August 18th I think...

This was a blog that I wrote during the summer sometime. I'm sorry I didn't post it then but I did now... maybe that's better than never.

So we recently spent two days slaving away in various alpine classrooms around the Squamish area. Thursday was spent hiking up onto Paul Ridge in Garibaldi Provincial Park in order to do some orienteering and topographical map work while having an astounding view of the panorama displayed in various contour lines and colors on our two dimensional maps. We also had a “homework assignment” to prepare a meal and cook it for another group on that day. Our recipe (cleverly titled “The Soup de Jour” in honor of Lloyd Christmas) was a fabrication of a delicious soup elements, served with peanut butter on Stoned Wheat crackers as an appetizer and instant pudding with dehydrated milk… which ended up both tasting and looking like warm lumpy poo. The next day we hiked a trail around the Brohm Lake area which brought us to a fantastic viewpoint looking out over the Tantalus Mountain Range. At this point we were able identify all the peaks displayed in front of us and pinpoint our exact location on the map using triangulation (big word… simple concept). We were then treated to the meal from the two ladies that we had cooked for the previous day, and judging by the excitable mélange of flavours that entered my mouth that afternoon, they hadn’t held the poopy pudding against us. We finished off class on Friday with a long swim in Brohm lake.

Friday night Dan and I went camping with 20 of our new comrades to celebrate Jesse’s birthday. He was turning 23 so apparently that’s an excuse for lots of beer. So we all set up tents and got a fire pit made by the Squamish River (we originally planned to camp on the Cheakamus River but le disaster de les toxins caused a change in plan). That’s when Dan and I got the brilliant idea to go rafting down the Squamish River in a cheap plastic dingy!!! It was sweet. We pretty much rode the bottom of the river with our butts the whole way down the stretch that we piloted. But I’d say that foot deep water threw some beauty class IV’s :) So by then the consumption of alcohol was fully under way so I grabbed myself a Coke and sat back for a deep discussion with Patrick (a new friend of mine) and with Nick (another new friend) who are both very friendly with a beer in their hand and are not in the habit of drunkenness. Patrick’s beautiful camperized VW Westphalia Van had just randomly caught on fire while he was driving it and burned to a complete crisp before his eyes. We talked about everything and anything and I quite admire him but long to share with him the good news about Christ. Nick is the child of missionary parents who never really had faith in Jesus Christ but knows all about him. He said that his doubts overtook whatever it was that he did believe and he’d walked away from faith. This makes me sad but also hopeful because I totally believe that I’ll have a chance to share the root of my joy and contentment with both of these guys.

I said goodbye to a good friend on Saturday. I’ve known Daniel Brouwer for about 13 years now (maybe 14) and seen him practically every year during that time span, but from this point on he’s going to be in Edmonton freezing his buns off working on a Biology major. Dan’s the kind of quality guy that I think every girl and guy should look for. He’s patient and kind and full of love… although if you’re a guy, you might not want to experiment too too much with the love part cause you might end up with a sore shoulder. Dan and I used to have an unofficial competition during our club soccer for who could hammer guys the hardest during a fair tackle... I don’t think that I would ever want to go into a tackle against Dan, but maybe in the past our muscle masses were a little closer to even.

I guess that was it...