Learning, Healing, and Growing: A Night at Toastmasters

Tonight, I walked into a Spanish-English bilingual Toastmasters meeting for the first time. I walked out with a blue ribbon for Best Table Topics Speaker and something far more valuable than an award.

I walked out with a reminder of who I am.

My father passed away recently, and I've been navigating some complicated feelings about our relationship. Grief has a way of bringing old wounds to the surface, including things we thought we'd worked through years ago.

My father and I were very different people. He never really understood my fascination with languages, my curiosity about other cultures, or the unconventional path my life took. For much of my life, I struggled to reconcile who I was with who I thought he wanted me to be.

And lately, I've been realizing just how much those struggles affected my sense of self.

On my way to Toastmasters tonight, I received a hurtful message from my stepmother. Among other things, she told me I was nothing like my father.

She's right.

I'm not.

But perhaps being different from my father isn't something I need to explain, justify, or overcome.

Maybe it's something I can embrace.

I arrived at Broward Bilingual Toastmasters Club hoping to practice public speaking, use my Spanish, and meet some interesting people. I certainly wasn't expecting the evening to become part of my healing process.

One of the activities was Table Topics, where participants are given a question and asked to speak without preparation.

My question was something like, "If you could speak with anyone from history who is no longer living, who would you choose, and what would you talk about?"

I couldn't think of anybody.

Seriously. My mind went blank.

Then I looked around the room. Here I was, surrounded by people who shared an interest in language, communication, and personal development. Many were bilingual, practicing their less dominant language. And I myself was about to deliver a two-minute extemporaneous speech in Spanish, a language I hadn't lectured in since I taught at Miami Dade College more than 15 years ago.

Suddenly, as I looked out at the crowd of unfamiliar faces laced with curious expressions, of new friends waiting to hear what I was going to say - and in which language I was going to say it - William Shakespeare popped into mind.

Now, I'm not particularly a Shakespeare enthusiast. But as a writer, I understand that every story we share with the world has another story behind it.

There are experiences, relationships, disappointments, and discoveries that shape what eventually appears on the page. Sometimes the most interesting story is the one the audience never hears.

So I said I'd want to sit down with Shakespeare and ask him about the stories behind his stories.

What inspired him? What personal experiences influenced his characters? What was happening in his life when he wrote those plays?

I just started talking.

No script. No preparation. I simply connected my own experience as a writer with something I thought might resonate with the people in the room.

Apparently, it worked.

At the end of the evening, I received the award for Best Table Topics Speaker!

But the evening wasn't over.

Afterward, I struck up a conversation with Steve, one of the club's founders, who speaks several languages. Before I knew it, we were speaking French!

I was genuinely surprised by how much I understood. We even discussed an opportunity to participate in an online French-speaking Toastmasters activity.

I also convinced a few people to join me in recording a little Portuguese video saying good night to my Brazilian followers.

There I was, moving between English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, connecting with people, laughing, and enjoying myself.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, something important happened.

I remembered who I am.

The very qualities that sometimes made me feel misunderstood within my own family were the qualities that allowed me to connect with people tonight.

My love of languages. My curiosity about the world. My interest in people's stories. My willingness to walk into an unfamiliar room and strike up a conversation.

Those aren't shortcomings. They're strengths.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a man of merit. For me, it isn't about perfection, collecting awards, or proving anything to anybody.

It's about learning, healing, and growing.

Sometimes that means developing new skills. Sometimes it means challenging old assumptions about ourselves. And sometimes it means recognizing that the judgments we've carried for years never really belonged to us.

There's something wonderfully ironic about tonight's Table Topics question.

I chose Shakespeare because I wanted to know the stories behind his stories.

But the story behind my own little speech turned out to be far more meaningful than I could have imagined.

On the surface, it was about a man attending his first Toastmasters meeting and unexpectedly winning an award.

Behind the scenes, it was about a man grieving his father, confronting old wounds, and rediscovering his confidence.

I'm 55 years old, and I certainly don't have everything figured out.

But I'm learning that I don't have to.

Tonight, I earned a blue ribbon.

More importantly, I walked out knowing that I had shown up as myself.

And that was more than enough.

