A hike up the High Shelf

I needed a day off from being amazed indoors, so I went looking for nature, and the Solivagant has nature the way it has everything else: more of it than makes sense. A host pointed me at the High Shelf, a mountain range a half-day's travel toward the rim, and I spent a glorious aching day walking up into it.

It's real wilderness — cold, clean air, forest that smells almost but not quite like pine, switchback trails worn by however many million years of feet. There's weather up there, proper weather, cloud catching on the peaks. For long stretches you could forget entirely that you're on a ship; it's just a mountain, and you, and the wind.

And then you reach a lookout and the thing your eyes can't get used to: the world is flat, so the far ranges never curve away over a horizon. They just keep going — ridge behind ridge behind ridge, hazing to pale blue and then to nothing, further than a horizon should ever allow. On Earth the world hides its distance by bending. Here it doesn't bend. It just lies there, enormous and honest, all the way to a rim you can't quite see. I sat on a rock and got a bit overwhelmed and ate my sandwich and felt great about it. Bring layers. Bring water. Bring a friend if you've got one; some views want sharing.