winter has come……..

   These days in class we have been having some really interesting conversations about teaching,  friendship and bonding. My teacher, Christian, asked us to describe beauty. No one could come up with a simple answer. A term like beauty cannot really be described in a short answer. There are several other really common terms that have no concrete definition. The one term that I have been thinking about is love. We all think we know what love is, something shared between two people who really care deeply about one another.  The dictionary labels it a deep romance kind of thing. I am not really willing to accept that it is that simple of an answer.

Over the last few months of my life there have been some really hard times, and there have been some really good times. It has been a roller coaster ride to say the least. Unfortunately for me, the hard times that I had to go though, was to watch some of my best friends go through a life changing time. To watch this, I felt like I was outside of a glass box, a feeling of helplessness is what sped through me. All I could do is hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And I did. When I finally was let into the glass box ( when I came home from the summer) what I expected to find and what I actually found where completely different. If does not matter what I expected but what I found was a group of people that had gone through a really difficult time and had survived. What came out on the other side was a bond that was so visibly close and strong between everyone. Since I was not able to be present when the major construction of this unique bond took place, it was remarkable to walk into such a place. Soon I found myself fully taken in by everyone and I too felt the bond that I had observed from outside that glass box.What is this bond? Can you call it love? Does the word love even do justice for what has taken place? I guess what I see is a love between friends that has just finally matured and aged to perfection. I have known most of these people for most of my life and now after all these tough times, with the understanding of where we all came from and that it does not matter what happens in the future, we are tied together even when we are scattered across the globe.

Recently, in my life there is another type of love that has really taken a strong part in my life. This love you could call a text book type of love, but it is anything but text book. I know I have only 21 years to learn about life and I know there is still much more for me to know. But, I feel that with this new found love I have learned more about who I am and who I want to be. 

One year ago I started to go through a change in myself. I would delegate credit to the people at Plymouth the ones who really got the ball rolling in this change that I had experienced. It is kind of hard to tell exactly what change has taken place but I know that I have come out with a more open mind and clarity of where i want to go in life. It feels like what some people would call an awakening. After I had been so called “awakened”, I departed west for a great adventure. About a week into my adventure I introduced myself to the new comer of the group, she greeted me with a big smile and told me her name was Ariana. 

As the summer progressed she and I started to build a connection. What I found out is that I could talk to her about anything. I just felt really really comfortable.When you work with someone in backcountry you build a very strong connection because there is that feeling of need. When you are in the woods you rely on every person on the team in order to get a task done. She and I started building our relationship on that connection formed by survival. With that and our ability to talk and communicate, there was nowhere to grow but closer. As the summer progressed we grew very close. We would work seamlessly in the field and have a blast in the front country. With all the time we spent together ,I had a equal amount of time to reflect on us.  I saw in myself when I was with her, the brightest part of my personality. Basically when I am with her I feel as though nothing can bring me down. And this is love…….

So now we have seen two different types of so called love. I guess when you look at it this closely you can find that love means millions of things. But there is one fact that will never change. There is no greater feeling than the feeling that friend’s families and lovers can bring to someone’s sprit. It does not matter who you are if you are loved somewhere by someone, find them and just try to feel good. This is what the holidays are really about

Happy holidays

Smile.

After all my adventures this fall, we got a few days of climbing in before the really cold weather came. But now snow is here and snowboarding time has come. Time to put the climbing gear away and get the snow gear out…. boo ya!

Photos

Pics of the trip Enjoy!