scent-a-mental

well, i finally went north of grand rapids... me, my suite mate and a friend of hers went up to manistee national forrest and went camping last night. it was absolutely beautiful and a lot of fun... lots of smores :) weather was great, and this morning a family of 5 deer came through or camprground... crazy!!! by the time i got my camera out they were gone though. there was also this crazy fog blowing across the lake too... it was awesome... you know how you can see your breath when its cold? it was like that, only the lake was the one breathing... ? ...

anyway



here's something cool. you know how you've got friends that have ways of making you smile whether by saying some inside joke or poking you in the one spot that it tickles the most? i'll come back to that in a sec

last night, i crawled in to my sleeping bag (we camped tentless) and was just laying there for a bit. now, i LOVE my sleeping bag, and so as i was thinking about how much i love my sleeping bag, i started getting all senitmental and thought about all that bag has gone through... i remember when i got it. 7th grade (my first time going to REI), before the CA science trip. i remember being amazed at the hugeness of REI. and the sleeping bag, it was love at first sight. they didn't have any orange ones, so the green one caught my eye right away.

after thinking about that, i started thinking about the CA science trips and eventually made my way to high school. wilderness challenge.

i hadn't thought about wilderness challenge for a while. my sleeping bag made it through some cold nights at Jtree! so much fun. but then my thougths kind of shifted from the sleeping bag to wilderness challenge itself. kind of made me sad because i missed it so much... but then, in true God fashion, in the midst of my bout of homesickness, a huge shooting star went across the sky.

let me explain.

this is not the first time this has happened. a shooting star is God's version of an inside joke that makes me smile.

my first night on the wilderness orientation trip in wyoming, i was a bit homesick. so as i looked at the stars that night, i feebisly asked for a shooting star. and when one didn't come, it made me more upset (i know, a little demandng, eh?) anyway, so i crawled in my sleeping bag and was about to go to sleep, and as i apologized to God for making such a random request, a huge shooting star pierced the sky. it was so awesome, that i even laughed out loud a bit.

it happened a few other random times through out the wyoming trip, at random times that i was a little bummed out from being away from home... and each time it made me smile.

so, when i saw that shooting star last night, i smiled and knew, hey, it's all good.

enough of the wordy stuff... pictures below! :)