Reflections from the Journey

Getting up early and going to bed late caught up with me.  I had wanted to get up early to get more sunrise image but I woke up with a splitting headache.  I couldn’t seem to shake it even after going back to sleep for an hour.  I almost packed everything up and head home, but I new that I should go out and shoot here while I could.  Headache or not I was in the mountains and that is better than being in Charlotte.

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After getting back to my camp at Roan Mt. State Park in TN, cooked myself a VERY tasty omelette and tried to decide on where to shoot next.  The combination of my early rising, hiking with a 30-ish pound pack, and full belly, however, made me quite sleepy so I opted to take a nap before making any decisions.  Yep, that’s just what I needed, a nice relaxing nap.

Ever try taking a nap in a campground in the middle of the day?

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Day 2 of my trip to Roan Mt.  came really early.  4:00am is not the time that I generally enjoy getting up in the morning, but the sun (& the other CNPA members) weren’t going to wait.   Wisely, I had laid out all my clothes and gear the night before, so I was out of my tent and ready to roll within minutes.

It’s a good thing I had those extra minutes, because I spotted a few deer as I was leaving the campground & slowed down a bit for safety’s sake.  Let me just say that driving in the dark at 4 in the morning on a strange winding road is difficult enough without the prospect of  deer in the road adding to it.  Anyway, I got to Carver’s Gap met up with my fellow nature photographers and headed up the Appalachian Trail toward Round Bald.

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Friday, the first full day of my trip was pretty much open since I wasn’t meeting the other folks from CNPA until Saturday morning.  There were so many trails to check out that I didn’t know where to start!   I decided to check out a trail that I thought I had read about earlier in the week:  The Cloudland Trail.  I quikly consulted a trail guide provided by the State Park and headed down to the Visitor’s Center to find the trailhead.  As I approached the trailhead which is behind the Visitor’s Center I saw a sign that read something like “Cloudland Nature Trail a service project of the Cloudland Nature Club.”  That and the relatively short length of the trail was beginning to make me suspect I has made a mistake.

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This last weekend I finally took a trip to a place in the mountains that I have been wanting to photograph for a few years.  I’d seen photos from friends and other photographers of the Roan Mt. area and they always made my mouth water, but for some reason or other I never made it up there.   An outing with the Charlotte chapter of the Carolina Nature Photographers Association (CNPA) gave me just the “excuse” I needed.

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Not so long ago I thought I knew it all.  In fact one of my favorite sayings was, “Those of you who think you know everything are annoying those of us who do.”  I also thought I was the greatest nature photographer since William Neil.  I may not have been published as much or sold as many prints as “those other photographers”, but I certainly took better photos.  “Once I catch a break,” I thought, “I’ll be rich and famous.  Everyone will know who I am.”

Do you know what God does to the proud?

DING! DING!  That’s right!  God humbles the proud.

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