Mt. Scenery - Come Climb 1064 Steps With Me

Saba has one giant mountain at its center and I've been wanting to hike it for awhile now.  I didn't get a chance over Jaron's semester break because Mt. Scenery had its head in the clouds everyday (like it does 90% of the time).  I really wanted to climb it soon, though, before the heat-that-feels-like-summer becomes the heat-that-no-one-should-have-to-endure.  So when Jaron came home yesterday at 4:00 and the mountain was clear, I took my chance!

Mt. Scenery's welcome sign has one small misprint.  When it says 1064 steps, it really means 1064 huge, cut-from-jagged-rock, moss-covered STAIRS.

Because I was hiking by myself and because I knew I had to be back to feed my baby and only had a few hours until sunset, I started off flying up the mountain as fast as I could.  But after awhile I grew tired of stairs...

...and stairs...

...and stairs...

...and stairs.  Get the idea?

It's funny that whenever something becomes difficult, my mind starts spinning these crazy symbolic metaphors.  It seemed like as I was digging up all my perseverence reserves, I could liken hiking to just about any tough thing in life.  But of coarse, now that the moment has passed, I can't remember any of the earth-shattering wisdom that was coming to my realization.

As I got higher, I could no longer hear the tropical birds singing and the smell of the tropical rainforest became different - mustier, I guess.  I started to wonder if Saba's wildlife was really limited to lizards, wild chickens and wild goats.  It was a little too easy to let my imagination run wild climbing through the dark rainforest by myself!  For example, what do you imagine lives in HERE:

Hahaha.  But the view, especially as I got higher up, was PHENOMENAL.  I began to feel like everyone who comes to Saba and doesn't hike the mountain doesn't really experience Saba.  It's probably the only time in my life that I'm going to get to hike a mountain with tropical rainforest and oceanic views as my backdrop.

It was amazing to me that as I got higher up, I could see St. Johns and The Bottom at the same time.

The first 600 "steps" flew by but the last 400 or so were a challenge.  It didn't help that the stairs got bigger the higher I climbed. To me it seems like if I stop, it's a lot harder to keep going so I just slowed up some.

And I was awarded with this at the top:

The promise of two beautiful scenic views!  Here is the first, a complete view of Windwardside and the Level.  Our house is near the top of the hill in this picture, on the lefthand side.  The only downside was that the horizon was fuzzied by the humidity fog, like it almost always is.  My neighbor says he's been up there and seen as far as Montserrat before!  I could see a foggy Statia but could barely make out Nevis behind it.

Proof that I made it:

I headed in the direction of the second scenic view, but this was definitely a path less trodden.

When I reached this, my thoughts were, "You've got to be kidding."

I pulled myself up to the first ledge of rock in the picture but it only seemed to get worse from there.  With a sunset threatening to make a dark rainforest path even darker and for the sake of my husband and children, I decided not to proceed up the crazy-rock-climb and instead just snapped a photo of the ocean view and called it good.

This is the view of Mt. Scenery and the radio tower on top that we can see from our backyard:

This is the view I got of it yesterday.  Awesome.

P.S.  I think I could easily get addicted to hiking.