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My dad and I ran off from the confinement of staying inside during quarantine to go camping and hiking—as safely as possible. I’m even proud to announce that I got a zit from wearing my mask so often. Isn’t responsibility attractive!
We had some maps, but there was no one at any of the stations to talk to or get the layout of the land from, so we kind of just took it head on without doing tons of research. We started up to the bluff and used what we knew from the map to checkmark all the things we were supposed to see, with one exception: Balanced Rock.
We’d tried to find it, but on the map, it only showed that Balanced Rock was a 0.4 mile trail. It did not have a dot showing where the rock was. So my dad and I looped about to go back and try to find it, assuming it would be right there the same as all the other key rock formations were. This was our first day there and we’d both already worked all morning, driven 3 hours, and set up the tent, so we were pretty exhausted. We found the map that showed where the balanced rock trail started up again and realized it went straight down.
We started going down and about 0.1 miles down, we both looked back with my mother’s words echoing in my head, “What goes down must come back up.” I shook my head exasperated at the idea of climbing back up.
The downward path got steeper and steeper with no signs or any notes of how far down the Balanced Rock was. The path was basically a bunch of steep stairs cut into a quartz field, and my dad and I are two of the clumsiest people I know, so we were both being extra careful. In fact, we were being so careful and trying to conserve energy to take the treacherous stairs back up, that we didn’t even find the balanced rock.
We had completely missed it. Twice. Not only that, with the steeper the stairs and the more exhausted we were, I didn’t even enjoy the hike down only fearing trying to get back up. Luckily at the bottom, there was a connection to some train tracks that we traversed instead of trying to get back up the sheer cliffside, shaking our heads at our inability to find the rock.
It became a joke over the next 24 hours. “There is no balance rock. It’s a lie. It’s something they put on the maps to trick tourists.” We laughed it off, but we were still determined to see it.
The last morning there, we decided to take another go at it. We climbed up the cliffside, walked to the top stopping and enjoying more now that we knew the route. Then we reached the breakaway of the Balanced Rock Trail.
This time, it was different, we knew what to expect, we knew to go slow since it had rained the night before, and we knew to vigilantly seek out this rock. We asked (from a safe distance) a few people on the trail if they had found it, and eureka! a couple said they saw it right on the edge of the cliffside. We looked to where they pointed, and saw nothing. We tried to pretend some of the rocks were what we had in the pictures, but we didn’t really convince ourselves.
We begrudgingly continued down taking caution at every step nearly giving up, when the corner of my eye caught a bright light. There in a halo of the sun was the rock we were looking for all this time. It was there, way off to the side looking like an arrow piercing the Earth, and there were absolutely no signs pointing it out to any passersby. We were ecstatic and relieved having finally found it before we had to head home.
My dad and I clambered around the rocks and found a path to get closer, also pointing the rock out to people in the area so they did not have to come back the way we did.
Then exalting in our success, we climbed down the rest of the way to loop the rest of the lake.
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With quarantine, I feel like I did the first time walking down the cliffside, not knowing where the bottom was, what I was looking for, or where I would end up. Without knowing an inkling of when this will be over, the journey feels grueling and arduous for no cause. Especially seeing people getting together and ignoring common courtesy mandates, it can feel so draining to keep putting the effort in to be safe which is often for other people in your house or family and not even for yourself. There’s no official map to how to deal, only the basic outline of the path that many people are ignoring. I really do hope we find the halo of light that announces something worth seeking in this time and that we carry what we learned over to provide a better map and path for the future, because when I was hiking the same trail the second time, it didn’t feel grueling, it felt important, there was time to stop and enjoy the surroundings while feeling safe even on precarious rocks and steps.
I hope you can focus on the glow of attaining balance in little victories and little assurances the way I'm trying to remind myself to focus on the little things and not be overwhelmed. I feel like this rock wearing down near the bottom and still trying to balance while plagued with constant feelings of helplessness with all that's going on in the world. Remember, wearing a mask is doing something helpful. Keeping distance is doing something helpful. Keeping in touch virtually is doing something helpful. Be helpful, in a world that can often overwhelm and make you feel helpless. Be the person to point to the little victory and say, “Don’t miss that! That’s what you’re looking for right over there a bit off the main stream of all that’s going on during this time.”
Stay safe out there. Stay helpful. Stay balanced.
—Cor