I haven't written at all this summer,
and I have a lot of things to write about and don't quite know where
to start. I finished freshman year, did lifeguard training, became a
Voyageur camp counselor, chilled in Minneapolis and then the North
Woods near Minocqua, came home, and went backpacking in the Emigrant
Wilderness. It was a summer of laughter, love, learning, and lots of
other clichés. I went looking for myself and found me in the woods
where I belong. I learned that the most rewarding thing I could be
doing is teaching high schoolers how to camp and appreciate the
wilderness like I do, teaching them how to take care of themselves,
be responsible, and have the confidence and maturity of the young
adults they are becoming.
Being a camp counselor was a crazy and
wonderful experience. I've always loved French camp, but I love it
even more now. It changed my life and gave me a sense of self-worth
when I was 14 and didn't love myself, showed me that I had valuable
skills and interesting things to learn from interesting people. And
that makes it very powerful for me to see that change happening in
others. My family knows – when I came home all I could talk about
was my campers, how cool they were and how much they learned and how
proud I am. It's an intoxicating feeling, especially for someone only
a few years older than they are, who's never experienced being a
teacher before.
I'm still undecided; I don't have a
major yet and don't plan on choosing one soon because I'm still
exploring. But if I could be a camp counselor all year round, I
would. I'm starting to look at outdoor schools and alternative
education programs in the woods, because I believe so strongly in the
good it does. I don't want to be a teacher because I don't want to
sit in a classroom all day, but I do
want to teach kids and see their confidence grow and watch them get
better at French, or being responsible, or lighting campfires. We'll
see where this takes me, but I've been waiting and waiting to see
what I feel called to do, where my passion lies... and if there's
anything I'm passionate about, it's this. I struggle with the idea of
not doing something more academic, that the child of my brilliant
parents “should” be doing, but on the other hand, I know that
teaching makes a difference in the world, and in the end that's what
I want.
Enough
of pondering what to do with my life; I still have time before I have
to decide anything. So camp was full of glorious sunrises and
sunsets, cold Northern lakes and sun-warmed granite, beaches that
disappeared under 5 feet of extra water and trees drowning in the
record flooding, learning how to teach, loons, and sleepless nights
packing equipment and writing blog posts. (I'm
the blogmaster at camp! Here it is: (link)
But I'm not responsible for all those 2nd
session posts, so read everything earlier than July 22nd
to get the stuff I worked on!) We had an amazing staff who are all very close to my
heart, and amazing kids who worked hard, learned a ton of French, and
suffered admirably through mosquitoes, cold nights, broken canoes,
and last-minute changes of plan like always happen at Voyageurs.
After one week of staff training and four weeks of campers, I left
for Minneapolis, hung out with family, and ran my first 5k. I
“trained” briefly with my cousin, meaning we went on a total of
two runs, and then matched each other neck-and-neck during the whole
race, finishing 15th
and 16th
place with the same time of 23:08. (That's a 7:27 mile time, and I
was the 3rd
woman to finish! Yes I almost threw up after the race... worth it!) I
think 5k is a great distance for me and I'd like to run more of them
and improve my time. My dad and Grace ran it too, and did pretty
well. My dad finished 2nd
in the 60+ category and was mad at the one 60-year-old who had the
nerve to beat him.
Then I
headed up to Minocqua with family, and had a week of relaxing at the
cabin, running and swimming across the lake every day. My aunt is an
amazing cook and spoils us rotten, so even though the cabin sounds
like a rustic place, it's actually the height of luxury. Still, I was
glad to get home, see friends, and play pickup Frisbee again.
