The Three Days of Green

 Some thing that I love are: Breweries, Hiking and Beauty. Not in that particular order and for my birthday I got to experience all three! My birthday lies between two interesting dates on the calendar, April 20th and April 22nd. Now I'm not going to explain 4/20 I expect if you are reading my blog you can go look it up if you don't know. April 22nd is Earth Day. I like to refer to this series of days as 'The Three Days of Green'. April this year is also the month of unemployment for me. Ski season ended early and my job starts late. While some would view this as a negative thing I saw it as an opportunity to take an extended vacation. I've been staying with my family in Vermont, and then I came down to North Carolina and am spending a week or so with my brother Jason and his fiance/ my best friend Lynn. They took me to spend some time in Ashville for my birthday weekend.

I met some really great people in Ashville, going from my last blog post. I spent some time with Rachel and her husband Bryan. While Rachel wasn't a perfect stranger, she's Lynns sister and I've met her before I didn't ever spend enough time to get to know her. Bryan I had never met before. I'm glad that I did, they're both great people. Bryan plays in a band and we went to see him play at the Pisgah Brewery. The reason why I love breweries is because they're 99% of the time laid back places to enjoy craft beer. This unpretentious attitude lends itself to attracting people with the same outlook on life. Overall, it was a great night good beer, good music and good people.

 The next day, on my birthday, we went hiking in the Pisgah National Forest with Lynns cousins and their dog (because what is a hike without a dog?). We looked at the weather and saw that there was an extremely high chance of rain. The hike that was chosen was one that was along a river. The original plan was to go until we wanted to turn around. The river contained swimming holes and beautiful scenery. Unlike when one hikes to a destination such as a waterfall or summit there was no specific place to turn around. This made it perfect for a rainy day. When one is hiking in the rain, even for those who like hiking, there is a fine line between enjoyable adventure and painful endurance. If you leave the car and view the day as a hardship to muscle through, you might as well of stayed home. You have to choose that it is going to be a good day. We all did just that, we all decided to enjoy ourselves. When we began it wasn't raining, but about 15 minutes into the hike the rain started, it was slow and then when we decided to turn around it was a soaking rain. The hike was beautiful. I would come back and camp there. Coming out of the woods we felt good, refreshed, and at peace, we were also soaked. When I go hiking I remember what I love about nature, it gives you much more than just beauty or opportunity for exercise. Wild places have a soothing effect on people. After hundreds of thousands of year of evolution people weren't meant to live in boxes. We weren't meant to keep our lives free of bacteria and movement, we evolved to be outside we adapted to the natural environment not the one that we created for ourselves. Now, I realize that it is extremely difficult to live 'off the land' and that I personally wouldn't want to do it. The developed world is a great place. But there is a piece inside all of us that is wild, and instinctual.

On Sunday Jason took me to see the Blue Ridge Parkway. If you haven't ever been there, it is beautiful, and  when you go you're left without a sense of awe I would question if you had a soul. We ended up parking going on a stroll, I'd be hard-pressed to call it a hike (it was only 1/5th of a mile on mostly boardwalk and pavement), to a waterfall. We then relaxed and watched a couple of guys catch trout out of the pool beneath the falls. They were almost catching good meal-sized ones every time. It must have been a man in his 40's and his father. I'm glad to see others enjoying this natural place. Getting people to care about nature is the first step toward gaining the support to preserve wild places. We then ate lunch at the Pisgah Inn, which is a restaurant that overlooks the Appalachians. After our exhausting weekend Jason, Lynn and I returned back to their apartment and fell asleep. Overall a great way to celebrate The Three Days of Green.