Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Summer

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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