Come on up.

One of my family's Thanksgiving traditions is a hike out in the woods somewhere. We didn't manage to get to it last year - my parents moving into their new place, my younger brother still in school, everyone all over the place - but we were in the right place this time around to pull it off. So we went to New Jersey. It was better than it sounds, I promise.

We went to High Point park for a fairly short dayhike along a very pleasant stretch of the Appalachian Trail. I didn't know what I'd encounter so I didn't bring any of my jewelry, so I wasn't able to time how long we were out, but it was around three hours, including a little stop for lunch. Maybe three and a half. Just a little walk in the woods, up to an obelisk and back down. This time of year there's not much sharing the woods with humans when they come tramping through open areas, but it took me a while to catch onto that: the wind kept rustling the leaves and making me think there was a bird or rodent dashing through the bushes and making those sounds happen. Then I adjusted to being out in nature again and stopped whipping my head around all the time.

The first thing that hit me when I got out of the car was quiet. It was a slow stretch of road by the parking lot, no other cars or humans around, just nothing. And no outside noises. None whatsoever. I can't express how much of a paradigm shift it was to not have anything to hear. Even on quiet nights, there's something going on in a city. But on a quiet day out in nature, there isn't a whole lot. Some cars came by, and we filled in the air with conversation soon enough - and getting quiet back shook me deep.

What also shook me deep was getting a horizon again. High Point is, in fact, pretty high, and we got views into New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania from the obelisk. We also stopped periodically along the trail to take in the little valleys and the horizons and the far blue mountains. Distance isn't something I get in the city, either, and I was close to Pennsylvania - just across the Delaware river - but I was also a good ways away from the Catskills, and I could see that. All that space in between me and them, and I sighed, saying how good it was to see mountains again.

The woods themselves looked like the woods in Pittsburgh's parks this time of year: dry, open, barren, under a sharp blue sky with the occasional cloud. It was nice to be in that sort of place again, less for raw nostalgia over Pittsburgh and more for an area where I couldn't see anything but the nature around me. When we'd get to a clear spot or an observation deck we'd look out to the valleys and pick out cows in the fields, or back to said observation deck, and there was that obelisk, and there was more nature than the rest of that. And when I'm hopping down rock-to-rock on a steep incline, I can't do anything except look where my feet need to go next.

After the hike was done, we spent a little time in an open area by the road. I don't know why it was there, this decently-sized lawn with well-cut grass, and I didn't care after I lay down on it. The grass was short, about standard lawn height, and dry from the lack of rain and snow, and scratched and tickled the way grass does, and it was dirt under me, real dirt, and I could look up and see nothing but clouds and sky, and didn't want to move and just stay there lying on the earth. But I had to, since my parents were leaving and they were my ride.

We went out for Chinese food for dinner, and all in all, had one of the better days any of us have had in a good long while.