The View No One Mentions | Appalachian Trail Virginia Triple Crown

There are places on the Appalachian Trail that everybody knows.

They have names. They have reputations. They have photographs covering the internet.

Dragon’s Tooth is known for its challenge. McAfee Knob is perhaps one of the most celebrated overlooks on the entire Appalachian Trail. Tinker Cliffs is quieter, but still earns its place among the Virginia Triple Crown.

For roughly 40 miles, this old trail through Virginia connects all three.

And I came here for one more long hike.

Perhaps my last.

I had bgun this journey thinking about the big three—the places everyone talks about and every hiker wants to see.

But somewhere along the way, I started noticing something different.

The trail has a way of doing that.

When you stop worrying about reaching the next destination, you begin to see what is happening around you.

The overlooks without names.

The small clearings between the trees.

The light filtering through the forest.

The places where the trail suddenly opens and gives you a glimpse of the mountains stretching toward the horizon.

Those places don't make the guidebooks.

They don't have the famous rock ledge where everyone poses for the photograph.

They are simply there.

And sometimes, they are every bit as beautiful.

The View No One Mentions

On my final morning, I stopped at one of those places.

It is simply known as The Cliffs.

There is nothing particularly famous about it. No iconic photograph that I knew I had to capture. No great destination marker telling me that I had arrived somewhere important.

But that morning, the mountains were wrapped in the soft light of sunrise.

Mist settled into the valleys below. Layer after layer of mountains disappeared into the distance. The granite beneath my feet caught the first warm light of the morning, and a solitary pine stood against the sky.

I stood there for a while and simply looked.

And I remember thinking:

This view is every bit as beautiful as the ones everyone talks about.

Perhaps more beautiful because I wasn't expecting it.

That may be one of the lessons I take away from this journey.

We spend an awful lot of time looking for the places we're told are worth seeing.

Sometimes we forget to look at what is right in front of us.

One More Journey

This trip was supposed to be a farewell.

After years of backpacking and long days on the trail, I had reached the point where I knew that my body was probably telling me something my mind didn't particularly want to hear.

This was intended to be my farewell journey to long hikes.

It probably was.

But I'm not sure I want to call it an ending.

Maybe it's simply a change in the way I travel.

I have spent years measuring a journey in miles—how far I could walk, how much elevation I could climb, and how many miles remained before reaching camp.

Photography has taught me to measure journeys differently.

Sometimes the most important part of the journey is the place where you stop.

The view nobody mentioned.

The sunrise nobody promised.

The quiet moment when you realize you don't need to go any farther.

You simply need to stand still and look.

And on this final morning of a 40-mile journey through Virginia, I found a view that reminded me of something I've learned many times on the trail:

The best view isn't always the one you're looking for.

Sometimes it's the one you almost walked past.

And I'm grateful I stopped.