OUR WILD WAYS

i think it’s important to reflect. whether it’s after a trip, at the end of the day or at the end of a significant time period of your life. i also think it’s important to take time, ahead of a trip, to realize what you’re goals are and what you hope that trip will mean to you. i am leaving in a few short days for a semester in Patagonia and i’d like to work out why im going there and what i hope this trip will be, i am sharing this with you because i hope it might be of some use or interest. 

why? i’m going because i love it. i love that life style, i love the wilderness, the freedom, the emancipation, the glorious beauty. i’m going because i want to see things as i did when i was in alaska. 

the nature of the trip has changed for me- though it’s nature is still nonexistent. i have recently gone through a bad break-up. i have come to realize that person i trusted with my life and considered my best friend & boyfriend was a completely different person than who i saw him to be in my mind. having said this, i lost a loved one this past year, and without a doubt along with my senior year and IB this has been the hardest year of my life. i know that somewhere in me i want nature to mend my wounds and bring me clarity. i also know that as Emerson said loss sometimes brings the opportunity for realization and reflection. i don’t want this to turn into some pity, unheard rant but i do want to honestly lay out all the reasons for the trip. and although i have decided to do this semester before all this happened, my NEED to do it has been intensified by the pain i’ve suffered. 

i want to walk out of the bush at the end of that semester and know that there is little that fear. i want to overcome my fears, to look them in the eye and jump into whatever it is that im afraid of (i know exactly what those things are). i want to shed weakness; not necessarily physical but perhaps tear down the walls i’ve built. but most of all i want to be touched by nature, to be changed, i want to seek out the innermost chambers of my soul and see what there is for me to find. 

i have promised myself that no matter how hungry, cold, miserable, bruised, blistered, sick i feel that i will live each day of the course to the fullest, and stay positive…because in the end that will be ‘the time of my life’ that i will forever look back upon and forever miss. i will welcome the great things ahead of me either through toil and pain or joy and sheer exhilaration. 

(Source: ourwildways)