After finishing high school at 17, I busted out of Tulsa and moved to Idaho for college. My first summer break I worked as a camp counselor in Utah and then after my 2nd year at byu-I I was ready for something new. A friend and I transferred to Byu-Hawaii. I was there for a year and loved it!
In Hawaii, I lived off campus and got my first real taste of independence. I remember plotting my way into a rental car for a weekend one time while I was there and drove the whole island. Twice. Once alone and once with a friend. I stopped at everything remotely interesting. Hawaii taught me that the world was out there just waiting for me to get to it and it wasn't going to just come to me. Looking back, I think my time in Hawaii opened me up to the idea that there are so many possibilities in this world that aren't just part of a movie or someone else's life- I can have my own fabulous story. Corny as it may sound, there's no better way I can think of to describe it.
When I left Hawaii, I knew I wouldn't be back for a while because I had decided to serve a mission. I had kind of been planning to serve since I was 15, but I wouldn't say I had been determined for that many years. I had left myself open for other possibilities to come along (and no you crazy Mormon people who think getting married asap is the end all and be all, I am not referring to being open for 'suitors'. bluh) but I knew a mission was something I wanted to do.
I had been prompted to go through the temple for the first time when I was 19 at the end of my 2nd year at byu-I. I'm not saying that I was something cherubic and spastospiritual and I don't know why- I just knew that it was what I was supposed to do.
I had been able to attend the temple in Laie during my time in HI and developed a strength from it that I don't think I could have found for myself in any other way. Maybe receiving my endowments and going out on a mission all at one time would have been too much for me, I don't know. I just knew I was ready to serve a mission and put all my focus into it. So you can imagine my shock when I got the call to serve in the Utah Ogden mission. I kind of hear party kazoos running out of air when I think of opening the call. Like everything deflated.
I came to understand that serving in UT was exactly what was right for me and it was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life. I couldn't imagine serving anywhere else.
So this post was originally supposed to be about traveling but has turned more into a biography. Oops. Oh well, its our blog and I'll do what I want with it. Ha!
Any-who. After I got back from my mission, I was preparing to go back to HI and it just wasn't falling into place. I wasn't feeling right about it so I, on a whim and 24 hrs before the deadline, applied to go back to Idaho. Nothing felt more right and that one step in time changed everything for me.
When I went back to ID I was a different person than I had been before. I was confident, outgoing, active, outdoorsy, and most important of all, I was really happy. Happy about where I was in life and what I was doing. Such a fantastic time of my life. I found out that I had more desire to be outside, backpacking, camping, adventuring that I had to be inside and playing the whose dating whom game that is byu-I. I found a great group of friends and worked hard in school and not just to get good grades, but to really learn. I was so alive. I even took off to Hawaii for a week on my own that first Thanksgiving just to get the Hawaii crave out of my system. It was an incredible first solo trip that laid a foundation for more to come.
I look back on that year and half of school and learn lessons from my old self sometimes. Asking myself, "what would I have done back then?" Good or bad, I don't know, but I do that.
My first semester after my mission, I met a friend that was really into snowboarding. I had gone twice before just randomly with friends, but I didn't really know what I was doing. I wanted to learn. I wanted to ski and I was determined. I bought a ski set up and a pass at Targhee , the closest resort to me and got out there (if you know anything about skiing, you know how big a commitment that is if you don't know how to ski!). I didn't know what I was going really and I fell a lot, but I started to get the hang of it that first season. I landed a fantastic research internship as well that winter semester in Pocatello that I'm still amazed I got and it payed really well (aka fed my new ski addiction.) I managed to squeeze in 3 days of that and usually 2 days of skiing in every week. Pretty freakin sweet deal I had there.
I feel such an overwhelming gratitude to my Heavenly Father for bringing such amazing opportunities in my path and blessing me with the gumption to go after them. Going after skiing like that when I had no idea what I was doing and having it shape my life in such a beautiful way is incredible. I will never forget that lesson- to just go after it and not question it or doubt that new experiences will be life opening.
When I finished college, I wanted to go right into working somewhere instead of going home and deciding what to do next. I didn't want the momentum to stop. I went after a job working in ski school reservations at a resort in Park City and moved into a place in SLC the day after Christmas. Working there and living in SLC wasn't the time of my life, but I took advantage of free lessons as a ski school employee and spent a lot of time reading Thoreau, Walden and Krakauer.
Krakauer wrote a book about a young guy that wandered around north america and ended up in AK where he died alone in the woods and I just became enchanted with it. I had some friends from college that had worked in AK the summer before we graduated and I wasn't all that close with them. Actually we had been not the best of friends over silly college things, but had learned to be friends during our last semester. With that history, its easy to understand why I was suprised that these 2 guys were at my apt when I came home from my graduation ceremony. One of the reasons they had been waiting there for me so they could convince me to apply for a summer job in Alaska. They had taken time in their last night at college to come and persuade me. How could I not be persuaded with that? So I applied. And I got the job. There is the story behind how I got to the great white north. Somewhere I never thought I'd go, let alone spend so much time and love so much. It is so far away and such a different world there. I love it and a piece of me will always belong in Alaska.