Working Toward Better Health, Financial Growth, Business Success, and Stronger Communication Skills

I'm a firm believer that continuous learning and personal development are essential to living a fuller, more meaningful life. They help us discover new possibilities, develop our abilities, adapt to change, and make better decisions about our future.

My interest in lifelong learning goes back to my childhood. I participated in Boy Scouts through ninth grade, but a lack of structure at home made it difficult to continue. Looking back, I realize how many opportunities I missed.

About 15 years ago, I rediscovered the merit badge curriculum and began using it as a framework for my own personal development. One of the highlights of that initial experiment was working toward the Hiking merit badge. I lost a significant amount of weight, learned first aid, developed skills in map reading and route planning, and taught myself how to prepare for challenging hikes. My biggest accomplishment was completing a solo, 12-hour, 12-mile out-and-back hike to a 10,000-foot summit, with 4,000 feet of elevation gain and loss.

Now, at 55, I've aged out of the official Scouting America merit badge program by decades, but I certainly haven't outgrown the desire to learn. As I revisit the curriculum, I recognize many skills I've already developed through education, work, and life experience.

That's where Man of Merit comes in. I'm using the Scouting America-inspired merit badge curriculum to document what I've already learned, identify gaps in my knowledge, and continue developing new skills.

One of the principles of adult learning is that we build new knowledge by connecting it to what we already know. I'm applying that same principle to my personal development by connecting the merit badge curriculum to goals and activities I'm already pursuing. Rather than starting something entirely new, I'm using the curriculum to give my existing efforts greater direction, structure, and momentum.

With that approach in mind, I've selected four merit badges that align with goals I'm currently pursuing.

Personal Fitness

My focus is on losing weight, improving my physical conditioning, exercising consistently, and developing healthier habits. I'm building strength and endurance to improve my health and prepare for future outdoor adventures.

Personal Management

I'm getting my financial house in order through budgeting, improving my credit, addressing student loans, and managing debt. My long-term goal is to bring home $10,000 per month after taxes while building greater financial stability.

Entrepreneurship

With Brianopolis Group LLC officially established, I'm developing Brianopolis Learning and Coaching, creating educational programs, building my brand, and working toward a sustainable business.

Communication

I'm building on my previous Toastmasters experience by completing its curriculum in Spanish while continuing to develop my public speaking, writing, and storytelling skills. I'm also creating content in Portuguese through TikTok to connect with, educate, and inspire others.

Tracking My Progress

These four areas provide a starting point for documenting my progress and applying what I learn. As I complete projects, I'll expand into other subjects, including Swimming, Cooking, and First Aid.

For more stories, experiences, and adventures, follow me on YouTube and TikTok.

Brianopolis (YouTube) celebrates curiosity, lifelong learning, cultural discovery, nature, and the excitement of exploring new possibilities at any age.
https://www.youtube.com/@brianopolis

Brian's Big Living (YouTube) explores life as a bigger guy in his 50s, from personal style and food to friendships, entrepreneurship, travel, and embracing everyday adventures with confidence.
https://www.youtube.com/@beingbrian

O Brian Brasil (TikTok) shares my experiences, perspectives, and cultural connections with a Brazilian audience, featuring conversations in Portuguese about life, personal growth, and everyday experiences.
https://www.tiktok.com/@obrianbrasil

What Does Personal Fitness Really Mean? Taking Stock of My Health and Setting New Goals

At 55, I've been taking a closer look at what personal fitness means to me and how I can make better decisions about my health. I've decided to approach this as a learning experience, using the Boy Scouts' Personal Fitness merit badge requirements as a framework for evaluating where I am today and developing a plan for improvement.

Personal fitness involves much more than weight loss or spending time at the gym. It includes cardiovascular health, muscular strength, endurance, flexibility, nutrition, and sleep. Each of these areas influences my ability to stay active, maintain my independence, and enjoy the activities I have planned for the years ahead.

Nutrition is one of my biggest priorities right now. I'm working toward a daily intake of approximately 2,000 calories while paying closer attention to macronutrients, particularly protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Rather than simply counting calories, I want to better understand how the foods I choose support my energy, muscle development, and weight-loss goals.

