping bag I had was rated down to 40 degree weather, so I brought 2 of them. As we hiked into camp, I was thinking "What an experience!, so this is what good ol' Alex McCandless must have felt in Alaska" and "So this is what it feels like to whip it out in 10 degrees! wih-hih-hoo!," but at the same time I was thinking "am I really gonna be ok this weekend just from reading a few "complete guide to winter backpacking" books?!" Then I looked at who I was camping with -3 Northerners. They looked pretty at home in the cold, of course they had their North-face zero degree sleeping bags in their packs, but still their tranquil demeanor that night really changed my whole perspective on what I was experiencing -namely the extreme cold. Racing questions like "why am I here" and the whole "survival mode" mentality seemed to pass away and I just felt at peace with the conditions, just from sitting in the cold dark night and feeling warm. It all started to seem endurable, livable, Comfortable! No, I wasn't getting so cold that I was delirious and out of touch with reality, quite the opposite, I was experiencing an outside perspective from my own, and realizing the true state of things -cold on the outside and warm on the inside, kinda like my heart (haha). What I'm here saying is that everything around us has an influence on us in one way or another, even things as fundamental as gravity assert their influence. What's significant about my story of this timeless maxim, is that the People I was around at that moment of realization, Influenced me by revealing how tolerant I really was of the cold. Now that I'm back in my "habitat" and normal daily routines, the experience has made me realize how influential everyone is around me to my own state of mind -my own reality.

This experience brought a whole new level of meaning to this statement:

"I feel these expeditions to be necessary for me to survive as a human being, to realize myself and maintain my inner harmony."

written by Reinhold Messner who was describing his 100 mile trek to the base of Hidden Peak, which he then climbed with Peter Habler and made the first ever two man ascent of an 8000 meter peak.