A Climb

Blogging Every Day in May ~ Day Ten

Whew. It's a good thing that I actually did something exciting last night to write about.
Last night I went on a sunset hike in Hollywood. My first time actually hiking since coming here for college...

It was really only a 20 minute walk, but it was elevator up (i.e. my legs were on fire and I was huffing the whole way). The white lines on the far left of the photo on the first letters of the Hollywood sign, and in the distance is downtown Los Angeles. Being stuck in the center of this sprawling city, you can feel a little lost and a bit frustrated with all the concrete and smog and lack of greenery.

But then you take a walk up in the hills to clear your head you realize that there is some strange beauty in the vastness that is this city. I think climbing up anywhere can clear your head and put everything back in perspective. Being above everything and looking at your entire life as you would look at a map. Just seeing how small this world really is, and how small you are in it.

It didn't hurt that there were cairns as well. When I was younger, whenever we went on hikes, we would look for the cairns to mark the trails. They became a way to mark that we had been there and done that. They symbolize accomplishment, as well as the need to keep going forward to look for the next one. I built my own little cairn as a marker in lieu of writing for the box under the tree (though I did take the opportunity to go for a tree climb).