Perhaps, since I am a high school student, somebody might say that I have my entire life ahead of me, with all of its beautiful experiences. But, despite being so young, I already have a personal breath-taking experience, which, I am sure, I will carry with me until my last days. What I am talking about here is my first hike to the mountains. Though traveling is not a big deal today, and lots of my peers rolled over the whole US or even abroad, before my trip I used to be a homebody. I had friends to hang out with, several hobbies, and I felt completely comfortable about spending weeks or even months in my hometown – or sometimes even on my block – without going anywhere. All my demands of novelty were satisfied by the Discovery and National Geographic channels, and I seriously thought that there was no difference between seeing something on the TV or with one’s own eyes. The situation changed when one day David, my best pal who always got a couple of colorful bugs in his head (or, in other words, was always carrying out several crazy plans at once) tumbled into my room and proclaimed his neglect towards civilization.
I will not describe how he managed to persuade me to join him in his journey to the Rocky Mountains; all I’ll say is that we departed in five days. This was my first time in the mountains, so I was turning my head in all directions. Unfortunately, the weather was foggy all the time, and the higher we got into the mountains, the worse the visibility was. Even despite this fact I still enjoyed the hike – I felt like I was Bear Grylls, whose show I used to watch with excitement: in the wild, with food and water in my backpack, carrying a flashlight and a knife. In the first day we were making our way along the foothills; but, the next day we started to climb on one of the peaks.
Though it was not very steep and high, I still was excited. I regularly hastened, and because of that I ran out of energy long before we got to the top; David, on the other hand was more reasonable. When we finally got to the top, nothing had really changed. The same fog was covering everything around us, and even though I was full of positive emotions, caused by the hike, I felt disappointed because I counted on seeing the view from above and perhaps being able to take some photos. We spent a couple of hours on the top, and decided to turn back, when the wind suddenly dispersed the clouds, and the plateau we were standing on became illuminated with the sun.
I saw a fantastic panorama in front of me, and for some moments I couldn’t believe my eyes. Seeing all those mountain ridges, cliffs, and edges on my own, not on TV, was like a revelation for me. The strong wind blew right into my face, and I just stood there and watched shreds of fog gliding over the ground far beneath me. At that moment I realized that I won’t be able to live a life without visiting the mountains at least twice a year. The next day we returned – my legs started to hurt so bad that I could hardly walk. But every time as my face wrinkled because of an ache, I remembered the feeling of being high above, with my head touching the skies and the clouds swimming below. And I smiled at myself and my first hiking experience. Source: http://academichelp.net/samples/essays/narrative/experience.html
