Every semester, I find myself walking the Noland Trail. When I first came to CNU, I had no idea what it was or that it was within walking distance. After about a month here, I decided to find it and discover what it actually was. My first time out on the trail, I went alone. It was a cold Saturday in October, my favourite time of the year. The leaves were an array of different colours and the breeze was nice. There was something serene about a pseudo-escape from college life that I found out on the trail. It was catharsis. Walking that trail soothed all of the stress that had built up from my first semester here. It erased the difficulties I had in regards to adjusting to college life and it provided me with the perfect place to get away from it all. That first trip was, in a way, a spiritual experience. It was the first time i had been able to hear my own thoughts in months. The trail also provided me the opportunity to become more attuned to my own, personal wants and needs. It gave me the power to decide my own future for myself instead of allowing my friends to make plans for me; plans that I had no intention of keeping.
Ever since that first time out on the trail, I have made it a goal to "hike" the trail as regularly as possible. In a way, it is my own personal form of therapy. Whenever I need time to myself or I just need to get out and go back to my roots, to nature, and draw, I simply go out and hike the trail. Before I became an avid "hiker" of the Noland Trail, I didn't fully appreciate all the wonders that nature could offer. Since then, nature has become the one sure place for me to tune in to my own thoughts as well as be entirely and completely myself. Nature offered me the solace that humans relentlessly seek in this world. Thus, I developed a greater appreciation for the wilderness: the large scapes on land that go virtually untouched by man.
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