In an endless ocean of waste and days spent floundering in a torrent of monotony, what makes a day or a week seem any different? In summers past, a week was an adventure, an eternity contained, and then it became nothing. It soon became a chaotic disarray of responsibility and requirement. I was melting away into the depths of boredom when I was presented with an opportunity to participate in a week that possessed its own identity. I had recently become acquainted with the terrible burden on my youth that was long distance running when it came to my attention that I would be permitted to experience the magnitude of the abode of the Giant Sequoia. It was a moderately small group that would be converging from across the state to traverse the capillaries of the Sequoia Valley. I could not contest the promise of freedom of responsibility and I thus decided to attend.

The minute I awoke that morning, preceding the eternal voyage to the campsite, the chaos of my reality was conspicuously absent. At that point I knew then that this haven was the key to simplicity and self realization. As the winding road up the mountain perpetually extended around corner after corner, the pitiful and blurred trees that I witnessed in the distance began to take notice of my watchful eye and stood on their toes and reached to the heavens as if to collapse in exhaustion once we passed. I could distinguish the last union to the world flickering at the base of the mountain as I transcended into the hall of the gods and left the guards to deny all shards of reality from their realm.

I arrived at the site, unable to comprehend the enormity of what I was truly viewing. The ash-gray stems with their dismally bare arms vainly reached upward, only to be starved of life by the dictatorial monstrosities that never ended. Their rose shaded hides became saturated with the wisdom of an eternity of experience before me and the reality of it occurred to me. The celestial significance of my soul that I left in my room faded away with the leaves to the massive rose tinted trees leaving just me.

However, as I stood at the base of it, I felt my first inkling of uncertainty. Would I be able to return to a world without a silent dictator to preserve the magnitude of my reality? I looked over to my running shoes and under the layer of dust and earth, the truth flickered, which was all I needed.