Mount LeConte

For this piece I chose to draw my inspiration from two of the prompts. When I heard “dazzle”, and “surprise”, I was immediately brought into a recent memory of mine from a backpacking trip I had gone on with Aria in Tennessee. After a ton of driving and a fair amount of hiking with our heavy packs, we made it to the top of a peak in the Great Smoky Mountains, and the feeling of being up there, alone on the mountain top can only be captured by these two words. After seeing the Canadian and American Rockies, as well as the Great Tetons (much higher mountain ranges), I was keeping my expectations for this trip in check, which made the surprise of that incredible view extraordinary. As the vibrant pink sun began to set, and each passing second I exclaimed “this is surely peak”, only for the sky to become even more beautiful left me completely dazzled.