Doing Nothing at the Split Rock

Once a year I get in the car and drive 2 and a half hours past Mount Pocono to a timeshare in Lake Harmony, Pennsylvania called Split Rock. The Split Rock Resort is exactly what you’d think it is: a modern day “Dirty Dancing” style camp for adults and families with a man made beach on a lake, several swimming pools, group activities, an ice cream parlor, and absolutely no wifi. Sure, they say they have wifi, but go ahead, try to connect there, in the woods, with deer running past your window and Google Maps all confused not knowing where the hell you are.

I take the opportunity in Lake Harmony to unplug and do nothing. I sit at the man made beach. I eat ice cream sundae’s. I sit on a couch and read the newspaper. This has been going on for 4 years now and for the most part, I’ve been really happy with this traditional excursion. I put it in my calendar and look forward to the one week a year when I’ll have time to dip in a pool and drink bad frozen margarita’s out of plastic cups. I love it. So, I’m not exactly sure why I felt the need to mix it up this year.

After a week of sharing a room with 7 screaming, sticky kids, you kinda wanna pull your hair out. Now, add in feuding adults, whining 20-somethings, room service that doesn’t quite understand what “we need towels” means, and, oh yeah, no wifi (aka no connection to the outer world) and you’re bound to loose it, like I did. Instead of running to the parking lot and hightailing it past the Dairy Queen into civilization, I strapped on the running shoes previously left neglected in the back of my car and went to the front desk.

“Hello! Do you have a map for the hiking trails in the area.”

“Hiking trails?”

“We’re in the middle of the woods. There’s gotta be a trail or a lookout point or something, right?”

“Oh. Well. No trails but we do lead a group *drive* up the hill to see the Split Rock. Or you can meet everyone out front and grab a Segway!”

Hi. Poster child for laziness here, but seriously. Segway? Those little black machines, all stick and tires, leave in my mind images of Pixar film Wall-E. Chunks of exhaustion, unable to get up from our little seats for fear of falling off the Earth. No sir, not me. So, how to find my way to the top without motor vehicle?

As if on mention, a team of Segway’s clattered behind me, ascending up a steep overpass that, I’m sure, is used during the winter to launch snow tubers. One by one the team members turned around and came back down, opting to do whirlies and circles in the asphalt parking lot beneath the hill instead. Placing in my earbuds, I started a slow job to the hill.

Several minutes and one intrepid older couple later, I found myself in the center of this behemoth that, from the bottom, looked to be just an anthill. Staring out above all those trees and smaller hills I had the determination to suck up the coughing gulps that stopped me in my tracks and continue up the incline. Up and up and up, till the top.

Reaching that summit I entered a dirt path that met up with a street. I wasn’t sure where I was going but chose to walk up the path, passing cabins and homes and backyards like some sort of Disney princess searching for escape from a rude and vicious queen. And finally, I reached the Split Rock. I knew I had arrived because of a make-shift pebbled parking lot full of Segway’s and one minivan.

In front of me was a split rock. Really. A rock split in half. And on the other side a pair of rickety wooden steps and a picnic table. Team Segway sat at the table at the bottom, taking MySpace-esque photos to probably share with all thier Facebook friends. Look at me on a mountain! I’ve been there but today wasn’t the day for it. Step by step I walked the stairs till I reached a small platform, barely enough room for two people, poached sensitively at the top of this split rock. I wish I could say somethign dramatic like,  “I gasped at the view!” or something, but no I didn’t. I did enjoy it though. And I sat up there, staring out over summits for a really long time. Then I climbed down and walked the other way down the dirt path. I chased those homes and backyards all the way down the dirt path, noting wooden carved totem poles and airstream trailers.

Then I walked through the door of that family resort, past 7 sticky kids, tired fiance’s, and everybody else, and jumped right in the hot tub. It occurred to me, sweating out my upset in a stone sauna, that for my “nothing” time I had done, well, something. I had seen something. I had gone somewhere. Relaxing, and the idea of doing nothing doesn’t so much mean literally being still all the time. Doing nothing means not exerting, not forcing, not complying. Something the most strenuous activity, the one that makes you sweat and curse, can be just as gentle as “nothing.”