rock_city

I arrive puzzled as to what my adventure is going to be today. My dad says we are off to Rock City. I am puzzled as to how can anyone live in a city full of rocks? I am so anxious to see what this place has in store for me. I enter with an open mind ready for the day’s adventure. Any place that has such an interesting name must have a good adventure to be discovered.

The rocks are huge, some as tall as two story buildings, all towering over my eleven year old body making me feel like Stuart Little in the human world. You really feel like you’re in a city made completely of rocks made of tall skyscrapers, uneven roads, but with out the load noise. As we walk further in it gets cooler and cooler, but there is no wind anywhere. The trees cover this place making it in constant shade with the sun trying its hardest to peak through to shine on this magical city. In this magical city I decide to go a quest to find something absolutely amazing. I find my QUEST for the day! I hear voices that seem to be coming from the heavens until I look up and realize its people on top of these huge rocks. I see other hikers above me on top of the big rocks and I want to join them. They are too far away for me to ask them how they have reached the top and so I am on my own to find the way up. I find my stepping stool, a rock that leads to another one, which takes me to the top. Once I reach the top I feel like I am on top of the world. I am on top of the city and feel like the ruler who decides what rocks will stay and what ones will have to be destroyed and moved for big and better ones. The rocks are filled with this moss that is the green of granny smith apples. It feels like a big fluffy blanket that you would use on a cold winter night, but smells like cedar chips that you place in your drawers to keep the moths away from your good sweaters.

My dad calls to me; I look to find him on a different rock from me. The rocks are not altogether as one big one; there are gaps and it order to get from one to another you need to jump. As I approach the edge and look down the gap seems to get bigger and bigger and more impossible for me to get across. I’m terrified that I will not make it across and will fall to the city floor. My dad helps me across and I realize it is not that far and I can accomplish anything I put my mind to. I continue walking until I find what seems to be the center of the entire city and decide that I want to sit down and take it all in. I sit at the edge of a rock dangling my feet and looking out seeing what I can see. As I’m looking I see these little white spots that almost make the rock look like it has chicken pox’s. They are little rocks are smooth and pure white and very easily able to be taken out of big rocks to be dropped for the top of the rocks. I close my eyes as the wind begins to blow and just listen to the world around me. I hear many different sounds that make me wonder what they could actually be. All of a sudden there is a loud crash, like someone dropping cinder blocks into an empty trash bin, and I open my eyes thinking that someone has fallen, but as I listen further I don’t hear anything further it was just a tree branch.

I close my eyes again and imagine everything that tree branch went through; I become the tree branch for a minute. I hear myself snapping one thread at a time knowing that at any moment I will be plummeting to the ground on anything that stands in my way on my descent. Finally I feel the last snap and I am free falling with nothing to slow me down except the ground below me. I hit and hear a lot of crying from the things that I have landed on. I have killed little families of mice and little plants. I feel bad but there is nothing that I can do about it, it’s not my fault the tree I was hanging on no longer wanted me and so it was my time to go. I turn back from the branch back into my normal form wondering if it was really a tree branch that fell and if the experience really could have happened or if I was just getting ahead of myself.

I decide to go exploring more to see what other amazing things I may find. I am still curious as to whether or not there is wildlife that lives up here on top of the rocks. As I continue it seems like every rock is the same as the next with only that gap distance as the only difference. Some gaps are tiny that it only takes one step to get over them while others are big enough that you need to leap over sometimes get a running start to make it over. Everyone more exciting then the last and more terrifying making me wonder why I continue going. My adventure is coming to an end with still so many questions to be answered. But these questions will have to wait for another day when another adventure will be born.

As we are making our journey out of the city back to our car, I recap my day and see what I have learned. I realized that I faced my fears of heights and falling to my death. Also that there is really such a place that is full of just rocks that were put there by nature and will be there for many years to come only calling for more adventure. This is only one of many times that I will visit this place finding new places to explore in Rock City.