Talking to Rocks and Strangers: PART TWO

Hopefully, my last blog left you feeling all the feels and fuzzies.  Maybe this one will too... :) I mean...look at all this lush sunshine!

 The hour after my near nirvana-like moment on the Cumbrian rocks was painful! I had lost the motivation to talk to rocks, the view was deteriorating as the clouds rolled in and I was getting cold.  Very cold.  You know the one...when you're mega hot and sweat through your clothes (particularly your bra), then get cold and you've not got extra clothes to change into....It's the worst!  OK, not the worst.  It is "first world problems" kind of bad though...And you can get ill from it if you're not careful (as my father would say).  Anyway, I was thinking, "Crap, I've been climbing, crawling, sprawling up rocks for nearly three hours!" Slate rocks, granite rocks, limestone rocks, and there was this one rock that looked like those giant sand eels from everyone's favourite Kevin Bacon movie, "Tremors". Check out the pic on the left....and here's one from google so you get where I was coming from.  I imagined this badboy was jumping out of the green grass, going straight for my face:

 Anyway, I knew it was time for lunch if I was thinking that the rocks were fictitious sand eels....I was knackered and hungry.  I had climbed up 222 floors, nearly 2,500 feet or about 850 metres.  I had actually only hiked 4.2 miles, but most of it was UP HILL.  My goal was to complete the 11 miles horseshoe and the 2,900 foot elevation gain, but I was spent. I was having lucid dreams for red wine and olives on the beach in Spain....Margaritas and nachos in Arizona...and yes. I was even dreaming of a pork pie covered in brown sauce! I was again...anywhere but on a mountain in the middle of the Lake District.

I got out my down jacket to protect me from the howling wind and I off-loaded my peasant lunch of rice cakes and a sandwich on dried-out, week-old bread. Not what I had been dreaming about, but hey, I was hangry!!  Here is where I wrote this blog, nestled between the butt-cheek of two giant rocks.  And YES! People still do write things down on paper with ink pens! I am not sure how long I sat writing and eating, but I was content.  I would periodically look up at the passing clouds and the littering of bright white snow, nestled just like I was between other random rock butt-cheeks.  It was beautiful. The sound of nothing but wind flowing over the grass was actually very fulfilling and made me again, stop to appreciate the grandeur of where I was.  It was now when I had to stop writing - I couldn't read what I was writing anymore! My hands were freezing!!  And...it had started to rain.

The weather had turned to crap, misty and gray, windy and cold.  And I wanted nothing more than to sit in an old pub and drink a glass of red by an open fire.  I set off now in three layers of clothes, a hat and gloves....maybe I should have put those on sooner! You can never trust the sun in the UK; it has a very short shelf-life. Anyway, I set off very quickly - I wanted that booze! And according to my Fitbit *product placement*, I was going 2/3 faster going down, than when I was going up! 

Well chaps....even though the rain fell harder with every passing minute, I was so happy.  I was yet again taken away from the side of a hill.  Maybe it was the rain on the grass or soil, or maybe it was the rain cooling the sun-warmed, 420 million year old rocks....but the smell...THAT SMELL!!  It was breathtaking and I was home.  I was sat on the front steps with my parents and my dog, in my hometown of Bennington.  We were watching the rain fall down and the squirrels gather their last bits of food before scrambling into their nests to wait out the storm.  I was, in all reality, 4,154 miles from that spot on my front steps.  And even though I wasn't near enough to my parents to hug them, it was enough for me to feel safe and happy.  I walked the last three miles in a happy daze with a giant smile on my face.  As much as I miss my family and my home, I know that I can summon feelings of comfort and love through nature.  And if mother nature has the power to take us away from reality, set us on an uplifting, safe path, we should be doing everything to protect her. xx