It Was Cold, Frigid Cold

It was cold, frigid cold. The rain didn't help, but I had grown used to it since thats what the sky did here most of the time. I had come to appreciate dry sneakers much more than I had ever thought possible to appreciate something that no one even really thinks about. The same goes for dry clothes, the sensation of being warm and a place to sleep that isn't wet, loud or infested with earwigs.

The rock that I was sitting on might as well have been an ice cube. There was a strange sensation in my hands, which usually swell when I hike, but the cold was telling them to do otherwise, leaving me with swollen fingers and bright red palms. My head and my throat hurt from not sleeping and I had scratches on my legs from hiking through thorn bushes and brambles all morning only to end up at this rock.

Our morning hike was supposed to lead us to see the towers, a set of rock formations which the park was named after, but the higher we climbed the harder it rained. The crest of every hill brought another daunting hill crest into sight, and another after that. We eventually decided that it wasn't worth going any further since it would lead us to more of the same thing, fog, rain and probably snow if we went far enough.
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I wasn't disappointed though. In fact I felt quite the opposite as I sat on my rock embracing the cold and the rain since it was the last time for a long time that I was going to feel it. I reflected on my time here and immediately began to cry. A place has never moved me so emotionally before. The combined thought of where I was and how I felt while I was here was overwhelming. The mountains were just so big that they made you feel like a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert or a single plankton in floating around in the sea. I felt small. Which also meant that everything that I was thinking about was also very small. All of the problems that I had were carried away by the whistling wind. It was liberating. I felt relieved and relaxed.

It reminded me of when my dad took me skiing right before I left for Chile. He kept saying that he just had to go, he had to get out of his life for a day and get into nature. We were both stressed. He has to do a lot of things in his line of work that he really shouldn't have to do because of the state of our health system in the U.S. I was preparing for my second study abroad experience and was so nervous that I was starting to make myself sick. So we went and it was on of the best skiing days I have ever had. Not just because I got to spend one of my last days in the U.S. with my dad but because of how we felt after. Relieved, more relaxed.

Sitting on that rock, in the cold and the rain, surrounded by fog I felt very humbled. I am not a lucky person when it comes to certain things but I felt extremely lucky to be sitting on that rock with my friend behind me on his. I felt content. I noticed the things that had gone wrong, like losing a contact, the constant cold, my weak ankles, my asthma, our ripped tent, the earwigs but they didn't matter. Not on that rock. Everything outside of that moment was completely insignificant. I appreciated that I was surrounded by mountains and lakes that were so beautiful that they brought me to tears. I was with friends whom I had come to love over such a short time. I felt alive and grateful to be alive.

So, in the end we didn't see the towers but that was ok, just knowing that they were there and appreciating that I was there was enough.

Here is a video that my friend, Christian Papesch, made from photos that he took during our trip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8LBVxVr3nY