Harper's Ferry Fist Bumps

What do Harper's Ferry and Brooklyn have in common?     Brooklyn is highly urban with store fronts and restaurants, topped by apartments on the higher floors.  Cars and cabs vie for street space and crossing the streets on foot is hazardous.  Harper's Ferry, by contrast, is bucolic, set on the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers.  The mid nineteenth century village is located on the eastern tip of West Virginia with Virginia across the Shenandoah to the south and Maryland, across the Potomac to the east.  The town exists as it did over a century and a half ago and is famous for John Brown's daring raid on the U.S. armoury in 1858.  As you stand in the village everywhere is up.  So what could they possibly have in common?

The thing they have in common is that in each I learned I could do  more than I thought I could.   I chronicled my earlier adventures in the "Browsing Brooklyn" post.   A couple of weeks ago Palesa and her boyfriend Jeff came to visit and we decided one day to go to Harper's Ferry.  My plan had been to sit on a bench while the more hardy explored the village but somehow I got started up the main street and for some reason I then decided to try to ascend "Jefferson's Rock."  the highest point.   With my cane in my right hand and daughter Palesa holding my left, up we went.



Here we are starting up!

At the top is a view that Thomas Jefferson famously described as "worth crossing the Atlantic for."

Here I am near the foundation of an old church with son Thabie and daughter Palesa.

And finally on our way down after sharing fist bumps all around.   Kindly ignore the impression that Jeff and Palesa are half carrying me!   I did it after all and I'll admit I felt pretty proud of myself!

After Jeff and Palesa left, Qenehelo, Thabie, and I drove to Kill Devil Hills on North Carolina's outer banks where, flushed with my activities at Harper's Ferry, I undertook what for me were more physical challenges.   The first was at the site of the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903.   The flight took off from the top of a hill which I climbed up unassisted, albeit with Thabie at my side.

Here I am at the bottom of the hill.   The little specks at the top are people.

 

 And here I am at the top where the first plane took off.  Pay no attention to the small kids who doubtlessly scampered up with ease.  

The next day we went to Jockey Ridge State Park, where the second highest dune on the Atlantic is located.  Hang gliders launch themselves from the top.   It was a slow slog through soft sand but again I made it!





Here I am near the top of the dune with hang gliders in the background.

My wife Qenehelo and I near the Bodie Island lighthouse.

Finally we went to the Elizabethan Gardens, a ten acre botanical paradise, the functional equivalent of Brooklyn's Botanical Gardens where I tooled around in a wheel chair.   This time it was just my two feet.   In an earlier time these would be modest exploits, but now they taught me that if I think I can't do something, give it a try.