The Way Home


     So I never wrote a final article for our summer trip, mostly because of all the excitement of getting home, and preparing for a new semester of college. However, another part of it has really been that I just didn’t know what to say. There was so much that happened, in so short a time, that I’m still processing the experiences. I think that the biggest thing I have gotten from all of this is a real purpose of what I want to do with my life. All the photographs I have taken, all the people I have met, and all the wonders I have seen are pushing me to a greater mission. That generic question every kid is asked when they get to college; Who do you want to be? What do you want to do? To capture these things, to write about the stuff out of the reach of most people, to capture the images and to tell the stories of the human experience, that’s what I want to do with my life.

     I got the chance to meet my great uncle, though I didn’t get enough time with him as I would have liked. I guess that’s the kind of thing with which you never do. Even in that there is so much to say that I can’t even begin to write it all. He is an outdoorsman, to put it more than lightly. He truly experiences the world like few others, and much like I would want to. He makes his own kayaks to float rivers with, and brings a role of duck tape to fix the faux hide boats, whenever damaged on a float. He hunts with a bow, and hikes miles and days. He crafts almost everything he uses, from his knives and hiking stoves, to the tents he sleeps in, whenever he decides to use a tent. He was a dentist, who decided to spend his life outdoors, and took patients at his home, and only about three days a week, so that he could do what he truly loved. He was, and is more than we all deserve. He, his sister, and my grandfather. They were all giants in their own ways, with crippling wisdom, and unheard-of heart. I had the pleasure, now, of meeting all three. A stroke of luck.

     I spent more time with my father, in one sitting, than I can remember ever before, during this trip. I got the privilege of knowing him, and he me and my brother, in all our worst and best. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. To really know your parents is a gift rarely appreciated, or understood. For those of us who spend much of our time with one or both parents, we find a piece of ourselves that we may not notice, or look past, for better or worse. That is only something we can gleam from time spent, however, should you make a trip like this, close to one another. There you will see the side that cannot escape into its room, or away into the den. The side of better good, and worse bad, that is always hidden from those you love, that when cramped has nowhere else to go. That’s the side you will meet and that’s the side that you find love in. No matter the bad or good it is.


























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