Sleep has also been an important part of improving my health. After being diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, I began using BiPAP therapy, which has made a significant difference in managing the condition. Addressing my sleep apnea was an important step, and maintaining good sleep habits remains part of my overall fitness plan.

I've also returned to the gym, completing my first few workouts at Crunch Fitness in Plantation. A coworker and I have committed to exercising twice a week, providing some much-needed accountability as we work toward improving our health. I'm concentrating on building consistency while gradually improving my strength, endurance, and mobility.

My next step is developing a structured 12-week personal fitness program. I want to establish measurable starting points, set realistic goals, and track my progress in several areas rather than relying exclusively on the number on the scale.

The Personal Fitness merit badge emphasizes evaluating current habits, understanding the principles of fitness, and developing a plan for improvement. I appreciate that approach because it encourages learning before action and provides a way to measure the results of everyday decisions.

This is also an opportunity to apply the philosophy behind Man of Merit. Learning doesn't end when formal education does, and there's always value in examining what we know, challenging our assumptions, and putting new knowledge into practice.

How would you evaluate your own personal fitness today? Beyond your weight, what areas of your health would you most like to improve? I'd be interested in hearing how you measure your progress and what you've learned along the way.

Inspired by the Scouting America Personal Fitness merit badge. This is an independent adult learning challenge, not an official Scouting America merit badge program.

Coaching Helped Me Rebuild After Grief; Now I'm Paying It Forward

Man of Merit began as a self-coaching tool. In 2011, I was about to turn 40. In my first post, I joked that I was having a midlife crisis. I had already lost more than 150 pounds, a transformation I wrote about on MyFitLife2day, and I wanted to do something with the fitness I had regained. I set out to learn outdoor skills and complete the Boy Scout merit badges I had left unfinished as a teenager.

Now I’m 55, on the other side of that crisis and making the most of my later midlife years as I quickly approach the next phase.

Looking back, I was trying to return to the boy I had been, curious, independent, eager to explore, and imagining the person I might become. I understood becoming a man of merit to mean setting goals, developing skills, and following through. The blog helped me turn those ideas into something I could work on.

For the next five years, I used Man of Merit to document the work I was doing. I took stock of my fitness and preparedness, assessed the skills I already had, and figured out what I needed to learn. The merit badges gave me a framework. Writing about my goals and progress helped me stay focused as I built up my life and moved in a direction I had chosen.

Then my mother died. In the months before her death, I had already begun to lose sight of myself. Within six months of her passing, I had gained more than 100 pounds. If I hadn’t needed to buy a whole new wardrobe, I might not have noticed how completely I had abandoned myself and the strong vision I once had for my life and my future.

I was living as if I didn’t care about living.

Eventually, I sought grief counseling. Through that counseling, I was brought back to the foundation I had laid during those years. My mind began to clear. My heart remains forever broken, but I began to find my trail again and see a way forward.

After counseling, I sought life coaching to help me get fully back on track. By then, I had regained all the weight I’d lost before turning 40 and found myself back at 460 pounds. This time, health issues complicated things. I began addressing atrial fibrillation and sleep apnea, and coaching helped me bring my focus back to the choices that could move me forward.

Now I’m back under 400 pounds. Based on the choices I’m making and the direction I’m heading, I’m on track to lose another 100 pounds over the next 18 months. I’m still learning from my past mistakes and adding new skills as I continue to shape the life I want.

I’ve carried a philosophy of lifelong learning with me for years. I even wrote a poem about it called Philosophy on Lifelong Learning.

Philosophy on Lifelong Learning

Learning must be a lifelong pursuit
If life is to have any meaning
Find yourself a mentor, because not
Everything is simple, and time is fleeting
Look inward for context to learn new things
Owe much to imagination and needing
Now is the time, and there's no place like here
Give up on excuses; start leading

Love your community and those around you
Every one of us deserves to be believed in
And if you're fortunate enough to have the skills
Recharge the people and teach them
Nothing's more gratifying than changing a life
In all of us lies the power to care
Never again say, "I'll wait 'til tomorrow"
Go the distance; Learn, teach, share

I’m bringing Man of Merit back for two reasons. First, I still have a lot to learn. I’m learning from past mistakes and developing new skills, including how to tell stories and connect with people through social media. Just as the merit badges gave me a framework when I was 40, I’m building new knowledge and skills for this next phase. I want to keep documenting what I’m learning and how I’m putting it into practice.

