Mark Murphy: To find myself, I climbed to the mountaintop again, 50 years later
This is a commentary by Mark Murphy, a longtime contributor to the Savannah Morning News.
The mountain is named Kitsuma.
Kitsuma is in the Pisgah National Forest, abutting I-40 just west of the eastern Continental Divide, near the town of Ridgecrest, North Carolina. You’d never notice it if you were not looking for it. As mountains go, it’s nondescript.
But for me, it’s holy ground.
In 1971, I left Savannah to attend Camp Ridgecrest for a two-week session. It was my first time ever away from home for an extended period without my family.
Camp Ridgecrest, founded in 1929, is a traditional summer camp. Its rustic cabins are scattered throughout a hilly campus in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lake Ridgecrest, a body of water formed by the damming of a small creek, serves as the camp’s geographic centerpiece. But the spiritual centerpiece of the camp lies in the hearts and minds of the young men who attend it.
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I first arrived at Ridgecrest as a chubby, bookish nine-year-old. My previous summers had been spent reading, biking, going to the beach and hanging out with my friends in Windsor Forest and, later, in Ardsley Park, where we moved when I was six. In those days, I was shy and self-conscious. Like many children that age, I was also self-absorbed, living at the center of my own personal universe.
By the time I stopped attending Ridgecrest, seven summers later, I was a completely different person.
The value of perseverance, hard work
Camp Ridgecrest espoused a system of Christian values rooted in altruism, responsibility, and respect for all people. My mother and father had taught me similar things at home, but at Ridgecrest, the training wheels came off for the very first time. Ultimately, the experience helped define the sort of individual I would become.
There was a ranking system at camp which was based upon one’s adherence to those values. A camper could be promoted once a week based on the recommendations of the counselors. Once one had reached the rank of Scout, a camper was eligible for being selected, or “tapped out,” to try out for Little Chief, the camp’s highest honor.
Little Chief tryouts were grueling. Tap outs occurred after 11 p.m. Those selected were required to build a fire which could be ignited with a single match, keep it going with a visible flame until dawn. Those who passed that test were taken to the bottom of Mount Kitsuma, where the candidates were made to run up to the top of the mountain at a rigorous pace. Those who made it to the mountaintop then wrote an essay and completed various tasks of physical labor.
All of this had to be done without uttering a single word. The bond of silence ended at sunset on the next day. Those who had passed all phases were given the rank of Little Chief (now called “Torchman”).
I was tapped out for Little Chief four times. I passed the fire, mountain, essay and hard labor portions of the challenge each time only to speak, and therefore fail, in last few hours before sunset every single time.
The nature of my failure surprises no one who knows me. I talk a lot. But the fact that I was even tapped out at all was a validation of everything my parents had taught me. My ability to pass the physical and psychological challenges made me realize that there was little I could not ultimately overcome through perseverance and hard work.
Returning to the mountaintop
This past week, I travelled to North Carolina and ascended Kitsuma once again. The mountain has recently become a prime mountain biking destination, so the trail looks a little different these days, but the view from the mountaintop remains the same.
As I stood on a granite overlook gazing westward, I remembered standing at that spot as the sun came up over the Swannanoa Valley after being tapped out for Little Chief the very first time.
That was nearly 50 years ago.
Shakespeare once wrote, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” At 60, I am painfully aware of the finite nature of my own brief appearance on that stage. However, I have also become more appreciative of the experiences, like Camp Ridgecrest, which have shaped the glittering facets of my life’s experience.
As I stood once again, after half a century, atop the sacred summit of Kitsuma, gazing into the valley below, I remembered the many people I have loved and the myriad wonders I have seen and uttered a prayer of gratitude for my life’s many blessings.
Truly, my cup runneth over.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Kitsuma is a mountain in North Carolina sacred to summer campers
