#roostercomb summit

[summitclan-chronicles]

Let's Take A Hike.

It's been over a full day since our pinned post was put up! I already have some followers and I welcome everyone - thank you for your interest already! Since we have a small audience I thought I would come in and say hello in a more relaxed way.

My name is Jingo (he/him)! I am the owner of SCC, as well as cat enthusiast, book consumer and local idea-haver. My favorite activity is Thinking Purposefully - mostly about my surroundings. The sky, the buildings, art pieces, textures, colors, smells, sounds, tones - taking in my environment in a planned methodical manner makes me feel immersed in it, like I'm giving every thing in my vicinity its deserved attention.

This habit is exactly how Summitclan was born.

In late summer of 2023, when the air is still thick but the wind blows cool, I started having a difficult time of things & my ever-patient and attentive partner decided to take me to a little lake to get me in the sun. We had a picnic, listened to music, danced, and the waves hush-hushed against the rocks. This day gave birth to a weekend tradition of hiking New York State's wilderness.

First it was just nature walks, then small forays into wooded foothills, with loops and connected webbings of trails. Then we set our sights on the Adirondack range, and the rolling peaks we always admired during the early morning drive to work, blue sentinels that - at the time of posting - are slowly being swallowed by encroaching wintry night-dawns.

I have been to, and fallen in love with, a little troop of peaks now: Buck Mountain is a dear friend, but I have also gotten to know Roostercomb and Shelving Rock. On all these ventures I found myself unable to stop Thinking Purposefully. I notice every fallen acorn, rustling leaf and broken stick; I eagerly observe how water falls down rocks, how leaves flutter to the ground, how downed trees entangle with each other, keeping each other alive. I discovered minute bugs, observant chipmunks, hidden slugs, old snail shells, coyote tracks, whitetail antler scrapes and old abandoned black bear dens.

As often happens, I became haunted by little cats.

If you've gone this far you probably have heard of Warrior Cats, and its magnetic pull toward certain people. In any natural setting they crawl into the backs of my eyes, and my hikes are no different, similarly influenced by tiny invasive animals with funny habits. But I am a writer, a poet, a dork; I like exploring ideas. I'll never solve a rubik's cube, but my brain might as well be one.

As I turned warrior-cats-in-the-adirondacks around and around, I started mucking up a silly fanclan I started calling AntlerClan after its fake mountain, Antlerhead Mountain. (This is still the name of the mountain in the full version, but the cats don't know that.) The cats in my head now form prehistoric generations of Summitclan: they showed me how they came together, how they showed they cared, and what they did for the cats in the future... but I was still seeing this from the angle of a fanfiction, and try as I might I could not escape the thick fog of "modern" characters. I could think of many ideas for the formations, the cultures, the stories, the values, but what about now?

It occured to me that it wasn't a story I could, or even would, write alone. This sort of project isn't really something to be discussed, but lived and experienced, I supposed: interpreted and used and tested against organic situations.

So, I retooled some things to make them compatible with roleplay instead. The little cats in my head were pleased with the changes. Now they told me all sorts of things and I knew this was a community I was building, not a story.

So here we are at the summit of our hike, and the birth of Summitclan. As my thoughts were cresting I happened to find my copy of Tailchaser's Song. After a spotty reread I got the idea to drop the capitalized "Clan." It feels appropriate in the books, when the Clanhood feels so intensely identifying and they feel so othered from neighboring groups. But Summitclan lives alone, and is intrinsically one with the rest of the surrounding population of cats. They cannot afford to feel othered or to turn their nose at things unfamiliar or strange, so isolated are they.

So, Summitclan it was. I had my moment in the sun, standing at the peak of my work: the building was done. Now came the hard work of going back down before dark.

September 9th, 2023 I made my very first draft of the roleplay version of my idea. On the 26th, I had my things properly organized and rewritten to my liking. I decided I would start advertising in November, and open in 2024.

So here we are. It is a Friday, November 3rd. We have reached the parking lot at the bottom of our hike, now. When you hike with someone you learn a lot about them: do they take the muddy path or the dry path? hard or easy? do they pause often to take in the view? I hope you've learned enough about me now to feel comfortable joining my community. I plan on going on a lot of hikes.

In the meantime, here are some photos of my adventures. Whatever comes up the trail ahead, I wish you the best, and I'm very glad I met you!