Over the summer, shortly after my seventeenth birthday, my girlfriend wanted to take me out to do something as some sort of celebration to me aging another year. After nearly a week of them insisting and myself stubbornly pressing against, I finally gave in. This was a pretty rare event, as I truly dislike when someone does something for me and normally I would protest until the other person gives up. However, I could tell that this was something meaningful to them and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by turning them down.

Our morning started off with meeting in the Walmart parking lot sometime before noon. Because we live on opposite sides of the county, them on the Wilkes line and me just outside of Mountain City, it was much easier to find a meeting place rather than one of us making a 26+ mile trip to the other’s home. After another little party of insistence and stubbornness, this time on who drives and who leaves her car in the parking lot, I once again let them call the shots and we took her car. Thankfully the little arguing was in a somewhat joking matter, otherwise the 45-minute ride to our first stop would have seemed much longer.

I wasn’t really sure where we were going, as that was part of her surprise for me. She had me pick a number between 1 and 1000, and somehow this would decide the two places we would spend our day at. I chose 95, as it had a significant meaning between me and them; I noticed a smug little grin creep across her face, making the upcoming events into some sort of Schrodinger's occasion as it was both sweet and sketchy until I knew what we were doing.

I was relieved to find that our first stop was not sketchy at all, but instead was breakfast at IHOP- my then, and current, favorite restaurant. I couldn’t help but get a little excited as I was at a place I enjoyed with the person I enjoy most. I was even more grateful about it once we were inside and realized that there were very few other people there at that time, which made the scene a bit more comfortable. This was her first time going there, which for whatever reason gave me a sense of pride as I talked about my favorite menu items while helping them decide on what to get. We spent roughly an hour there, just eating and talking, before continuing to part two of this mystery adventure. After finishing up, and another little argument over who gets to pay, we made our way back to the car and went on.

“Oh, by the way, I’m just kinda guessing on how to get there from here. No worries” is a rather odd way of breaking a five-minute silence, especially when you don’t even know where you’re going- at least it added some sense of adventure.

We pulled into a parking lot to what seemed like nothing, but I didn’t want to question it just yet. After getting out of the car and adjusting to the light difference, I realized that we were at some sort of walking trail.

One of my favorite things to do as a kid was go through all sorts of animal-made trails in the woods behind my house. I would spend hours just walking around and adventuring, climbing huge rocks, observing plants, watching animals, catching creek-dwelling critters and so much more. Sadly, this had to be left behind when I moved to a place where the woods were full of trigger-happy men and their hunting dogs.

We walked for well over a mile, something that should have only taken a half hour became nearly two as we stopped and one or both of us would comment on what we were seeing. At one point the trail was parallel to a wide creek, so after curiosity got the best of us we spent times at its bank and watched the slow and calming water pass by. Afterwards, we continued the trail until it lead to a sort of dugout area next to a waterfall. As we looked out past the waterfall and surrounding trees, we were able to see Boone (or so I assume) from an amazing perspective as well as an unending horizon of mountains in the distance. It was beyond amazing to me, I had never gotten the opportunity to see anything like this. It wasn’t until then that I had completely left my usual hatefulness towards having someone do something to me and I was finally able to fully appreciate it.

I realized that this was the first time someone had taken their own time to spend some on just me and my hatefulness stemmed from having never really experienced this sort of thing, therefore never seeing much importance in it. Being part of this day-long adventure was not only an excuse to be with someone for a day, but planted the idea in my head that, despite what I had told myself for years, maybe I really was worth someone’s time.