Planet Hope is about adventure

One of my favorite parts of Planet Hope sailing camp is that day of the week when we decide that the
wind is right and the sailors are ready to sail to Crystal Mountain! It’s a stretch to really call Crystal
Mountain a mountain, but it is pretty much the highest point we can see from Piscataway Creek, so I
think that it is fair to call it a mountain, relatively speaking. On this day of camp, usually a Thursday or
Friday, we begin our epic adventure by setting a course towards the wide waters of the Potomac River,
but just as we get to the tumultuous zone where the Potomac and Piscataway tides pull at our hearts,
we trim our sails and head north to the shallows that lap away at the Mountain of Crystals. It is always a
heart pounding beach landing as we attempt to navigate the murky shallows where hidden dangers such
as logs that eat center boards and Hydrilla so thick that lesser sailors have been known to lose entire
boats in the weedy tangles. Ah, but once we have landed at Crystal Mountain, the mountain sighs as it
knows that we have landed upon it to pillage its crystals as keep sakes of our epic sail. Some say that
the crystals are pure diamond, others that they are merely quartz, a geologist once tried to tell us that
it was salt (we tasted it, its not salt), but whatever these magical crystals are made of, they are worth all
the struggles of the day and of the week, because we leave that mountain with pockets full of crystals,
boats full of mud, and sense of accomplishment because we sailed to the mountain and we won.

By Charley Sabatier