Blog assignment 3 – A description of a false reality.

My writing goals for this assignment are to be as visually descriptive as possible, to instill in the reader the things that I have experienced and to improve the coherence of my paragraph structure. This writing is going to be of an descriptive nature, and the purpose is to convey the message in a way that a reader can both visualize and relate to. I think those most likely to read this would be my classmates, teacher possibly and maybe anyone out there on WordPress that finds this interesting.

Illustration

Sometimes, the mind has a way of misinterpreting visual details. This can be very disappointing and can, in certain situations, undermine a person’s morale. I was hiking with a group of people once through the dense woods of north carolina, in what is known as Pisga national forest. It is a forest that it linked up with the very similar Smoky mountain range which famously runs   through Tennessee. The forest is so dense that at points during your hike, you may not even be able to see more then 50 yards ahead of yourself.

These woods are full of all kinds of diverse biology, towering and pungent fir trees, vast expanses of open and desert like brush in the valleys on the south sides of some ranges, but also lush, thick green Azalea trees, which dominate most of the undergrowth along the particular trail we had picked.

The trail, although not rated to be a difficult one, crossed directly up through and over a mountain top, which was rumored to hold one of the best vistas in the entire park. This vista was directly in the middle of our journey one day. While we were hiking to a different camp site for the night, we had to cross a couple of park roads and some very easy trails which brought us to the base of the mountain that was supposedly the entrance to the beautiful vista that we had to cross through. The incline was at first not very sharp, maybe something along the lines of 30 or 40 percent incline. This quickly gave way in about 100 yards or so to an incline of about 50 or 60 percent, which can be very tiresome if you have to hike a decent pace to make it to camp like we did. This went on for about 20 to 30 minutes and then, there it was.

You can always tell the top of the mountain because all along the trail, if you look directly in front of you and toward the sky, your vision is blocked by the endless foliage that towers above the ground. When you near the summit of an even moderately sized hill, if you look in the same spot, you can see the sky. We saw the sky.

We burned with anticipation to reach the top and pushed harder and faster to get there so that we may rest and take in the sight. We found the strength to propel ourselves up this trail at a faster pace then we had been keeping along the easy trail at the beginning of our journey that day. About 30 yards to go, and it started not to feel quite right. We pushed on to the top sweating and panting, in denial about what lay before us. Low and behold, the hill behind us turned into a false summit. A false summit is usually, although not always, when you are hiking to the top of a sizable mountain which has another at its base. when you near the top of the first mountain, you cannot see the much larger one on front of you because of the angle which you are on and the fact that there is usually a distance of flat land in between the two. This didn’t quite break our spirits because, after all, the show must go on, but it did cause a few of us to mutter some choice words before pressing on to the top.

I think I achieved my goals because I was able to tell the story in a way that might make the reader feel the sense of disheartenment that my group and I felt when we reached the false summit. I am not that good of an objective reader when it comes to my own work because, well, it always make sense to me in a way, but I think I may have made an improvement in the way I structure my paragraphs and move from idea to idea. I think overall this may be an accurate depiction of the events that I tried to describe and that makes me feel satisfied.