Thursday, February 25, 2016

13

Willow becomes a teenager today! Happy birthday, Willow!

I don't remember my 13th birthday. I guess it's an arbitrary kind of milestone. Junior High doesn't hold a lot of fond memories for me. Being a teenager is so awkward.

I was around 13 when our family started going to Stanford Sierra Camp (see previous post), and those trips created some of my best memories from that time. I got to play on a ropes course for the first time, tried sailboarding (I was fine until I tried to change directions), water skiing, sail boating (we managed to turn a small sailboat completely upside down in the near freezing waters of Fallen Leaf lake), backpacking (overnight in Desolation Wilderness - it was great except for the fondue one of the leaders made one night, which was so bad that it became an in-joke), and many other things that make better memories than stories.

One afternoon, my friend Jody (I think that was his name) and I decided to go on a hike by ourselves. Being ambitious and not very realistic in our thinking, we headed up the side of Mt. Cathedral, which looms behind the camp. Our journey involved a lot of bushwhacking, scrambling, and sudden revelations that we weren't as near the summit as we thought we were. We finally made it, and almost fell off a cliff when the boulder we were standing on started sliding over the edge. Then we noticed it was getting dark, so we headed back toward camp. I remember scrambling down dry washes, dislodging large rocks on top of each other, and generally having the time of our lives, despite our excitement gradually becoming overshadowed with worry that it was going to get too dark to find our way back.

We tiredly walked into camp just as a search party was being organized. Looking back, I'm glad that we didn't become a statistic that day.

No comments: