Noland Trail - student choice

    Just the other day, I walked the Noland Trail with a few friends from RUF. We had a great time soaking in the scenery, catching up, and enjoying the warming weather. As usually happens when I am with Grant Wiley, we ended up falling to the back of the group on our walk and had a great conversation. We discussed a myriad of things, but our main topic of conversation was how to live a life of meaning. Grant had recently been reading a few murder-mystery books that took place in the 1920s and we were discussing how incredible it would be to live a slow life where we travelled long distances by train and boat, could only communicate with loved-ones via letters, and actually spoke to the people that we encountered along our journeys. Reflecting upon this idea of a slow and meaningful life while walking the beautiful trail caused me to consider the lives of Native Americans in Virginia. Now, the similarities between murder mysteries taking place in the 1920s and the lives of Native Americans in Virginia are very few, but both are so far separated from the lives that we live now, and I could not help but start imagining what my life might be like in each situation. I have become quite overcome with my current lifestyle where I am constantly busy and unable to complete anything well. I am pulled in so many directions, and I feel largely useless. I cannot help but imagine how nice it would be to dedicate myself to three things: school/my job, my family, and my church. That is how both people in the 1920s and Native Americans seemed to live. 


April 12, 2022

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