AAVE Trip BLOG » Best Teen Summer Camp EVER!!!
March 14, 2007
Best Teen Summer Camp EVER!!!
Posted by Jenny at AAVE in : General AAVE Trip BLOG , trackback
This past summer I traveled to Utah on an adventure program. I learned to rock climb, camp, white-water raft and backpack. My friends and I spent many of our nights under the broad sky, sleeping outside of our small tents. Whether we were in the Moab desert or the Desolation Canyons, the earth’s atmosphere was clearly visible from north to south, east to west. I had rarely seen this view of space in Wellesley with its trees and houses.
Tired from the long days of activity, I would lie in my sleeping bag with dirt on my face and mosquito bites covering my legs. Backpacking through mountains and forests with thirty pounds on my back for several hours left me exhausted, yet satisfied. Despite my sweat-stained clothes and mud-caked skin, I felt the cleanest I ever had, for I was real. I was everything a human being should be. Happy, stress-free, aware of my surroundings, accomplished, strong and optimistic. As I looked up at the stars, I felt connected to the earth like I was strung on a puppet’s thread from up above, as if I was living the way the sky wanted me to. I felt large, because I was sharing something with nature that not many people are able to share. I was able to share an organic way of living. We were, after all, using only a few necessities to survive in the wild.
Though I felt large, a feeling of insignificance hid deep inside me. The stars have been here for ages. Each human has barely lived here for one century. Our small hearts beat, our tiny stomachs digest, and our miniscule eyelids blink. Underneath my happiness at the time, I knew life seemed purposeless, for we are small specks without meaningful motives. The time at which I learned something very important was a few moments after I recognized life’s hollowness. I concluded that life did have a purpose after all. It was to feel how whole I was feeling, stripped of materialistic anxieties. I was as Chloe as I could be, and that was good enough for me.
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