Escape to the Mountains!

Katie D.

December 11, 2009 - 10:49 PM

The term has ended at long last. This has been one of the best and most challenging terms of my college career. I feel like I've really had a transformation in my life: I felt so challenged and excited about my classes, but also felt increasingly pulled toward my other commitments: my work as a TA, my thesis, and especially my internship.

What all that boils down to is that I was way, way too busy this term. I managed to have a fabulous time with my friends and to spend some time concentrating on the things I need in my life (reading, rock climbing, watching good TV, cooking, and sometimes sleeping), but it was a spectacularly busy time.

I need a break.

I'll write more details about all those other activities soon. I want to tell you how things turned out with the TA job, and about the wrap-up of all my classes. There is a lot about the day-to-day living that doesn't always make it into my blogs, and I'll want to write more about the little things.

But, like I said, it's time for a break.

I flew back to Colorado today. "Home." I'm writing this from the desk I used for most of my life, surrounded by the same posters that have been on my walls for years. There are the marching band photographs from State Competitions, there are my old CDs in a huge stack. There is a full bookshelf, which I truly miss when I'm at school. There are notes and letters from friends taped to my desk. There are pictures with my middle school friends and first high school boyfriend floating around in various locations around the room.

It's a strange thing to be home.

But it's a chance to relax. To change pace. I plan on getting a lot of work done this break: thesis, GRE prep, Grad School Apps, internship work, the whole deal. But it's a different setting, a different pace. And I get some of my Mom's cooking, which is probably the most comforting thing in the world.

It is so wonderful to be back: to see the Rocky Mountains from the plane window and feel that rush of familiarity. I love Oregon deeply, but the Rockies were the dominant feature of the landscape of my youth, and seeing them again makes me so nostalgic for years gone by that I want to jump in a car and find some snow, some 14,000 feet peaks, the old towns and hiking trails I've always known.

So that's what I'm doing! Sunday morning I'm taking off for a fabulous chunk of time in the mountains. I'll be staying at my Aunt and Uncle's cabin in Grand Lake. My dad is driving me up (I haven't driven a car in months, and I'm not crazy about that first time back being Colorado mountain passes in the winter), and that will give us time to catch up and talk about life, which mostly means talking about music. Then I'll have two or three nights completely to myself. Just me. In a cabin in a beautiful place. If I want to work on my thesis, I'll work on my thesis. If I want to do massive internship work, I'll do that. I'm not even bringing my GRE prep book, because I know for absolute certain that I will not want to be working on that.

But maybe what I'll want is to just be. Maybe I'll want to meditate. Maybe I'll go snowshoeing and do some funny yoga (all yoga is funny when I'm involved). Maybe I'll want to read novels and nothing else. Maybe I'll want to write: really write creatively for the first time in weeks. Perhaps I'll drink tea and watch the world go by.

The point is that I'll have my OWN TIME. Then Mom will come pick me up and we'll have an evening together, probably drinking wine and playing cards, before returning back to my house here, where all the work will have to start happening again (GRE math review included).

But a break! A fabulous chance to be alone in the woods. It's a sort of yuppy Waldon Pond moment. A chance to commune with nature from the comfort of my Aunt and Uncle's cabin. A place where I have fabulous memories from various summer trips with family: water skiing trips, family reunions, times we went hiking and the time we saw the moose.

So, friends and faithful readers, I hope you have plans that will make you as warm and happy as I plan to be! I hope you have time to think about all the hard work you've been accomplishing these days, and to give yourself a day off as a reward. I hope you take a few hours to remember some activity that makes you truly and deeply happy, and that you just go ahead and do that for a while, whether or not it has any bearing on your normal schedule. Take yourself on vacation, give yourself room to breathe.

And think of me out in the Rocky Mountain wilderness! I'll be breathing thin air and feeling free.