Fish Lake: attempted

The last weekend in June was my family's annual trip to the cabin up Weber Canyon. Since me & Clint were going up for the weekend, we decided to do our hike while we had easier-than-usual access to Uintah trails. I think Clint was especially looking forward to it. In past times when we've been hiking in the Uintahs, I'll be behind him and I'll look at his back and think, "He really looks like he's at home here." So we picked Fish Lake, since neither of us had done it before & it seemed doable without taking up our whole day.

I think Clint humored me in this consideration - he could have picked a day-long hike and been happy as ever - but he knows how much I value cabin time and being with my extended family. Growing up, The Cabin was always THE family summer vacation. We used to spend the whole week up there with our cousins and aunts and uncles - and it's grown deep roots in my soul as a place where I always feel like I belong, like I'm surrounded by people who love me simply for who I am, and where I can be myself minus the cares and stresses of the city. It feels so whole to have Clint up there with me.

Anyway, the Fish Lake trail deceived us. It had a well-established fork in the trail that wasn't indicated on the map so Clint & I ended up taking the wrong fork in the trail without even realizing it. We hiked probably 1 1/2 miles in the wrong direction before the trail disappeared and we realized something was... off. We bush-whacked back to the original trail; but by then we'd suffered bruises, twigs lashing our faces, scratches, holes in my pants, mud in our shoes, and a couple of scary slips on wet logs crossing streams (me), and we felt that we had sufficiently "adventured" into unknown territory and spent sufficient hours doing it. Mercifully.

I felt a celebratory mood overtake me when we re-joined with the established trail.

A puddle in the trail, you say? No, no... that is Fish Lake, my friends. Or, it was good enough for us, any way.

My Uintah-loving Mountain Dude:

The Ipodyssey

Once ago there was an ipod
tiny, shiny, sparkling grey -
it sat on the shelf at Circuit City
singing, "Please take me away!
Somebody with a love of Music
and an eclectic, classic taste -
Please, dear Fantasy Prince Charming
don't let this storage go to waste!"
And one day the stars aligned themselves -
Christmas was not too far ahead -
and a Handsome, Dark, Tall Stranger
strode through the grimy glass doors and said,
"I have traveled far and searched a-wide,
I have heard the sweetest song
of the perfect gift for my Beloved Wife -
the hands in which this ipod doth belong!"
Joy was spread, and Joy was sung,
and Joy was listened to
for many days after that Christmas morn
by that Wife whom the ipod belonged to.
They became 1 soul - ipod and Wife -
leave of each other they never did take.
Their lives were joined by Ear & iphones,
they even journeyed 'round Bear Lake.
But that was their last event,
it seemed, for Fate can be quite Cruel -
even for two souls who have shared The Greats:
Collective Soul, The Boss, & U2.
For the Evil DirtBag envied this bond
& suffered even to break glass -
DirtBag, the Coward, hid this crime from Wife -
he knew she would have kicked his a$$.
Many lonely days thus followed -
utterly magic-less, U2-less time -
while Wife pined in grey silence
with no resources, not a dime.
Sing, muse, the tale of Rage Gloriously Undimmed,
of a Wife with no Magic to her ear.
Ah, Fates, return Melody to this cubicle of Woe
for that Rock 'N Roll to hear.
Cry, Muse, this song of Losing
for who shall avenge a Music Lover's fraud?
No one now shall slay wretched DirtBag, who stole
my other half, my Christmas ipod.

mysteries & mercies

Remember when I thought I lost my wallet back in January? That caused quite a load of stress & anxiety. Recap: my wallet went missing, I called & cancelled all my plastic, froze my bank checks, flagged my credit for potential fraud, & prepared to replace my Driver License & temple recommend. Then, miracle of miracles, later that week I found my wallet in my car. Everything was still in it; I had just misplaced it.

I knew at the time that finding my wallet again had been an answer to my stressful, tear-filled prayers.

What I didn't know is that the whole incident of thinking my wallet was lost back in January was an answer to a prayer for strength which I just made last night.

Confused?

Let me explain:

Someone smashed into Clint's car last night. We went hiking up Big Cottonwood Canyon and my purse was in his trunk. No one saw me put it in there - the purse had been stored away before heading up the canyon. So it didn't even occur to me that Clint's car would be targeted for robbery.

We park. Head up the trail. 3 hours pass. We return to the parking lot and something like this comes out of my mouth: "Oh no, did we leave that window down in this rain? ...wait...a second..." As we get closer the millions of shattered glass shards expose the situation for what it is.

Clint's backpack is gone from the back seat. His watch from Papa, his journal, his glasses, an old ipod, his ipod-radio converter. We realize the low-life may have accessed the trunk from the back seat.

