By Roger Barbee
For many years I was part of a school’s administration that planned and supervised annual retreats for its high school students. One of the most popular activities on those retreats was the group hike to the large rock outcrop at the summit of Great North Mountain. We gathered our students onto the rock, and they would gaze east, looking far below to the village of Orkney Springs and Shrine Mont, the Episcopal Conference and Retreat Center for the Diocese of Virginia. It was a view that gave dimension to the hike they had just completed and to the village and retreat center. During one of the retreats, a student asked if some of them could hike back to the summit the next morning to see the sunrise. That is how I came to be standing outside the dining hall the next morning where about a dozen seniors met me, each gripping a flashlight in the morning chill. Leaving the center’s parking lot, our sleepy group walked past the outdoor chapel and followed a shadowy fire road where the walking was rather easy, even in the thick darkness of the woods. But soon enough, the rather smooth way of the fire road gave way to the trail, a narrow rock-filled path that served as a stream after every summer storm. Carefully we walked up the steep trail, each of us working in his or her own way to step gingerly on and around rocks. The walking was such that not even this group of high school seniors did what adolescents do best—talk. The flashlights’ beams and the labored breathing of walkers marked our progress, but we finally arrived safely at the summit and our destination.
We helped each other to climb onto the large stone outcropping, and the deep quiet was only disturbed by the many clicks as we turned off our flashlights. Getting comfortable on the outcrop in the thick dark of the forest, we reverently watched for the sunrise. The dawn came slowly to the valley that held the village and retreat center far below. A student asked about the lakes we saw, and another explained that what we were seeing was not lakes but concentrations of fog in low places that looked, in the low light, like lakes. Sitting in awe of the scene, we each tried to guess exactly where on the forested horizon the sun would show. Time in that stillness seemed halted, but suddenly one of the students said in a hushed shout, “There it is.” We each turned to our left, looking beyond the resort of Bryce, and watched in that dawn’s cloistered light until the sun grew so bright that we had to turn away, unaware that as we had been mesmerized by the sun rising, the warming of the earth had caused the heavy fog to evaporate, revealing the retreat center and the village of Orkney Springs far below us. When the sun cleared the far horizon, a student said (with only the wisdom of a high school senior), “Well, that’s over.” We then stood, stretched, and quietly commented about what we had done and what we had seen. We then hurried down the trail to the dining lodge for a breakfast of fried apples, sausage, and pancakes.
In Hold Everything Dear, John Berger writes, “A mountain stays in the same place, and can almost be considered immortal, but to those who are familiar with the mountain, it never repeats itself.” For many years I led students and teachers on the hike to that large rock on Great North Mountain. But only that one time did some students want to walk in the dark in order to witness a sunrise from the rock. Since that morning I have seen dawns come over at Shrine Mont and at other locales. Many dawns. Many years. Many students. And all are like Berger’s mountain: All the same without repetition.
The student who announced, “Well, that’s over,” was right. Our shared experience of the hike in the dark and that particular moment of seeing dawn come is now past, but I hope that the effect of rising so early, walking in the dark with classmates, and witnessing such a fine dawn is still with that student and all the others. I hope that that memory is one carried onward into their lives so that, when needed on one of those dark trails we all walk, it brings light, warmth, and hope.
