Trees and Mountains

One of the biggest draws about the OE is that we go on a week-long backpacking trip as a break between our first and second class segments. We just got back from it and it was probably the biggest life-giving thing I’ve done in a long, long while. I can’t think of a time when I’ve felt more at home in my body – my mind acknowledging it, encouraging it, being thankful for it.

There were three different trip options – my group, 11 of us, went to the Cascades in central Oregon.  We climbed up dry waterfalls, hiked across snow and shale, bushwacked through marsh, forest, and woods decimated and turned beautifully white by forest fire, walked across blister-inducing sand, covered obsidian-laden ground, and passed through meadows filled with wild flowers, streams, crickets, and butterflies. We dug holes and pooped in them, shared formative life stories around campfires, showered in waterfalls, ate dried apricots and instant soup, gazed at the milky way, drank water from sources that we could actually see and touch, and ate snow-cones made out of Gatorade and age-old mountain snow.

I spent lots of time thinking about everything and an equal amount of time thinking about nothing – just being alive in the present moment. It was a beautiful break for my soul and an incredible adventure for my body. I wish this kind of thing upon everyone.

Oh yeah. And we may have taken a mooning picture on some mountain somewhere at some point.