I'm not a fan of high places. Well, I love the view from a high place, it's just getting there that unnerves me. You're talking about someone here who can get woozy taking an escalator. Climb up on my roof to make some repairs? Fuggedaboutit! I love lighthouses and I've climbed a few light towers that allow visitors to do so, and every time, about halfway up, my brain starts arguing with itself:
"Hey, there's a window."
"Don't look! It'll show you how high you're getting!"
"Isn't that the point?"
"Let's just wait until you get to the top."
"Are you crazy? Don't you know you can lose your balance and fall to your death from the top?"
"Don't bother me with that now, if I let go of the stair rail, I'll tumble backwards and break my neck long before that happens!"
"Then why don't you just turn around and go back down?"
"And let those kids that ran up the stairs ahead of me show me up? Wait, I'll consider it. (Peers down the center column of the spiral stairway to the floor way, way below.) Naw, that might kill me, too. May as well keep going. I'll worry about the return trip later."
"Have it your way, chicken."
I took this photo while standing on a 50-foot observation tower on top of 6,600 foot-tall Clingman's Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It took a drive along a scenic mountain road with plenty of safety rails and a half-mile walk up a wide paved trail and a spiral ramp with high, thick walls and to get to this vantage point. It was as if it were designed just for me.
No internal arguing this evening. Just plenty of time to set up and shoot.
Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.
There's more to Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga Tennessee than Rock City and Ruby Falls. If you stay away from those tourist traps, you can view some wonderful vistas for a whole lot less money. Sunset Rock was a Confederate outpost that overlooked the valley below. From this vantage point, General Braxton Bragg watched Union troops advancing on Chattanooga in November of 1863. A Confederate assault on the advancing army failed and the city eventually fell to the north.
