Sherando Lake

Sherando Lake is a man-made lake located west of Charlottesville in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The first time I went was with camp, and it must have been around ten years ago. The experience I had there was clearly something memorable, but at the time I did not understand how to describe what I felt. To this day I’m not entirely sure what it was, and I have not told anyone this story.

Usually at camp we would go on day hikes, but today we were told we were headed to some lake where we could all go and swim. I was a very shy kid so when we got there I spent most of my time sitting on the shore and keeping to myself. We were scheduled to be there all day, and we practically had the whole lake to ourselves. As I sat on the shore, my eyes were drawn to a clearing on one of the surrounding mountains. As I stared at it, I began to view the mountain as a whole. This was by no means my first time seeing a mountain, but something about what I was seeing felt vastly different. The sheer magnitude of the mountain absorbed my entire vision, and I could not look away. Even writing it down feel ridiculous, but I can still remember the feeling it evoked. I have no concept of how much time I spent looking at that mountain, or what I may have looked like for anyone who could see me. Several years later I returned to Lake Sherando and got to look at the mountain again. It felt a little smaller, but I could still feel that same emotion if I looked hard enough. Below I have a picture of the lake. You can barely see the clearing in the background, and just to the left of the frame is the mountain.