Internalization and Black Mountain

I am beginning to understand some of the more counter-intuitive emotions tied into traveling that Kerouac tried to communicate in On The Road: the failure, the sadness, "everything . . . collapsing"

I traveled to Florence, South Carolina this weekend. It isn't a noteworthy pinpoint on the map other than the fact that I have true friends there that I often travel with. I wanted to spend time with just them, instead of going places with them to visit groups of friends and acquaintances, which we have always done. I have thought to myself in previous visits that we never get to really spend time together, except in the car (where we oddly don't really talk much). Our dynamic just wasn't the same without the road. I truly enjoyed their company and they are just as good of friends, but it was just different, and oftentimes we find what is at variance to our expectations, at first, to be unsatisfactory. I remember failure: failure to go to Charlotte or Asheville to see snow, glorious snow, snow that creates perfect silence, snow that sets nature at stillness and seems to set time in suspended animation, failure to even get out of Florence without something going wrong. My car battery drained, having left the lights on all night. After we got that fixed, me and a friend, who especially loves traveling, set out to test the car and decided to make a small adventure out of it. We headed for the NC/SC border, going up I-95. We ran out of gas, and had to pull the car to the side of the road -- that is ultimate defeat. Things were falling apart. After getting gas, there was nothing left to do but go home.

Now the above narrative is simply just the concentration of the feelings of dissatisfaction and the glorious struggle that is captured so perfectly in Kerouac's novel. It is a key element, and I'm very glad to keep experiencing it. I honestly did not feel it while I walked five miles to Black Mountain from LEAF, nor when my bike was stolen. I did feel it when my new bike's back wheel became wobbly upon heading down from the Blue Ridge Parkway. The simple transition from being above the clouds, commanding the view of seas of mist, to being below them and at their dominance, made me think of the security and comfort of the sunny mountain. Everything was perfect on that mountain ridge. After my descent, the sadness really soaked into me, through my shirt, until I was covered with it. It got in my shoes. It hung about me for two days. Though be it a subtle sadness (not the kind of sad that makes us sigh or cry) it literally obscured the beauty all around, except a misty field that I often remembered from previous days (this was on NC-hwy 281). This is my first time I travel in the fall, in late October, when the snow can be seen atop sleeping Black Mountain, when cloud moves in and challenges what I qualify as beautiful. That night where I realized my time of tramping with the full spirit of exploration was over and that it was time to accept defeat and go home. . . this was when the travail culminated. By this time, it was all in my sleeping bag, staining my feet (the feelings brought on in this instance were not like that night the rain deprived me of any sleep), running into the low parts of the inside of my tent. There really wasn't any escaping it. In this moment, I distinctly remember wanting to go home, like a little child. It was an essential part of my journey. I firmly believe that once you hit that point of conciously desiring all the comforts and familiarity of home, yet do not obtain home, the concept of "home" in your mind begins to change. Your thoughts on home get rewired in your brain a little, with each instance of this. I feel a little bit of familiarity and the emotion of a yearning to return towards any place I've spent more than day at, such as the Salem and Lake Jocassee area, Riceville, North Carolina, and especially Asheville. I feel my adventures are just beginning.

Musically-Inspired Geographic Location of The Day
I wanted to try something different (also, if you've noticed, I set the title of this section of the post as the link to the song, rather than the title of the post up at the top. I wanted the music to flood the reader's ears as the words below enter their mind. Same thing goes: right click, select 'open in new tab'). I wanted to share an instrumental, with the location just in the title. I've been dwelling on that memory of snow-covered Black Mountain in the morning, looming over the valley (this memory is from Lake Eden in October), and thinking "I want to be THERE! on top of THAT!" and reflecting on my over-simplistic fantasy of walking to the top of it. This song seems like the perfect sound if one were to prefer something other than the super-terrestrial silence of the mountain. The song suggests a summer setting, when the mountain is well-awake and resonating in deep lows. Think of the beginning free-flowing part as you look up and are captured by the prospect of climbing the summit, and the adventurous idea of it that gives you a headbuzz. As the tempo picks up (starts at one minute, thirteen secons), you are climbing it, and it is strenuous. You can't really see anything because of the trees. The desire to reach the top now pulls you upwards, against the will of the muscles of your legs against any other restraint that might come from the mind. Again, because of the trees (winter does not present this problem, though. The leaves no longer obscure the vew), you have no idea how close you are to the top. You eventually find your rhythm and the ascent isn't as tiring. When you come to a clearing in the trees, your reward a view of the valley below, the melody becomes soft and contemplative (around five minutes, fifty-three seconds). That's just how it goes. You put in much work of ascending the mountain side for just a moment of silence, looking down on where you started.