Commitment

No this post has nothing to do with me finding a significant other, more of just my commitment to myself and the future.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about commitment and what it means to me. I have always liked to make informed decisions and know that what I'm choosing is the right thing for me. It took me a long time to decide that med school was the route that I wanted to take. Although it is a hard route to take, It feels like that is what I should do with my life. I have found that the harder something is, the more rewarding it is to achieve it. The more I have to stretch and grow the better things will be. That is partly why I enjoy rock climbing, and why I am a chemistry major. I enjoy the outdoors and would have loved to have taken a different route through college, a route that would have been much easier, but I felt like it would not have been a good application of my mind, it would have been too easy I guess. I live to have commitments.

As part of being committed, I realize that I've made the commitment to go to med school. I need to make choices according to that. I need to fully commit myself and put forth the necessary effort. Commitment is essential in exercising the agency that I have given to me. Commitment is also essential in relationships, but that is another story.

Life is an Adventure

Its amazing the twists and turns that life can take you through. I wouldn't live without it though. Some of the most recent ones have been:

I put another team together for the temple to temple relay. It was a lot of fun. We packed all of us into my old roommate Marshall's 4runner and took off to run to the temple. It was a lot of fun, and I did get quite a bit of sun that day.

Another recent adventure has just been trying to survive my ridiculous life, particularly my class schedule. I'm not taking too many credits this semester, but I'm also working, and trying to have a social life at the same time. Dating can be pretty crazy sometimes, full of its own adventures, and trying to figure things out, all while having fun at the same time. You'd think with how many dates I normally go on, that I'd be a lot better at this than I am. But such is life.

Last week, I also went home and went hunting with Dad and David. It was fun hiking in the woods with Dad, and building a sling out of dad's shoelaces and the leather patch from the back of David's pants. We also had quite the time trying to navigate cliffs to get back down to the truck. But alls well that ends well.

Today I had planned on going mountain biking with my roommate Jon. We went and it was a much needed relaxing day in the mountains. It was good getting out and seeing the beautiful fall colors. I'd driven out there last saturday night, but had missed seeing the scenery.

This week I also submitted a grad plan, and I will be walking in april, and then finishing my degree by completing an internship. Its kind of stressful, since I'll have to take 10 credits of chemistry, and then figure out what I want to do with my life for the next year before I start med school. I've recently purchased MCAT test prep books as well, and that is taking up my spare time. its an interesting point in my life, full of a lot of decision making. wish me luck

Ship Island Lake with Dad

I decided that my birthday present to Dad would be planning and taking him on a backpacking trip to ship island lake. He told me that he had wanted to go there since he was 15 years old, so I'm glad that we were able to make it there. We left thursday morning and made the 5 hour trek to the trailhead. We got to the trailhead around 2 pm and started heading up the trail. It was full of gorgeous views the whole time we were hiking. It was an intense hike as well, since we were following the ridge line of mountains the whole way, full of up and down. We hiked all the way to Wilson lake where we set up camp and cooked dinner.

The next day we went down fish fin pass, which had literally been cut and blasted out of the rock and followed the trail to get to ship island lake. It was a long day hike in, but well worth seeing the large granite monoliths that were at the outlet of the lake. Dad also packed a spinning reel up to the lake, and we caught all kinds of trout, rainbow, golden, cutthroat, and hybrids of all of the above.

We then hiked back to our base camp at wilson lake and headed back to the truck. We ended up hiking about a total of 24 miles in the three days we were out hiking. with most likely at least 6,000 feet of vertical gain thanks to all of the up and down we did on that hike. It was a good time spent with Dad, and I'd love to go back and spend about 4 or 5 days back in the mountains!

New England Pictures

here are some pictures from when I was in New England, I've been pretty busy since I've gotten back, with school starting and with all that that brings. So enjoy! Some are from Quebec, some from New York City, and some from Connecticut.

Connecticut and Boston

Well, after finishing up the two weeks of work in utah, we took off on an airplane to fly across the country again, this time we were headed to hartford connecticut. The flight there was pretty interesting, we were delayed taking off from the Washington Dolles airport due to inclement weather in the Boston airspace, so we waited thirty minutes to take off, and then we departed. We then flew to Hartford, but the lightning storm had moved from Boston and was right on the Airport landing area, so we circled and circled until we didn't have enough fuel and we had to go to Providence Rhode Island to land and refuel and then take off and fly back again. The stewardess on the plane was really nice though and the delays didn't bug me one bit.

The Connecticut Site we worked at was really pretty, the first day there we had a local who owned 30 acres adjacent to the refuge property drive us around the old roads to familiarize ourselves with what we were working with. We had 7 of us riding around in an old jeep willys. The area was really beautiful with all of the trees and the brook running through it. It was a small refuge though, with only about 285 acres that we had to map, so we finished mapping it in a day and a half and decided that we should take off to check out Boston.

We walked the freedom trail in Boston and it was neat to see all of the old buildings where a lot of American History took place. I enjoyed going to Boston.

