Trip to Vogel

I love hiking. I love going into the mountains and going so deep into the woods that you can't hear any roads or cars or people. I haven't ever been on a true hike, but every time we go to the mountains we always stop off on a trail and go see something. On this last trip we went to Vogel State Park in Georgia.The trail that we went on led to a beautiful waterfall.

In order to get there we had to go down the side of a cliff almost. But when you got to the bottom there was a beautiful view of the waterfall and you could see all of the cascades.

The thing I really love about going through trails in the woods and seeing such beautiful things in nature is that it always makes me wonder how much more is out there that we haven't seen yet. What about what people centuries before us have seen? Did it look the same for them too?

Or was it something completely different for them? Before the European settlers came to the Americas, did the Native Americans stop and pause to look at waterfalls like we do now, or were they so connected to the natural world that they took it for granted like we take indoor plumbing for granted today?

There's so much beauty in the world it's hard to imagine that it's all been seen. Whenever I'm hiking or on a river or at the beach or at the lake I always see things in a different way. Things that seem so important and that have been bothering me seem like they don't really matter because, they really don't.

No matter what little problem we have now, five hundred years down the road it won't matter. The things that we go through now are things that people have already gone through. The only thing that's changed is the way they experience the problem. No matter what people have felt lonely. They've felt depressed. They've felt loved. They've felt angry. They've felt relieved. They've felt everything that we could possibly feel.

And no matter how much we as a species have advanced, I can't help but look back at the stories of our ancestors and realize that we haven't come that far. We aren't much smarter than they are. Sure we have better technology and a better understanding the biology of life, but we still don't know the big questions. What happens after we die? What's the point of life? How can I be happy? All of these questions have been asked before. And the answer will be different for each one of us, or maybe there's no answer at all. Maybe we're not supposed to know. This is what I think about in the mountains, and after a good long think about the bigger things in life, the small things don't seem to matter so much.