Thu, Jun 27 2013 - Summit Stone Mountain x3/(Yoga at sunset?) (View Original Event Details) Trip Leader(s): Michael Johnson Participants: Michael Johnson, Nancy R., Judy, Rafiq, Joyce B., Glenn A, Tom Jarosz (Yah-rosz), Carol, Linda P, Jenelle, Ron Walker

What an incredible hike last night. As the group got started on our first ascent, I thought how lucky we were with the weather. Strong storms had already smashed into Stone Mountain about an hour earlier, but the rock was already dry from the hot southern sun. The humidity hung in the air and we drank it into our lungs as fast as the chestnut oaks on the mountain side drank deep from hundreds of roots splayed out from it's trunk. After we stood on the summit for a few minutes catching our breath, and drinking enough water to keep the juices flowing, we started down, with a view to the west of ominous weather building, and basking the sun in a radiant glow, yet still casting it's warmth down upon us.

After we got to the summit for the 2nd time, you could see that weather pattern getting thicker, and turning from a high misty fog like, yet beautiful cloud layer, painted above the horizon, to the threatening thunder clouds starting to build from the hot southern sun forcing that water back into the sky. With incredible speed you could see those clouds coming alive.

As we were going down for the 2nd time, I heard a little girl crying behind me. We turned and found Maria, a very pretty, but scared 9 yr old looking for her Aunt. She kept saying, "She said she would wait for me, but she didn't!". Poor thing. After we made sure her Aunt was in front of her, we brought her down with us, and she started to feel a little better, as 4 or 5 women kept telling her we would help her find her Aunt. When Maria found her Aunt, the look of joy, and the hug she got from her Aunt, tugged on the heart a little. She was so cute and smart, and a little adventurous. I'm sure you can all relate.

When we got to the top the 3rd time, and the humidity continued to build, right along with those thunderheads. We decided we needed to get off the top as soon as possible. We passed Tom and Rafique, training with extra weight on their backpacks of course, and told them of our plan to get off the top and find a place closer to the bottom for protection from the storm blasting the flat lands to the west with a downpour, upwind from us. They briefly considered, and decided they were going to push to the top as fast as they could pump those legs with the extra weight, and try to find us for the yoga.

We got no more than a couple hundred yards further, when we saw the first lightning strike flash, just when I was about to turn off the road to the rock face just to the south. So with tail between the legs decided to descend even further. We came to a nice private relatively flat rock on the SW side of the mountain, just below the treeline to the west, but still off to the side enough to enjoy mother nature, and the sounds of nature at dusk. The lightning was getting a little closer, but seemed to be stuck just west of us, so the yoga was a go.

Nancy lit her little candle, and began her yoga session, doing an excellent job of putting everyone into a trance like state, that you can only achieve at dusk, with the night call of the night jar, or in this case, the Chuck Will Widow's call, mixed with the sound of thunder booming to the west, the flash of the lightning reflecting off the clouds, almost above us now, and after climbing over 2100' in elevation, in the hot and humid summer evening. It was one of the best ends to an almost 2.5 hour exercise session, culminating in a joy that comes from feeling proud of your body, happiness that comes from enjoying those long summer evenings reminiscent of the beginning of summer vacation, and the relief that the storm was stuck just west of us. But I forgot how nice it was to have someone lead yoga, after years of doing it on my own. It was very soothing, and Nancy is so good at it!

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I got home to Decatur, the lightning was crashing all around me, seemingly alive with a stubborness to continue striking in areas very close to my house, and in no hurry to move on. We were very lucky we were spared that on the mountain.

Thank you for joining me. Sorry for the long write up, but it was very special to me, and as I sat here drinking my coffee, I just had to put something together in an attempt to capture what we experienced. It went way beyond just another fitness hike to me.

Michael J.