We pop open the trunk.

My heart didn't drop, I didn't cry, my stomach didn't lurch. Nothing happened. My eyes fell & rested on the empty trunk.

No purse.

Since then I've made a list of the following inventory. The thief has: my house key, car keys, flash drive containing pictures & original poems, keys to work, debit & credit cards, bank checks, driver's license, health & dental cards, temple recommend, ipod, my LOTR book, cosmetic bags, library cards, prescription pills, & not to mention the purse itself which was one of my favorites.

We knew what to do. Luckily I didn't leave my cell phone in the car, and my first call was to the bank. Closed my card & froze my accounts, right then. The thief had already made $500 in purchases at Ross Stores, Panda Express, & some others; but those charges are being disputed since I was able to confirm the last purchase made by myself.

We drove home as quickly as possible with the rain blowing in through the shattered back window. Hoping. That the thief wouldn't have added up the home address on my driver's license with the car keys to my unattended Neon or heaven forbid the house key. Luckily the violations stopped with what was in Clint's car.

But once home I was still in 'machine' mode. Taking care of business. Calling, calling. I think I've been on the phone nearly non-stop since 8:30 last night. My cards are all cancelled & my credit is flagged for security alert again. I had all the bank paperwork & Customer Service phone numbers at home - ready, organized, handy. Among which was an invaluable bank checklist of what to do & who to call when your IDs are snatched, which I acquired back in January when I only thought I lost it all.

There is more missing this time. More irreplaceable things. Locks & keys must be changed. Money spent. But to me it is quite clear that I would not have been able to take care of business so quickly & efficiently or with such a clear head if I hadn't have gone through all this back in January. Some of what was stolen may be replaced. Certain careless mistakes will never be made again. And I have perspective. It's no use stressing over what can't be controlled. Clint & I are already coming out of this thing okay. We really are.

I don't know why it had to happen to us. Right now. But one mystery I have figured out is that there is a reason.

on second thought

I am so buoyed by everyone's support of mine & Clint's recent race! It is so validating.

Also, since posting about the race, I realize I was pretty hard on myself. In an effort to correct my petulance, I have to explain that the day of the half marathon was one of those days for me. I'm sure many people can relate: you eat right and you get good sleep, but you wake up on race day & for no apparent reason your body does not want to perform. That was my race. Every breeze and incline affected me tenfold. What can I say, but I felt like it was in me to do better? Confession: I am a perfectionist, and couldn't help feeling slightly disappointed. But in this case I am reformed! You have all taught me to be happy in reaching a goal I'd been training for for months. It was a huge accomplishment for me.

Also, a shout-out to Lindsey for her post about how we are too hard on ourselves and we should be as optimistic about ourselves as much as we are encouraging of the people we care about. Needed that. Thanks Lindsey! I am jumping on the joy train!

race day

Here we are pre-race, pre-triumphal, pre-exhaustion. Sign of obviousness that I haven't run the race yet: I am smiling.

It was cloudy as you can see, but the rain had mostly passed. We made sure to get to the starting line in plenty of time, but ended up waiting over half an hour for the remainder of the racer shuttles to arrive and for dozens of the racers to wait in line at the porta-potties. I'd never seen such enthusiasm over a porta-potty.
Lucky Jessica got to assume the role of official race photographer as she is of course playing the role of Cute Pregnant Woman (my sisters-in-law are setting a very high standard for being the prettiest and skinniest pregnant women I've ever seen).

13.1 sporadically rainy miles later, and here is Clint's victorious arrival at the finish (if you ask me, he looks like he's doing pretty darn good):

Clint had a great run. He felt good, and he beat his goal time of under 2 hours with ease and stamina - an impressive 1:52.

Here I am racing an old man the last 30ish yards to the finish line. That just about sums up my race effort.
I was at least victorious in beating the old guy by a couple of seconds! Woohoo. My ego narrowly avoided a serious beating. I guess there is no point in trying to conceal my race time as anyone who cares enough will find out sooner or later: 2:09! One of those days.

In this picture, I wasn't really capable yet of holding my own self up. Not until about 30 mins after I stopped running, actually.

I was so impressed by Brett, Clint, Trent, & Amy for their awesome race times. Congrats, guys. You inspire me.
Clint and I are happy to report that we accomplished one of our biggest fitness goals of the year. And I must say, it is nice to have it over with.
(Many many thanks to Jessica for letting us stay at her family's cabin & for taking all of these great pictures for us. Thank you, Jessica!)

forecast for the half marathon:

Sat

high: 59°F low:38°F

...crappy.

Fantastic.

Destination Desolation.

