time of my life

So it's September 4th, and it's been a full 3 months since I've last blogged. In the past three months I have climbed mountains, preached to masses (well, if 10 people count as the masses, but in my defense they were complete strangers), gone skinny dipping, and truly fallen in love for the first time. Needless to say, this summer did not turn out exactly how I expected it to, which is not a bad thing. If I were to write about the 10 million things I did this summer, it might take a little while, so how's about some highlights of the summer sound? Here we go...

The Paintbrush/Cascade Canyons Loop was probably one of my favorite hikes, as well as my longest hike. Coming in somewhere between 20 and 21 miles, it was definitely a long day. Mike, Kate, Kirsen and Julie started sometime around 7 or 8am and finished about 9.5 hours later. I would say that we were only hiking for about 8 of those hours though... we liked to stop to pick huckleberries or debate whether or not to skinny dip . The hike brought us from Paintbrush Canyon (named for all of the gorgeous indian paintbrush flowers), to Holly lake, over the Paintbrush divide and down to Lake Solitude, through Cascade Canyon, and then we finally looped around Jenny Lake back to the parking area. It rained for a good 30-60 minutes after we left Lake Solitude, but we all dried off pretty quickly when the sun came out. It was definitely one of my longer days in the Tetons. After a quick shower, we jumped back into the car to head over to Signal Mountain for some dindin. To clue in the clueless, Signal Mountain is known for the huge plates of nachos that they serve (appropriately called "The Signal Mountain of Nachos"). By the time those nachos hit the table, we were ravenous, and devoured those suckers like it was our last meal. But oh, so tasty...

Working in the Tetons had it's ups and downs. Working in retail is... working in retail. Anyone who's done it before knows what I mean. Working in apparel is especially rough. Working in apparel when there are tee-shirt cubes is the roughest it gets (in my opinion at least). We had about 36 cubes of folded teeshirts, and I am continually amazed by how quickly customers can mess it up. But over all, it really wasn't that bad. I got a new manager about half way through the season, which actually made things a lot better. My first manager wasn't bad, but when LaDonna (LD) started, she pretty much let me do whatever I wanted with the apparel section, which was nice. LD was the sweetest boss that I have ever had... she gave us free coffee and cookies, brought cake/brownies for people's birthdays, and really worked hard to accomadate people's scheduling requests. By the end of the season I was glad to leave, but I really do miss some some of my coworkers.

As most of you know, I also spent my summer volunteering with A Christian Ministry in the National Parks (ACMNP). Our main goal was to lead interdenominational Christian worship services on Sundays for people passing through the park. While I was really apprehensive at the beginning of the summer, and at times I would have really liked to have 2 days off, ACMNP was great. The people were amazing, and it was really great to just put aside all of our differences to worship God. Through the ministry I learned how to preach (well, sorta), became more comfortable at leading worship, made some great friends, and of course made a lot of great memories.

One of my biggest achievements of the summer has to be climbing my first mountain. Yup, that's definitely up there. In the wee morning hours of July 10th, Jason, Kirsen, Julie, Jay, Mike and I climbed The Middle Teton, elevation 12,804 ft. We started climbing at 12:45am, and summited at 8:30am. The way up was rough, but definitely one of the most worthwhile things that I have ever done. I got to use and ice axe and cramp-ons to climb massive snow fields and watch the sunrise through the mountains. Sitting on the summit was absolutely incredible, breathtaking, and just plain awesome. Depending where you looked, you could see all of Jackson Hole, a good part of the Teton mountain range, and over into Idaho. Just incredible. The only bad thing was that on the way back I sprained my ankle (again) about 2 miles away from the trailhead. That sucked. But it was still definitely worth it.

So that pretty much sums up my summer, except for one important thing... Now before I left for Wyoming, I had many of friends (especially those of the female variety) tell me that I would meet some nice boy this summer. And what do you know, they were right. Since late May/early June I have been seeing this great guy named Mike (those who know me well can probably see the irony in this and have started to laugh... haha, shut up). But really, I never thought my friends would be right. I always the one that's perpetually single after all... and here I go falling in love. I don't really know where to start when I talk about Mike. "What's he like", "Where does he go to school", and "Where is he now" are usually the two questions that I get asked first. Well, for the curious, he just graduated from Minnesota State and is currently finishing up the season over at Colter Bay. What's he like? Well, I'd probably give a biased account, so you nosy people will just have to find out for yourself. All I can say is that I'm happy (which is a big understatement), and I think that's the most important thing. It's really hard having him so far away, especially considering that cellphone service in the Tetons sucks and I'm pretty much the most awkward person on the phone. I didn't think I could miss someone this much... but I do. October is really too far away, but at least he's comming.

So that's my summer in a nutshell. Tomorrow I start classes and my final year at Tufts. Scary. At this time three years ago I thought I had my life figured out. Now that can't be anything farther from the truth. Just please don't ask me what I'm doing next year, because I don't know yet. Hopefully I can get that all squared away in the next year. But you know what? There's no point in worrying about it, because it's just one decision out of many. Someone once told me that you only need to be 51% sure of something to do it. What I do next year may or may not be what I end up doing for the rest of my life. But you know what, I'm okay with not knowing for right now, I'll just do my best to not screw up too badly. Sounds like a plan :)

*ps: if you want to, you can check out more of my photos at http://community.webshots.com/users/MinikinDreamer. I don't have many up, but hey, it's a start...