  
 
Where is my favorite place to sit? My first thought is provincial enough: the chair in which I currently sit. It's comfortable. It swivels. It rolls around. It's at one of my favorite places to be: my big oak desk with its coffee cup warmer and various books and little toy animals and computer that keeps me in touch with everyone and practically everything. But that's really not my favorite place. No, were I to describe my favorite place... hm. It'd be a tough choice, really. I have many. There's the roots of the big old tree at the junction of the Lower Mt. Cammerer trail and the Appalachian Trail on the way up to the Mt. Cammerer fire tower. There's that rock in the middle of the Little Pigeon River at Greenbriar where I can lie on my stomach and watch the underwater world. There's the front steps of the Hall cabin a few miles off of Hazel Creek. There's the sand on the beach at Kageet Point from which I can see two tidewater glaciers and an amazing sunset. There's the rock under the slide in the pool near my house in Tennessee on which I can sit and watch the water slide past in front of my eyes. There's the Tawah Creek bridge from which I can see St. Elias, Fairweather, all their children, and various waterfowl. There's the front step of the Situk Lake cabin, which looks out onto the lake of the same name. There's the back deck of the house in Tennessee that looks out on the seemingly endless hazy peaks of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There's the big boulder just downstream of the start of the Dangerous River, in view of Harlequin Lake and the Yakutat Glacier, from which I can watch the icebergs float past. There's that old stacked rock wall on the Boogerman Trail in Cataloochee. There's the coolness of the water on a hot summer's day as you sit just below Ramsey Cascades. There's the shake of thunder in the core of your body as you feel Hubbard Glacier calve while sitting on a boat not far away. There's the uncertainty of feeling the wind shake you high in the top of the fire tower as you look down on Fontana Lake at Shuckstack. And these are just the places with which I'm really familiar. There are many more places I've experienced but once or twice and will forever remember: at the railing overlooking the top of Haleakala National Park, on the beach watching a fisherman work in the calm blue waters of Tabuaeran Island, among the ancient Mayan ruins at Tulum watching wild iguanas, sitting in King's College Chapel gazing up at the ceiling. And that's all I can think of in ten minutes.
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