2nd week in June: Desolation Lake. Last night Clint & I went up Big Cottonwood right after work to uphold our summer goal of hiking once a week. I am going to remember last night's thrilling adventure and the feeling of roaming through an enchanted forest for a very long time.

Clint has a new GPS (aka: the Toy) that we were both excited to employ on this outing:

Here in the secluded wildnerness the clouds were swiftly rolling across the sky.

And once it began to rain, we were swiftly drenched with it, and it rained steadily for hours.

I think Clint sensed my excitement at being caught in a rainstorm in the mountains - (though I have no idea how he would have arrived at such a conclusion; I only cheered and looked at the sky in awestruck wonder each time the thunder rolled) - and so... we persevered to the top.

I was glad I remembered to bring a sweater.

Extreme cross-country training: we jogged down a wet and slippery mountain trail to get out of the cold as fast as we could. Unfortunately for me, this meant a couple of up-close-and-personal visits with the mud. But at least Clint called me 'safe' sliding into home.

Yes. That is mud all up the side of my leg. I'll be here all week.

And yes. That is mud splattered all up Clint's back.

And once again we have ended up wetter at the end of our adventure than when we started. (I kept thinking about Splash Mountain. I think I'm going to dub this trail by that name.)

But the water-slogging was so worth it. Check this out:

Ahhh...magical.

Grandeur Peak

Ah, here we are! The beginning of another 1-hike-a-week summer. I love this. We started things off the first week of June with a beautiful evening on Grandeur (was it Wednesday? or Thursday? Help me out here Clinters). We went straight to Maga's from work and changed into our work-out gear & filled up the trusty Camelbacks. Have I mentioned I love having Clint done with school?

Memorial weekend

You'll forgive the lateness of this post I hope...

Clint & I are determined to be quite the adventurers this summer & I must concede that we have had a promising beginning.

We went down to Zion National Park over Memorial weekend, which was made possible by the generous offer of Clint's brother Brian to stay with him and his family and some in-laws in St George over the weekend. So we made the road trip Friday after work and had fun gaming late into the night with Brian & Annie and Annie's sister Mandi and her husband Bryce.

Saturday we spend in Zions:

It was a perfect day. Not too cold, not too hot. We had nice cloud cover throughout the day but against all forecasts: no rain. It was AWESOME.

First hike: Angels Landing.

I can't resist these shots. But I couldn't get Clint to sit anywhere near the edge with me:

Again, I was on my own here:

Here I am leading the way to Emerald Pools. Near the trailhead for Angels Landing, it branches off toward Emerald Pools which I thought was nice & convenient. Plus, we didn't have to worry abut where our car was parked because of the handy shuttle system in the park.

Here we are at the Lower Emerald Pool. Although I have to admit the coolest part of this attraction was the waterfall. The pool was lame-o.

We headed to Zion lodge after the Pool to get some lunch and I just had to take a seat. Time for Sammy to get in better hiking shape for the rest of the summer, methinks.

We had a yummy lunch at Zion lodge restaurant.

And then we hit up the Weeping Rock. You can kinda see the droplets falling behind us, if you look against the dark backdrop of the cliff face to the right.

Here we are at the River Walk. This was our last event of the day.

And of course at the end of the River Walk, we just had to continue another mile or 2 up the Narrows. Perhaps one day we will do a camping trip up the Narrows and hike the entire 20ish-mile distance.

All of the Children of Israel were in exodus this day, apparently.

Got a few pebbles in our hiking boots after that adventure.

Sunday morning we attended sacrament meeting in which my niece Avie was only too willing to indulge in letting her aunt help her color - among other things - Bambi and Mickey, and then Clint & I hit up the St George temple before heading back north.

Clint loves his nieces and I'm pretty sure he loves the excuse the toss someone around like a sack of potatoes.

For Monday, Memorial Day, Clint was serious about helping me get in hiking shape for the summer, so we decided to hike Bells Canyon in the morning. My fam came along, even thought some of my sibs slept in and had to catch up to us on the trail. Rain had been forecasted in the afternoon and we were hoping to beat the storm, but happily, for the first Memorial Day in about 3 or 4 years, we had a nice, sunny day all day!!! Hooray! My family joined us at the condo for some swimming afterwards and had a yummy barbecue with Clint's dad that night since he was home alone. It was the funnest Memorial Day we've had for a few years. And lucky for you - I know you're excited about this - I have pictures of Bells Canyon. You're welcome!

You can't really tell from this picture because of all the trees being in the way, which is a shame because it was so scarily cool, but the falls were raging. Think Niagara.

Me & my baby sister, Jenni posing triumphantly from an angle that makes us look like we're on top of the mountain.

Me and The Clinters. Yay for summer!

Stay tuned for following adventures!