Rose Ledge Again!

Last Friday, we went back to Rose Ledge to climb. This time, instead of our regular instructor Clementia, we were joined by Bob. As last week, it took us 45 minutes to get to Rose Ledge. And we also had a 30-40 minute hike.

Walking up to the rock we would climb on, I again noticed all the leaves. Although, there were still many on the ground, it seemed to me that the leaves were getting less. It is only a week ago that I have been here last time but I think something has changed already. The forest still looks pretty green because of the trees that don't lose their leaves for the winter, but as a whole the environment looked like it is getting prepared for the cold. I might be projecting my feelings of coldness into the forest and the forest doesn't really care that much about the cold and it really doesn't look any different.

 As long as the sun was out, the temperature was comfortable. Only the coldness of the rock (gneiss) revealed the real coldness of current times. After we sat up some climbs, we started climbing. This time, we had a few difficult climbs and a few easy ones, a nice balance. Something was different this time. I think because the air was fresher and the gneiss was colder, I was a bit more aware of my surrounding. It was more difficult to ignore. Every time I touched the gneiss, it was very clearly letting me know that it's there. When I got into trouble during my climb up, I as always pushed my entire body against the rock and I was never before as much aware of the clear and strong presence of the rock. Even if I would want to ignore it, I could not have, it simply forced itself into my senses without warning, preparing or alerting me. I liked that because sometimes unless I am forced to notice something I won't because I am too occupied with myself.

The second the sun started going down, the temperature dropped to an estimated 0 degrees Celsius. From now on, the rock not only made itself be noticed by us but it almost seemed like it was trying to kick us out. The rocks wanted us to leave. Since I am a type of person that believes everything has meaning I like to think of this reaction as a way to teach us not to be out too late. We could stay out there all night, if it would not get dark and cold but because it does, we leave and I think that's only to our own benefit. So we left.