A Hike

The "village" of Monticello

A Hike is a rare video that takes place both during the day and outdoors. The video is broken up into small chunks with Chris alternating between hiking and filming, presumably the exertion from walking up a slight grade requires all the energy he can muster.

In what can be considered the spiritual successor to the Parkay, he is immediately out of breath after the first cut and continues to deteriorate from that point. Top men calculate the filming took place at the Saunders-Monticello Trail.

Video

A Hike
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Stardate	9 October 2010
Subject Matter	Power Power
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Transcription

[Chris is filming himself with his handheld camera. He is sitting in his car in broad daylight. Children scream in the background]

Quarter after three now. I'm gonna be making my way up a mountain trail nearby The Monticello. I'll check back in about a quarter of an hour. I've got my OFF!, an' got my camera here and my phone. Be okay.

[Jump cut, Chris has begun to labor in his breathing]

Ah, just a few minutes into my little hiking trail. So I walk off course to visit the little woodland theater or Palmer that my congregation and I visited one past Sunday and now I'm gonna walk up further up the trail and I'll be back in a bit.

[Jump cut, Chris is standing still.]

Another trail as got explored by me, so I'm gonna take a little look up the trail and see what's up this way. Check in in a bit, it is quite a mysterious forest. Along the mountain beside The Monticello.

[Cut to dead tree]

Hm. A tree that has been uprooted by a past weather event, along the side of this path. Deep in the chasm, that forms a river. Which could be a river, if there was more water in it.

[Jump cut, Chris's heavy breathing is slowly replacing the narration as the dominant soundtrack]

Deeper and deeper into the forest the trail goes, where it leads? I don't know yet. There's a rock with moss. Moss grows on the north side. On tree bark or rock formations. I just walked across a wooden plank. [Prolonged gasping for air] If you think it's spooky. Well, you're wrong. Because it's only a stick I've stepped on. A really big stick. North is that way! As I have seen, on this rock and it's mold.

[Narration becomes slower and slower with more breaks] Huh, look at that. A tree bit formation with moss on the wrong side. Bet it got twisted and turned. That's why it's on the wrong side. Isn't it?

It is a sunny day in the village of Monticello. It's even a sunny day in the forest. Things may or may not be well, we'll see what what happens as we walk long this trail [Breathing continues horribly]

Huh, another tree fallen. [Chris sings] Free fallin'. Cut up 'chucks. Ah, look at this, a bit of an open field. A field that is open for play by one animal or two, or so. Quite possibly, many more. I think we go this way in the fork of the road. Other way goes back to civilization and I'm not ready to head back just yet. Look at that [Chris points the camera at a tree] a shade of red on this tree. One would suppose, rotted? Or dead wood? Or perhaps it is just dirty from dirt and grime thrown upon by it's wondrous past.

The parallels are eerie.

Over here, there's another big tree. OVER THERE! Fallen and uprooted.

[Heavy breathing, slow walking, shaky camera]

Quite a chasm down there. If that were water, it probably would be a river. A big one.

[Heavy breathing followed by a burp]

Goin' up a trail, not down the trail. Goin' up a trail not down the trail.

I'd care to comment, but you know what? I'd just prefer to marvel on nature and it's revels. A bug buzzing about me. Not busy as a bumble bee.

[Camera spends prolonged periods of time pointed at the ground, Chris is now gulping air.]

[Two pained grunts]

Whew, a long way up we have gotten.

[Chris is stumbling with exhaustion and stops midway on the trail]

Well I think we've reached the end of our trail, not too many ways to go, yeah? We have reached a dead end. [Camera clearly shows the trail continuing off to the right, despite Chris's claims to the contrary]

Rest a moment and I'm going to head by to my car. Take a hiking trail of your own, if you will, in your own forest where there in dwell.

[Jump cut]

Another commentary note, if you will, for down that big trail at that major fork with the clearing, we find an overlook. Let's take a look over.

Hm. Vast glorious view from here. As was portrayed and enjoyed by a Carter family.

[Chris points the camera at himself. He is simultaneously flushed, pale and drenched with sweat]

Signing off now, y'all take care and be s-

Notes

While difficult to try to guess why Chris does things, a person might find it odd that he turns his camera off while walking. One theory might be he doesn't want people to see how little exercise it will take to get him tired. Thanks to a map of the Saunders-Monticello Trail (found here), we can calculate the relative health of Chris by comparing his breathing with the actual distance covered. Using the scale of the map, estimates place the distance from his car to the Palmer Woodland Theater at roughly 822 feet. In addition, Chris had climbed 40 feet in elevation.

The map also conveys the length of the trail segments we suspect Chris walked. Adding those together and calculating the distance it takes to get to those trails yields a grand total of .59 miles (less than 1 km) before Chris reaches his “dead end,” wheezing and covered in sweat.

Chris repeatedly refers to Monticello, the historic home of famed Virginian and Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, as The Monticello for no reason.

External links

• Map of the Saunders-Monticello Trail — what an average human could walk through in less than fifteen minutes without breaking a sweat.

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