Absurdities

If I can look back on college, this my post-adolescent life ten years down the road, and remember weekends like this, I think I could be truely content in how I've spent the past few years. If I can look back next week and think of weekends like this, I know I could be content in how I've learned to spend time. If I can wake up tommorow, or I should say, in four hours, and laugh, I will have truely arrived at something great.

Saturday snowshoeing on Hood, on one magical sun-filled afternoon spent beneath the Oregon pines, climbing vertical hills like I've only ever daydreamed about, looking out on the mountains that I've only yet seen in my minds-eye. Talking and listening and talking somemore and laughing and not being pent-up drama. And more talking and laughing and smiling--I'd almost forgot how. And then getting marooned...its funny every weekend that I go up to the mountains, or out to the coast, or just plainly away I pray to get stranded. Pray to not have to come in for a good long time. And then when it finally happened, all I could do was laugh with joy at the absurdity of the situation. Long story short: we killed the van, and ended up waiting for a towtruck for a good 3 hours in the parking lot at the trailhead while the temp dropped down a ways below freezing. But for watching the stars come out behind the mountain, and seeing the face of the summit alive in the afterglow of the day, not to mention the gift of unencumbered time and getting caught up on the past few months with a good friend--for all of this I'd head back up there in a second. For that again I'd agree to spend the night up there, anything.

Cookies, holiday music, wine, and more good talk with camp friends Saturday evening, sleeping in past noon, waking up to snow and the luxury of dozing this afternoon. Crowned by truely one of the most amazing live music performances I've ever seen, and I am only feeling slightly bad for not even attempting to do homework.

My mind and my body are full and tired. I am learning again to say yes and damn the consequences. Because the moments when you forget all the hindrances of rationality are the ones that you'll look back on, twinge a little bit in the memory, but smile to yourself all the same. However absurd they seem in the moment.