A Time You Went...

Currently, Zooz has not responded to my texts about a final meeting, which is disappointing but I am still trying. This is an alternative post in case we cannot get together. ***UPDATE Zooz never contacted me back and I know he is going home this week so we will definitely not be able to meet again.

Topic: A time you went fishing, camping, hunting, flying, bungee-cord jumping . . .

When I was younger one of my favorite weeks of summer was always the week I went to camp. I did it every from second grade year until my sophomore year of high school, which is the age cut-off for all the camps. The camps are all focused on outdoor activities, like high-ropes courses, teamwork building challenges, kayaking, and white-water rafting. I always went with one of my three best friends, and the second to last year was the best because our other best friend could finally go with us as well.

The camps got more challenging the older the campers got, so the year after eighth grade we went on an incredibly exciting trip. We took vans out to West Virginia and pitched our own tents at a campsite, cooked our own meals, went white-water rafting and rock climbing. Rock climbing was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Not many people can say they’ve done natural rock climbing. Now, it wasn’t a huge mountain or anything, it would probably be considered a cliff, but it was real, natural rock climbing.

Getting started was a little rough. There were rungs drilled into the rock to help out, but they weren’t everywhere. We had harnesses and rope to hook ourselves onto the rungs so we wouldn’t fall, but it’s still terrifying to climb like that. I was nervous, but with the encouragement of my friends and camp counselors I got climbing and started going at a good pace. Once we climbed up a small distance, most of the climbing was horizontal. The cliff was shaped like a wall that jutted out and had a gap missing in the middle. Our goal was to climb across, go around the edge of the gap, across a bit more and then up to the top. It was tall enough that it was impossible to see over it from the ground or even while climbing. I remember getting to the gap in the middle, peering past the edge and gasping. I could see far across the land, over all the trees and other cliffs and mountains. It was the kind of landscape a person would take a picture of to put on a post card. I will never forget how rounding that corner and looking up completely took my breath away.