But I
can't stay out of the woods for long. I was invited by my good friend
Tim to go on an “advanced” backpacking trip in the Emigrant
Wilderness with 3 other experienced backpackers. I was the wild card;
I had never gone backpacking with any of them before, but Tim assumed
I could keep up because of the sports I play and my experiences
backpacking and canoeing. What I wasn't used to was being the slowest
one of the group. This crew was intense. We took plenty of long
breaks, so much so that it felt practically leisurely, but when we
were on the trail we hiked fast and covered a lot of terrain. A
typical backpacking day that I'd plan for with my family or less
experienced friends would be about 7 miles – that sounds short, but
miles are different when you're at altitude, have to change
elevation, carry a heavy pack, and are on rugged terrain. We were
doing 11 mile days and still had so much daylight left over that we'd
spend hours just lying in alpine meadows or swimming in granite
lakes.
Excerpts
from my journal: (August 19) “We broke out of the rocky stark
mountains and came upon this beautiful high meadow, a plateau covered
in green grass and abundantly strewn with wildflowers – Indian
paintbrush, lupin, and many more I didn't recognize. Turning around
we had a view of the granite peaks we just climbed, stark against the
blue sky, and turning south to where we were headed, we could see a
grey thundercloud starting to form. It was one of the most beautiful
places I've ever seen, with so many different kinds of beauty
juxtaposed. So we hiked into the thundercloud that awaited us....”
Fortunately we got our tents up before the skies opened up too much.
(20
August) “It rained during the night and everything was wet, but we
were still without water, so we decided to eat breakfast at the next
water source and dry out our tents then. So off we went, through a
meadow strewn with dew. Everything was in miniature, from the stunted
pine trees to the tiny perfect flowers and blades of grass, beaded
with water so each was translucent and sparkling in the morning sun.
It makes you lose your sense of size, like you're a giant in a world
of dwarf plants. Four miles later, we finally stopped to eat
breakfast at Deer Lake...” That night there was a beautiful sunset
and then a sky so clear and star-strewn that it was hard to pick out
constellations because there were too many stars. We stayed up late
just looking at the sky and making our own constellations. The next
morning there was frost on the ground.
On
Thursday we hiked cross-country to Snow Lake, following an
unmaintained trail which we lost halfway over a mountain. Going up
was fun, hopping from boulder to boulder, and finally standing on top
of the peak and seeing the view all the way down the long valley to
Huckleberry Lake in the distance, spreading our arms and shouting “I
AM ON TOP OF THE WORLD!” into the wind. But the way down the other
side was tough on my knees and Kate's and Tim's ankles. So our “short
day” didn't feel very short, because hiking cross-country is a
horse of a different color.
The
last two days were less beautiful and more strenuous. We were above
the treeline for much of it, hiking at high altitudes which made our
hands puffy and our faces windburned. The wind was enough to drive
anyone mad, especially on Friday when we hiked over Big Sam and had
to walk with a wide stance and bent knees to avoid being blown off
the mountain. Even during the evening while we were cooking dinner at
Leavitt Lake the wind howled mercilessly around us, making it a cold
and haunting place to be. When it finally died down a couple hours
after sunset we were incredibly grateful to be able to sleep in
silence and warmth. On Saturday we hiked out of Sonora Pass, and Tim
and I hitchhiked back to Kennedy Meadows to get our car. My first
experience with hitchhiking was an astonishingly easy one: literally
the first car that was going in the right direction stopped to pick
us up, two nice old guys who were happy to give us a lift all the way
to the parking lot where we left the car.
I feel
humbled and accomplished at the same time to have done this 55 mile
week with backpackers who could leave me in the dust. I would go
again in a heartbeat, but it's a good reminder for me that you can do
a lot more than you think you can, and that you're not the most
hardcore person out there just because you go camping a lot.
How
did summer go by so quickly? I don't feel ready to go back to classes
yet. I do feel ready to see my friends in Madison, get back to
fencing and back to my frisbee team. But I wasn't ready to leave
home. There's some very special people in Sunnyvale who I'm going to
miss a lot more than I'd like to admit. So here I am on an airplane
somewhere over the middle of the country, sleep-deprived because I
stayed up late packing, a little buzzed on caffeine, writing about
how great my summer was and confused about whether my eyes are wet
from happiness or sadness. All I can say is I hope this semester goes
as well as summer did, because this summer was perfect.
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