After my first winter at a ski resort, I was flat broke and didn't know what I wanted to do in life yet, but I was headed to AK. I convinced a friend from the Park City resort to drive up with me and we took 2 weeks to explore and photographing the whole experience. It was incredible and I regret that I don't keep in touch as well as I should with Kristi, my roadtrip partner in crime. I really should be better at keeping in touch.
I spent the summer devouring Alaska. I loved everything about it. Its so beautiful and breathtaking. Like no other place on earth. I saw so much of it and experienced way more than I thought I ever would. A lot of it is in thanks to the incredible roommates I shared a big house with and that I had brought my car (so important to an AK summer job!) There was always somebody willing to have fun and go somewhere. It really is so important to have good, happy, active people around you.
I also met some great friends who were into exploring the world. So many of my coworkers had backpacked around the world and I was ready to try it myself. I figured the easiest place to start would be Europe because English is so widely spoken. I didn't really think of trying to find somebody to go with me. Maybe I didn't want to be presented with the risk of not being able to find anybody that had the time and means to do it and didn't want that to be an excuse not to go. So one night, after searching a few times, I was in a hotel in Fairbanks on an overnighter with work and found a really cheap ticket roundtrip to London. I bought it without thinking twice and sat there stunned for a minute. There was no turning back after that!
I flew to London at the end of September 2007 and spent 8 weeks wandering all over Europe and Great Britain. I had so many note worthy experiences there, but for summary purposes I'll just say that I developed a curiosity for things of the world and seeing more of it. I was hooked. I had to travel.
I got back in time to move to Driggs, Idaho to start my first winter as a ski instructor. One of my roommates in AK worked there in the winter and convinced me to apply there instead of going back to a UT resort. I'm so glad that I did. Targhee has become a family to me over the years and I feel so at home there. I spent 3 winters as an instructor and never felt like I was at work. I just felt like I was getting paid to have fun with kids and play around with my friends. It was so amazing! I'll always look back on those years and be so grateful for the time I was able to spend at the Ghee.
After my first winter there, a group of friends and I went to the Bahamas, Florida and a week long cruise in the Caribbean. It was a part of the world I had never seen before and it was a good time. I learned that I travel better alone than with a big group. It wasn't my favorite trip ever but it was fun for sure.
I spent another summer in AK and this time my big house full of fun was full of different people. Some of the same people were there that I loved and some new ones, but I found myself spending more and more time with people outside of the church. I became great friends with some wonderful people that helped fill my crave for understanding things of the world.
Some of them I keep in contact with and some I don't, but I got to know some really fun people that knew about things I was always told to stay away from and had always been curious about. I was in denial at the time, but I went inactive for a while. Actually I had become that way when I left for Europe, but it feels different not going to church because you're on a train going through Germany rather than not going to church when its down the street and you just don't want to go. I did some things I can't believe I did and got into some things I shouldn't and enough time has passed that I'm ok with mentioning it.
After that 2nd summer in AK, I went to southeast asia for a couple months. I started in Thailand I didn't really have plan, but it wasn't long after I got there that I felt the draw to go north to China. I love traveling and not having a plan. Just letting the place you're in be your guide. I fell in love China. I absolutely loved it. I saw people and places that you think only exist in movies.
I took pictures that turned out incredible, but they still don't do it justice. I spent some time in Vietnam before flying home to start another season at Targhee. When I got back to Idaho, I spent an evening with a close friend and I remember saying that I felt like I wouldn't be traveling solo anymore. I didn't know if I was going to find someone to start traveling with or if I would stop traveling like I did, but I just knew like so many other things in my life that I've just known that I wouldn't be doing it anymore.
Then bam. I met Seth that winter. I had been seeing a couple of guys at the beginning of winter and had been too busy through the holiday slam to notice he was there, but by February I had figured it out and by March we knew we were going to get married.
I spent a few weeks at his house in LA with him and his parents after the season was over and by the end of May we were in AK together. I had convinced him to come to Alaska for a summer so we wouldn't be seperated. Seth isn't as used to moving and change as I am so it took some convincing, some arguments and tears to get him up there, but he came around. I went through a rough summer turning my life around and getting myself back in order. I wouldn't have made it through all that without Seth by my side. I'm so blessed not only to have stumbled upon the man I'm sealed to even with all my global wandering, but so blessed to have the temple back in my life. I feel like I'm relearning what its all about and its good to be back.
Seth and I were engaged by June and sealed in the LA temple at the end of September.
Three days later we flew to Australia and backpacked around for 2 months. Honeymoon of a backpackers dream. We had some interesting times getting used to spending so much time alone together without killing eachother traveling all over in our little rental car. We saw so much of Australia in so little time! We took a cruise around the coast line for 18 days from Sydney to Perth and Seth got his first taste of cruising and backpacking life. He's a trooper. His life since he met me has been so different than he had ever experienced before and he's had to adapt to this whirlwind of a woman. Props to my dude.
We went back for one more winter at Targhee, celebrated the return of spring with a cruise in Mexico with friends and then took the bold step of moving to Mesa, AZ and try to make a go of the married, sedentary life as I think of it. I'm trying to find the balance of fulfilling the drive within and yet keeping myself in one place. And this is where we catch up to where the blog began :)
1 comment:
Loved this post! Love you! Thank you for taking the time to write in all down and share your pictures!!
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