Summer in Review

What a summer it was...  As I sit here looking at my desktop wallpaper of the Great Sand Dunes while listening to my Field School playlist (consisting of a Nickel Creek album and some radio songs we heard at least 50 times each on vans), I can't help but think that this summer deserves a proper farewell.

This summer was a whirlwind.  A few days after finishing up finals, I pulled an all-nighter at school submitting an Honors optional project two days before field school.  Then away we went, on a seemingly endless 3-day journey to the West, only to realize that it was only the beginning of the beginning.

Then six weeks of sun, sweat, mountains, rocks, dust, cactus, and all kinds of beautiful things and experiences that make my eyes glaze over and my chest swell to think of...  Sunrises, sunsets, glaciers, summits, elk herds, butterflies, shooting stars, horizons...

Then unbelievably, I was back in Georgia -- with body, mind, and soul changed, with habits, perspective, tastes, hopes, dreams newly acquired.  With inevitably permanent scars on my limbs, with an armful of photographs and videos that I now cannot believe I took.  The weekend before field school, I was home showing my family the Google Image-d photographs of places I would visit.  I thought to myself, "These probably look more impressive than what I'm really going to see, but I'll give them the impressive versions, why not."  But of course, it was so much more impressive in person.  I remember trying over and over to capture a place with my camera and being disappointed that it wasn't turning out as good as the real thing.  Now, all I can do is look back at these photographs and marvel at the fact that they were what I was seeing, except what I was seeing was even better.

And to think that the beauty that I saw was only a part of the experience...

Trying to get up at 4 in the morning for the first fourteener climb, I asked myself, "Why the heck am I doing this?"  On the way down from the mountain, I could not stop talking to Chris, one of our instructors and mountain guru, about how it was the coolest/best experience of my life and and how inexplicable its goodness was.  How do you explain to someone who has never ridden a roller coaster why dropping and flipping in a metal box is fun?  Likewise, you can't explain to someone why climbing up four thousand feet with the thin air robbing you of oxygen and the freezing wind howling and whistling in your ear is so darn fulfilling.  Even if you can sort of get that across, you still won't be able to convey just how fulfilling.  It's just something you have to try to know...

Anyway, back in Georgia, I spent the first few weeks adjusting back to the humidly mundane and the latter few weeks moving out and into my new place.  Even after a month and a half, all I can think of is the West, how I can get myself back there as soon as possible, and how I can take my family and friends there.

Which is too bad because tomorrow, classes start, and the last year of college (da-dun) will dawn upon me.  With GRE, research, applications, and work, it may be the busiest semester of my life (but Heaven forbid it be as miserable as that semester I took Math Methods in Physics).  Hopefully, that everything I will be doing is what I am interested in (except for the GRE) will help.

Father, I pray that I will stay with and listen for you...