Stone Mountain Reflections
It’s funny how memory stretches things. Childhood recollection is a funhouse mirror, bending scale and perspective until everything feels monumental. Maybe things only seem bigger because we were smaller, but when I dig through the mental shoebox of my early years, the world feels oversized. Trees were taller. Distances were longer. Hills were mountains. And Stone Mountain, in my memory, was a towering slab of granite that could casually swallow a child whole.
I was in single digit age territory when my family visited Stone Mountain Park in Georgia, and I remember the mountain being enormous, overwhelming, and just a little bit terrifying. I was convinced that one wrong step would send me tumbling into oblivion. Gravity felt personal back then.
Fast forward a few decades and a professional conference later, and I found myself back at Stone Mountain. This time, armed with adult knees, a conference badge, and a slightly more rational relationship with gravity. On the first day, we rode the lift to the top, and that was when reality gently reminded me that nostalgia has a flair for exaggeration.
Stone Mountain is… fine. It exists. But the towering, epic beast from my childhood memories had somehow been reduced to a rather unimpressive boulder. Setting aside the deeply uncomfortable and racist confederate carving on its face, the mountain itself is, aesthetically speaking, not great. It is basically a giant rock plopped in the middle of an otherwise pleasant forest. The carving does nothing to improve this situation. If anything, it makes it worse.
At the summit, I expected sweeping views and that familiar sense of awe you get when you reach the top of something. Instead, I felt mildly underwhelmed. I have stood on some truly beautiful peaks, hiking parts of the Appalachian Trail, wandering through Philmont Scout Ranch, climbing Abernathy Peak in Washington State. Stone Mountain does not belong in that company. Compared to those places, it felt small, ordinary, and oddly anticlimactic. 
Every morning brought a different sky. The colors and fog spilled across the water and slowly pulled the day into existence. Those moments alone made the trip worthwhile. I photographed them digitally and also on 35mm film, because some scenes deserve to be slowed down and trusted to chemistry and patience. I cannot wait to see how those frames turn out.
So that was my week. A gentle collision between nostalgia and reality. A reminder that memory is a generous editor. A mountain that failed to live up to its legend, and a sunrise that quietly stole the show.
And yes, I still think we should stop building parks that celebrate confederate generals. But no one asked me.