The second reason is that I want to help others. I believe people are creative, resourceful, and whole. My role as a coach is to partner with people as they clarify what matters to them, recognize the strengths they already have, and decide what they want to learn or change. I listen, ask questions, and reflect what I hear so they can discover their own answers and choose goals that feel meaningful to them. Then we can identify steps they are ready to take and ways to stay connected to what they’ve chosen. I want to meet people where they are and help them move toward a future self they can be proud of, discovering the man or woman of merit who already exists within them.

Man of Merit began as a way for me to coach myself through learning and change. Now I’m bringing it back to keep doing that work and to help others do it, too.

The Alchemy of Lifelong Learning: How I Used TikTok to Master Portuguese

I think of lifelong learning a little like glassblowing. An artist selects pieces of glass, applies heat to fuse them together, and shapes the molten glass into something beautiful. Each shard of colored glass contributes to the finished work, its distinct shape and color blending with the others as they fuse into a single creation.

I think learning works much the same way throughout our lives.

We accumulate knowledge and experiences through our jobs, friendships, travels, education, and the things that interest us. But learning isn't simply a matter of collecting experiences. We can deliberately draw on what we already know, combine that knowledge with new experiences, and use both to develop skills and pursue goals that matter to us.

Like the glassblower, we are the artists directing the process.

It was that idea I drew upon when I set out to build an income-generating social media presence. I took shards of knowledge from things I'd learned years earlier, combined them with skills I was still developing, and deliberately fused them together to create something new.

Around May or June of 2025, I identified two things I wanted to learn. First, I wanted to understand how to grow a social media audience that I could eventually monetize. Second, I wanted to improve my Portuguese.

I decided to create an opportunity to accomplish both goals at the same time.

I'd been watching Gary Vaynerchuk, better known as Gary Vee, talk about the importance of creating content and putting yourself out there. I was already making videos for YouTube in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and experimenting with different languages on my original TikTok account, brianopolis.

I started thinking about how I could use TikTok's algorithm to connect with people in Brazil.

If I created content in Portuguese, perhaps the algorithm would introduce my videos to Brazilians who wanted to interact with me. I could practice the language, make friends, and learn how to build an audience through the same activity.

I had reason to believe this approach could work because I'd deliberately created a similar learning experience about 26 years earlier.

At the time, I'd moved to the New York City area for a job. I had already begun learning Portuguese, but I wanted to become fluent. So I made a conscious decision to live in Newark, New Jersey, where the Ironbound neighborhood had a large Brazilian community.

I wanted to surround myself with people who spoke Portuguese, make friends, and create opportunities to use the language in everyday life. I knew that if I wanted to improve my Portuguese, I needed more than books and lessons. I needed conversations, friendships, and regular interaction with people who spoke the language.

So I went where those opportunities existed.

And it worked. I made Brazilian friends, spent time in their community, and developed my Portuguese through everyday conversations and experiences. I had deliberately placed myself in an environment where learning could become part of my daily life.

Twenty-six years later, I realized I could apply the same approach without having to move anywhere.

This time, instead of physically going to a Brazilian community, I could use TikTok's algorithm to bring that community to me.

By creating videos in Portuguese, I could encourage the platform to introduce my content to people throughout Brazil. Those viewers could respond, follow me, and participate in conversations. Through livestreaming, I could speak directly with people from different parts of the country, all while sitting in my home in South Florida.

The technology had changed, but the learning strategy was essentially the same.

In Newark, I had deliberately moved into an environment where I could immerse myself in Portuguese. With Brian Brasil, I was deliberately creating that environment through social media.

I didn't need to travel to Brazil or relocate to another Brazilian neighborhood. I could use the algorithm, the videos I created, and the relationships I developed to bring opportunities for language immersion directly into my everyday life.

And this time, I could develop my Portuguese while simultaneously learning how to build a social media audience.

I was taking a learning strategy that had worked for me decades earlier, combining it with new technology and my experience creating content, and shaping it into something entirely new.

Another example of those shards of knowledge fusing together through intentional learning.

My first video was about as simple as you can imagine.

