The Mountains are Calling

an inspirational trip up Grandfather mountain

Mountains are special, aren’t they?

There is just something about them. You can stare at them for hours and it’s like this mighty engine pumping new thoughts and inspiration into your soul. Just looking at the mountains brightens your day and inspires you to something greater.

This past weekend, my wife and I got to spend our 6 month anniversary climbing Grandfather mountain and then spent two days on the tippy top. 

I got the reservations back in February as a surprise birthday present. I tried to look up the best campsites on Grandfather mountain, looked at the pictures on their website, and no matter how much research I did I couldn’t figure it out.

I’m here to tell you that God’s provision is clear. He helped me pick the absolute best campsite! 

We didn’t look at every other site, but we had multiple people tell us how lucky we were to have our site. Apparently, it was booked for months in advance. And we had it for 2 whole days!

Ok, ok, I will tell you the name so you can try it too. It is a site called Cliffside. Maybe it’s not as much of a secret to most of y’all. But to us it was. The pictures on the website do not do it justice. The reason I chose it was just because it was the closest to Callaway peak.

The beauty of Cliffside is that even though it’s not at the peak, the views are just as good! The name Cliffside tells you everything you need to know. The whole site is on a huge cliff that overlooks the vastness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We got to watch high above at 5600 feet or so, the many people winding down the Blue Ridge Parkway.

It was a really fascinating picture of God’s plan for the world. We all have this intricate part to play traveling down the parkway of God’s plan, but when you look at that broad picture of the mountain range, you realize how little you are. His plans do not revolve around you or me. You play such a unique part, yes. But a little part nonetheless. God’s plan is so beyond anything we can measure up to!

It was cool watching as people would stop on this overlook. We never found the overlook, but we couldn’t help but judge. They stopped at this overlook 3000 feet below us to look at something that looked so cool to them, but was so little to us we couldn’t even see it. Literally, the land they were looking at just looked flat to us, that’s how high we were! Another one of those cool perspective things.

We hiked up the mountain on Friday via the Profile trail. The trail says it’s strenuous, and we figured out that’s pretty accurate. It was a cool hike though! We passed creeks, caves, a bunch of giant boulders (so tempting to climb), and of course climbed like a million rock stairs!

I don’t know when they built the stairs, but wow! That’s impressive.

We ended up climbing 3000 feet in just shy of 4 miles. 

Needless to say, we were tired at the top, but gosh was the view worth it.

It’s funny how when something takes more energy and pain to reach, you appreciate it so much more.

We ate dinner and watched the sunset over the right of us. Since we faced north, we couldn’t get a great shot of the sunset or sunrise, but the light and colors still shone across the land in such a magnificent way!

It was a cloudy night so we couldn’t see any stars. Once it was dark, we actually streamed an episode of Brooklyn 99 in our tent before we went to sleep that night, haha! It’s crazy how far technology has come. When I was in scouts we used walkie talkies to communicate because no one ever had service. Now, I can’t think of the last time I went camping and didn’t have service on top of a mountain. And not just a little service, but enough connection to stream Hulu with no buffering!

Saturday we spent the day reading, lounging, eating, playing a board game, and enjoying the vastness of God’s great design!

I’ve been reading a book called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. 

I have learned a lot in the book about life. I read the book to try and get inspiration and knowledge for creating a good fiction story, but he actually had a lot of good points on life too. The book was written to teach someone how to write a good story, but Donald did it by showing his journey as he learned how to live a good story.

I won’t go into all the cool things I learned, but I’ll leave us off with this. Remember those mountains I said give us inspiration like an engine for our soul? I have always enjoyed staring into the mountain range and getting lost in thought. But I’ve always had trouble connecting the pieces. It’s like I have so many thoughts I just get lost and don’t know what to do with them.

This time, Donald put a new thought in me. In his book, he goes on some wild adventures. During one of them, he’s basking at the greatness of mountains as well. It’s at this moment he says something interesting: “I wondered at all this exposition God had created, as though it were an invitation to an epic so grand it might match the scenery. The mountains themselves call us into greater stories.” (page 159).

I really liked that thought. The idea that we are called to a greater story. God has invited us into His plan and His story. Another aspect of a good story Donald shares is that a great story involves a character who wants something, overcomes conflict to get it, and there is a great sacrifice at stake.

Well, what greater story than God’s? We are the characters. A character who wants God and desires God. We will face hardship, life and the Bible has shown that over and over. But the sacrifice at stake is the people around us that do not know God. Their lives are at stake and we need to overcome conflict at all costs to show them the truth.

We are the little car on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Just driving around the beauty of the mountains. Sometimes we see the large vastness of His plan on the overlook. Other times, it’s dark and scary like in the tunnel. But we move forward nonetheless. All we can do is drive our car and invite more people on the Parkway. We get to be part of the greatest story of all; a journey through the mountains if you will.

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We are about to head out on our next adventure…a cross-country road trip! I plan to write an update blog like this one every day during our trip! If you want to get those straight to your inbox, make sure to subscribe!