Scaling Stone Mountain

Are these alliterated adventure titles a little cheesy? (Last week’s was Adventuring to Amicalola.)  I’m not sure yet; I guess we’ll see how long I can keep it up.  Anyway, this week, my friends and I hiked another one of Georgia’s seven natural wonders, Stone Mountain.

The Yellow Daisy Festival, a festival where crafters and artisans from all over come to sell their wares, celebrated its 50th year this year.  This festival takes place at Stone Mountain park one weekend in September, and my family and I went to it this year.  It’s always so fun to walk through and see all the creative things people make.  Most of the time they don’t like for you to take pictures of their work, so I don’t have pictures from the festival, but I do have some of the nature around the park.

(I found this heart-shaped hole in a tree and thought it was pretty cool.)

After the festival, my family met up with our friends and we hiked Stone Mountain itself for sunset.  After having sped-walked around the festival for 2 hours, my lungs were burning trying to hurry up the mountain in time for sunset.  I knew I needed a rest, and so I stopped about halfway up the mountain.  There’s a little pavilion rest stop, and across from there, you can find a little trail that leads you to a great lookout spot.  My mom stayed behind with me since I was feeling sick, and we pretty much had the lookout spot to ourselves.  We were high enough up on the mountain to see the clouds, several of which were raining all around us.  From our vantage point on the side of the mountain, we could see clouds across from us, raining down.  It ‘clicked’ something inside of me and I had a visual of the pillar of cloud that led the Israelites through the wilderness to the Promised Land–I could see the cloud connecting with the ground through the rain, and it was a beautiful picture of the heavens coming to the earth.

I don’t really have words to explain my time on the side of the mountain.  When I stopped the hurried, burned-out pace to the top of the mountain and simply stopped to rest, I got to see beauty from a different perspective.  It was personal.

The sunset was beautiful, and eventually we laid back and just watched the clouds move.

A helicopter actually flew below us, which was so weird but a neat experience to see!

I posted more about the yellow daisies we found on the mountain on my Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

My family, friends, and I went to the Yellow Daisy festival this weekend at Stone Mountain Park, and then did a sunset hike up the mountain afterwords—which I’ll be posting about on my blog on the 17th. Along the way, we found some of the yellow daisies for which the festival was named. This one in particular captured my attention and I took a picture of it—because there was just one flourishing among the dead. It reminded me of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37: The Lord took hold of me, and I was carried away by the Spirit of the Lord to a valley filled with bones. 2 He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley floor. They were scattered everywhere across the ground and were completely dried out. 3 Then he asked me, “Son of man, can these bones become living people again?” “O Sovereign Lord,” I replied, “you alone know the answer to that.” 4 Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to these bones and say, ‘Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Look! I am going to put breath into you and make you live again! 6 I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin. I will put breath into you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’” 7 So I spoke this message, just as he told me. Suddenly as I spoke, there was a rattling noise all across the valley. The bones of each body came together and attached themselves as complete skeletons. 8 Then as I watched, muscles and flesh formed over the bones. Then skin formed to cover their bodies, but they still had no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to the winds, son of man. Speak a prophetic message and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, O breath, from the four winds! Breathe into these dead bodies so they may live again.’” 10 So I spoke the message as he commanded me, and breath came into their bodies. They all came to life and stood up on their feet—a great army. 11 Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel. They are saying, ‘We have become old, dry bones—all hope is gone. Our nation is finished.’ 12 Therefore, *finished in comments* 👇🏼

A post shared by Callie Susanna (@calliesusanna) on Sep 10, 2018 at 8:23am PDT

I’ll probably expand these thoughts into another blog post, so keep your eyes peeled for it!

xo,

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