"Hi, I'm Brian. Who are you?"

That's it.

Today, that introductory video has approximately 292,000 views and has brought me about 10,500 followers. People are still discovering it more than a year after I published it. The video continues to reach new viewers, some of whom decide to follow my account and join the conversations I'm having with other Brazilians.

But the numbers are only part of the story.

From the beginning, I was deliberately working toward two learning goals. Every time I created a video or hosted a livestream, I had an opportunity to practice Portuguese while learning how to attract viewers and develop relationships with an audience.

I was observing which subjects interested people, how viewers responded to different videos, and how conversations developed during livestreams. At the same time, I was listening to regional accents, learning unfamiliar expressions, and becoming more comfortable speaking Portuguese spontaneously.

The two learning goals reinforced each other.

My interest in improving my Portuguese motivated me to keep creating content and interacting with people. Those interactions gave me practical experience with TikTok and helped me understand how to develop an audience.

I was also experimenting with different approaches to publishing content.

I'd create a video, publish it, observe how viewers responded, and use that information to make decisions about future videos. Some approaches attracted more interest than others. By comparing the results, I developed a better understanding of what encouraged people to watch, comment, and participate.

That's one of the things I find most interesting about adult learning. We can take responsibility for our own development. We can identify specific learning goals, draw on previous experiences, create opportunities to practice, and evaluate whether our activities are helping us achieve those goals.

We don't have to wait for someone else to design a learning experience for us.

As my audience grew, I began making more deliberate decisions about the community I wanted to develop and how I would present myself as Brian Brasil.

What began as an experiment in language learning and social media became an opportunity to establish ongoing relationships with people across Brazil.

Today, more than 55,000 people follow Brian Brasil, and I livestream nearly every day. I speak with people from different regions of Brazil, each bringing their own accents, vocabulary, cultural references, and ways of expressing themselves.

And my Portuguese?

It has improved phenomenally.

I now feel fully fluent, whether I'm chatting casually with friends or speaking professionally to a large group of people. My confidence comes from having practiced the language consistently in conversations with people who use Portuguese every day.

I created an environment where speaking Portuguese became a regular part of my life, even though I was living in the United States.

When I look back at how I developed Brian Brasil, I can identify the knowledge and experiences I deliberately drew upon.

My friendships in Newark taught me the value of learning languages through personal interaction. My interest in languages motivated me to seek new opportunities to practice Portuguese. My experience creating videos gave me a foundation for producing content. My interest in technology encouraged me to explore how TikTok's algorithm could connect me with people in Brazil.

And my background in adult education helped me recognize that I could design a learning experience around my own goals.

Each of those experiences contributed something valuable. But it was my decision to combine what I'd learned from them that made the experiment possible.

And that brings me back to the glassblower.

The artist doesn't simply gather pieces of glass and hope they become something beautiful. The artist selects the materials, applies heat to fuse them, and uses knowledge, skill, and creativity to shape the molten glass into a finished work.

The process involves deliberate decisions. The artist determines which materials to use, how to combine them, and what form the finished work should take.

There may be unexpected results during the process, but the artist remains actively involved in shaping the final creation.

I believe lifelong learning works much the same way.

In Co-Active coaching, we believe that people are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole.

I've always been particularly interested in that last word. Whole.

We bring our accumulated knowledge, skills, interests, and experiences to every new learning opportunity. When we decide to learn something, we don't begin without resources. We already possess knowledge and abilities that can support our development.

We can examine those resources, identify how they relate to our goals, and deliberately combine them with new learning experiences.

Brian Brasil didn't happen by accident. I identified two things I wanted to learn, considered what I already knew about language learning and content creation, and designed an activity that would allow me to pursue both goals simultaneously.

The results have exceeded what I originally imagined, and I continue to develop both my Portuguese and my understanding of social media through the community I've created.

That's what excites me about lifelong learning. We can take an active role in our own development, drawing on the knowledge and experiences we've accumulated to create new opportunities for ourselves.

What knowledge, skills, and experiences could you deliberately combine to create your next learning opportunity?

Eagle Scout projects, returning to my roots, blaze path to opportunity

The Eagle Scout curriculum offers and amazing array of self-led learning experiences that, when meshed together in the imagination of an innovative scout, can prepare him for limitless opportunity.