Utah Mapping

Well, after finishing up mapping weeds in Kansas, I took off for Utah for two weeks of mapping weeds out there. We worked near Strawberry Reservoir, and also by Mt. Nebo and mapped trails for the forest service there. It was a nice two weeks where I didn't have to fly anywhere, and where we could just drive to work, and were out in the mountains instead of flat kansas! It was pretty and there weren't many weeds to find anywhere. I also got to hike almost to the top of Mt. Nebo, I went until there weren't anymore plants growing and then called it good. I also managed to get a flat tire on a gravel road, I was grateful it didn't happen on the road I took the truck down the day before that. I came down from Mt. Nebo on a gravel road that was only 6 miles out, instead of taking 30 miles of pavement. It saved some time, but was pretty hairy in spots, some three point turns were required on some of the switchbacks, but alls well that ends well! It was a fun time working in Utah.

Kansas

I'll just let the pictures do the talking for Kansas, except to say, it's hot. REAL hot here. 110 some days, and its pretty flat. I did make a trip to Missouri this last weekend, and we also took the sister missionaries out to dinner, and then went tracting with them in a small subdivision in Yoder, Kansas. It was pretty neat and brought back a lot of memories. Dillon and I set up an appointment with a family for the sisters to come back and teach. Hopefully all goes well with that. And thats about it for now. I had a lot of fun at the family reunion, and was only sore for a couple days after the run, a couple meaning two.

oh, the clouds are really great in Kansas, and lightning storms here are fun to watch. Thats about it for now though!

North Carolina

Well, I've been in North Carolina for almost two weeks now. I had no idea what to expect coming here, but I've come to really enjoy it here. I've been working hard at mapping noxious and invasive species of weeds here on the refuge, and have been enjoying myself whenever I haven't been working. I've discovered that the beach is the best place to be when its 90+ degrees and humid and that it makes for a very good break after wading through thick vegetation all day. Luckily quite a bit of what we've worked on mapping here has been in the farm fields and along canals and ditch lines, as well as on river banks. After finishing most all of the farm fields here we took canoes and canoed the creek here to map alligatorweed, so it was a nice break from hiking through the fields.

The beach has been fun after work, I've enjoyed wading out and playing in the waves, and tried body boarding, although it is rather challenging. I bought a kite and have enjoyed flying it on the beach. We went to a kite festival that was here as well, there was a kite the size and shape of a blue whale! it was pretty amazing to look at. We also drove down the outer banks and took a ferry out to an island called Ocracoke Island. It had the best beach I've been to so far.

This weekend after working our 40 hours, we drove up to Washington DC to check out our nations capitol. I saw the constitution and the declaration of independence, and toured around several museums and art galleries as well as seeing capitol hill. I also made a trip to the DC temple, it looks like a fortress and is really beautiful inside.

Its been pretty fun being out here in North Carolina staying in a beach house, and I would definitely come back to the East Coast again.

Moab and Such

Southern Utah

During the two weeks I had training in Logan, there was also Memorial Day weekend. Aaron Harker and I had planned on going to southern Utah for the weekend. We met up with Aaron in Brigham City and then drove the rest of the way to Moab that night. We slept on a tarp and our pads just on the side of a gravel road that led to the Mountain Biking trail we did the next morning. It was a really fun trail, which was about 4.5 miles one way over quite a bit of slickrock to Arches National Park boundary where we went on a short hike back to see a place called Klondike Bluffs. After that we went and found what looked like a nice place to go on a short hike to a swimming hole, unfortunately a few hundred other people had the same idea, so it was pretty crowded, but it still felt great to cool off by jumping off the top of a waterfall to a small pool at the bottom.

One of the things we wanted to do while we were down there was hike through a slot canyon. We found one that sounded pretty fun called Horse Play Canyon, it didn’t require any ropes and said that water was avoidable. It was over by Hanksville, Utah. We spent the night in my tent there, getting blasted by sand because of how windy it was. We also found a scorpion under my tent when we packed it up. We went to church there that morning, and then found the canyon we were going to hike. It was about 30 miles out in the middle of the desert. The canyon was pretty darn narrow in places, and quite a tight fit even for me. We made it through just fine though, although we were really sand blasted by the end since the wind was gusting up to 50 mph. We decided to avoid the sand that night to sleep in the car in the church parking lot. We then woke up the next morning and drove back home. It was a great adventure!

Weed Mapper

I wasn’t sure what I was going to be doing this summer and my friend Dillon Harker told me about a job that he had applied for. This job was with USU and we would go all over the US mapping noxious and invasive species of weeds. I applied for the job and interviewed for it over the phone while I was in Colorado. I heard back a week after I got back from Colorado that I got the job. I was pretty excited about it. I had training for a week in Great Falls Montana. It was really pretty up there. Then I had two more weeks of training in Logan. I found that I really liked Logan, it’s a really beautiful area, and so is Cache Valley.

Colorado and the Train ride home!

Well, after spending a little over a week in Iowa, Edwin and Jennifer and the kids took me to the train station and I left Iowa. The train ride went fairly well, although the train was over an hour late getting into the station, and an hour late getting to Denver. Ben picked me up at the train station and took me the rest of the way home. It was nice spending almost a week with Ben and Shanna. I helped Shanna rearrange the basement, and also helped move the toys down into the basement. I went on a nice hike with Benjamin on Saturday. It was pretty, although it was snowing that morning. Then Monday morning, Shanna took me to the train station and I rode the train through the rockies, and through grand junction up to provo. It was a gorgeous ride. Thank you Leonora and Kevin for picking me up and letting me stay there.