Hiking. Anyone? Anyone?

Now I've got to be honest about where my loyalties lie. I am strangely not the type to lament the arrival of colder weather. My California and Arizona friends marvel at my deep and true love for winter with it's shorter days and longer nights. I will always love the feeling of walking out into the crisp winter night and breathing deep, feeling that cold air fill every space in my lungs. I love the smell of frosty pine and I find snow absolutely enchanting the way it sparkles and spins as it falls in perfect white sheets, making everything look untouched as if I'm the first to see it. Things feel different in winter air. Winter looks, feels and smells like Christmas. Maybe it's because I'm a Christmas baby... I am fully converted to winter.

That being said, this morning while running I found myself getting excited for winter to end and summer to come. This may seem a little out of character for me to say, therefore allow me to explain myself. As the sun rose over snow-covered Y mountain, I remembered what it feels like to go hiking. I stopped my run and took a seat on the curb while gazing up at the rosy pinks, pale peaches and deep lavenders spread across the sky. No painting or photo can capture that kind of color- they exist only in the moment and then they're gone. Looking towards the mountains caused a flood of summer memories to come back. 

I spent many a morning in June exploring the woods up Provo canyon with roommates. My roommate Jessi and I would go hiking on Tuesdays because I had the day off work. I spent many an afternoon in mid-July floating down the freezing Provo river with friends.  We'd wave to the fishermen we passed and try to keep our inner tubes from catching on their hooks. I spent many August evenings sitting up in those mountains thinking about my life and what I wanted to do with it or reading a book about the life of someone else. This past summer was reminiscent of my glory days (age 8-12): building dams in rivers, climbing trees and rocks, and simply playing. Just as things feel different in winter air, everything is different up in mountain air. I think clearer, I breathe deeper, I see better, I feel easier. It sounds cheesy and like I'm quoting Backpacker Magazine or something but it's true. I was taught to love the mountains from the time I was a little girl and suddenly while sitting on the freezing cement curb, I remembered that. I remembered what the sun felt like on my back and how the air tasted like aspens. I remembered the great feeling of looking out over the valley and down to where a trailhead began and realizing that I conquered something. I remembered how much I love to hike. 

Four years ago I was a lot younger. At barely twenty, I hadn't yet had some important experiences that shape and define who I am today. I had just completed a class at BYU called Wilderness Writing in which we spent most of our time hiking, backpacking, and camping and then recording our experiences in personal essays. It was during a backpacking trip in southern utah with that class that I decided to go on a study abroad with the same professor. It was on that study abroad in the British Isles, backpacking several hundred miles across the Scottish and English countryside, that I decided to serve a mission. It was on a hike on P-Day in the Tuscan mountains while on my mission that I decided to become a teacher. And it was likely during  my first experience hiking that I decided that I liked it. I have made some of my best decisions in the mountains.

So this morning while watching the colors of the sunrise fade in to classic blues and the light begin to fill the valley, I'll admit that I began to wish winter away just a little. I've got some pretty big decisions to make in the next year and I need my mountains.

I want to go hiking. 

On another somewhat unrelated  note, this morning in my Race, Rhetoric and Identity Politics class we spent an hour discussing this question: Am I more an I or am I more a me? For the record, I am more of a me than an I. Sometimes I wish I had stuck with my initial psychology  major instead of switching to literature...