As an adult, this curriculum is no less valid. In fact, perhaps it is more so. There is no one looking over my adult shoulder, for example, to keep me on track toward the goals I want to pursue. There is no one that, at the end of it all, is going to say I did a satisfactory job or not. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Still, in ticking off each small task that is part of the three or so merit badge projects I'm working on at the moment, I'm constantly coming up with new ideas of how to put my newly acquired knowledge into practice. Beyond what I'm doing at the moment as a means to complete the list of must-dos in a finite booklet, I'm finding limitless the ways I can make an impact in my home, my community and in my world.

Recently I decided to abandon city life - a life I've known for the better part of 25 years - to return to a life that's, geographically at least, closer to my roots. My formative years were shared among what, as a child, I considered to be four very different communities. These communities were each more than an hour's drive from each other, and because my parents were divorced, I was constantly being shuttled between some concoction of two of the four.

These communities were Orange, in the Virginia Piedmont, Stephens City, in the Shenandoah Valley, Hanover, in South Central Pennsylvania and Olney, a suburb of Rockville in the DC Metro, a.k.a. the DMV.

Since I returned to live in the District of Columbia a year ago, I've been out exploring each of the four communities of my youth. Before coming back, I'd always remembered these communities as prisons of torment to an angst-filled teen. But in fact, there is great beauty in each of them, and the forests and trails that surround them have given me a new perspective I had not originally held.

I brought with me my adult perspective as well as my reborn love of the outdoors. And because of that, ideas that have been brewing in my mind over the past five years, since my 2010 transformation are bubbling to the surface and beginning to take shape.

Now I'm returning to a rural life, at the foot of the mountains, here in the southern end of Megalopolis. Being self-employed was a goal of mine five years ago. As such, I've been making calculated career moves for the past five years while continuing to increase my outdoors and leadership skills. And the projects I've been working on in pursuit of Eagle Scout merit badge completion have prepared me to launch new endeavors in areas I'd not originally dreamed possible.

So what's next for me? I guess like me you'll have to turn the page to the next chapter to find out.


ABOUT Man of Merit: This is a project I started to help me overcome post-traumatic stress disorder. I was diagnosed with PTSD some years after 9/11, when my weight had ballooned some 200 pounds and I was struggling to keep employment due to bouts with anxiety, depression and impending physical disability. Impacted greatly by a brief stint with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy while living in Philadelphia, the birthplace of positive psychology, I underwent a weight-loss transformation. Subsequently, I began to pursue goals I'd left behind when I quit Boy Scouts at 15. I was entering adolescence without a strong male figure at home to guide me as I figured out what kind of man I wanted to become.

As springtime warms, hiking heats up in the Appalachian Mountains

by Brian Schwarz

It's been nearly two months since I've checked in here on Man of Merit blog, but a lot's been going on in my preparations for summertime camping and backpacking. I've been obtaining new skills I'll count on as I delve into wilderness survival and emergency preparedness, too.

Brian on top of Old Rag Mountain, April 2, 2015, at 330 lbs.

Old Rag Mountain

In April, warm and sunny weather broke through the cold grey winter. I was able to get in some big hikes, one out of every three days. The first hig hike of spring was Shenandoah's Old Rag Mountain on April 2.

This winter was pretty rough on me and my fit life journey; I'd gained five pounds from a combination of unhealthy eating and lack of exercise, so when I took on Old Rag I was weighing in at a beefy 335 pounds. Try not to laugh when imagining me heaving and hauling my deluxe-sized body over walls of boulders and squeezing through ascending and descending crevices. Encouraged by such an auspicious start as summiting the DMV's biggest, baddest (and perhaps baldest) Blue Ridge outlier, I'd hiked 10 pounds off by the end of the month.

A guy from work named Tom, who's in training to hike Mount McKinley this summer, hiked Old Rag with me. Rucking with 50 pounds on his back, Tom got a kick at how I handled my own 20-pound pack while at the same time grunting and groaning as I made my way precariously over, under and through the rock formations for two miles at the top.

Just prior to reaching the Old Rag rock scramble that day, Tom and I ran into a dude who been shopping at our store the day before - Abdiel. As it turns out, Abdiel would end up joining our little HTO hiking crew, too. As a result, the two of them would become avid hiking partners for as long as I could keep up with them; We ended up doing several high points in the Massanutten Mountain Range and elsewhere in the Appalachians before the month was out.

Abdiel and Tom on Massanutten's Buzzard Rock, overlooking Fort Valley

Signal Knob and Maneka Peak

Signal Knob and Maneka Peak was the first big Massanutten hike I did with Tom. About 100 yards from the Signal Knob overlook, there's a tower for Virginia public television. You'd think this would detract from the views, but its existence in no way takes away from the experience.

After spending a while panning the landscape at the Signal Knob overlook, a couple walked up who had a lot of knowledge about some of the topography you could see from here. I was able to gain connections from the geography I'd learned while living in the area for five years in the 1980s. The couple pointed out in the distance a series of small outliers from Great North Mountain.

One of these outliers rises up from the valley floor just west of the city of Winchester; It's called Apple Pie Ridge. This ridge, I remembered, is where I'd gone to the Ridge Campus of my high school for marching band practice. And it was during those many intensive band practices that I'd built up the base for my "hiking calves", marching in cadence and formations all while playing a saxophone at my core.

Hiking north, down from Kennedy Peak, overlooking Shenandoah Valley

High Peak and Massanutten Ridge

On a foggy and drizzly day, Abdiel and I hiked to High Peak along the Tuscarora and Massanutten trails. We heard more than 70 gunshots in Shenandoah's south valley that day, and I'm pretty sure we'd agree that we heard a bear rifling around near a newly rerouted section of the Tuscarora Trail, below Shawl Gap. There was a cool bear's den sort of outcropping along the trail. Maybe we were passing by its home and it was watching from a distance. In any event, we kept moving along.

Kennedy Peak and Edith Gap

It was a super sunny day when I hiked Kennedy Peak with Tom. The views from the Kennedy Peak tower are some of the best I've seen in the region. At the summit, Tom surprised me with a fish taco - simply a small flour tortilla filled with grilled asparagus and striped bass meat. But the meat was from a fish he'd caught only the day before at the confluence of the Potomac River approaching the Chesapeake Bay, so as we looked east from the summit tower, across the Shenandoah Valley and toward the Blue Ridge in the distance, this down-home Virginia-caught bass tasted especially good.

Buzzard Rock

Even after experiencing the overlook at Signal Knob and the high tower at Kennedy Peak, a much easier hike that I did with both Tom and Abdiel sticks in my mind most for the incredible vistas from its namesake rock. I say the vistas were incredible, but I honestly lost words at the moment I saw the view of Fort Valley and western ridges of the expansive northern Massanutten Mountain Range. Lost. Words. I possibly even gasped.

Buzzard Rock is the huge slab of rock that you see hanging high on the ridge to your left as you enter Fort Valley and the Elizabeth Furnace section of Washington National Forest from the north along Passage Creek. The day we hiked to Buzzard Rock, there was a group camp set up just down from ridge. We stopped and chatted with one of the group for a while, who told us he was a guide with a therapy outing. Some teen guys were being "straightened out" through leadership and trust exercises while rock climbing, or some such.

Next Steps

My hiking has slowed a bit in May, and it's been by choice - I felt for the first week at least I needed to recover. I'll be heading out on a big hike tomorrow, though. Tom and Abdiel are doing 13 miles at Crabtree Falls. I'd go with them but Tom leaves soon for a three-week expedition at Denali National Park, so I think he may want to go harder than I'll be able to handle. Instead, I think I'm going to opt for something shorter, around between seven and 10 miles, maybe in West Virginia.

So when am I going to start backpacking? I've taken four days off around my birthday weekend, so this is probably when it will happen. I still need to buy a backpack, which is a pretty big deal. It's going to cost me around $200, and it's a really big decision as to which one to buy. I need to do it soon, though. Meanwhile, I am planning to do some car camping in conjunction with big day hikes at wilderness areas around Charlottesville and Roanoke. But backpacking will happen soon. Stay tuned to see my progress!

Follow Brian's adventures on Instagram @fitlifechronicles. Check out his splash page at about.me/brian.schwarz.