Space and Awesome Places

Vacation is awesome, isn't it? No school!!!!!!!!!! Easter break was this week for me. The thing I hate about Easter break is that it's the last break until June...when summer rolls around. (Except for one day for Memorial Day.) At least that's how it is at my school...

So I haven't been on Sparknotes as much this week because I was out having other kinds of fun!

And of course, since I'm a senior and gonna be outta high school in a little while, I naturally made the most of my Easter break! I slept a lot...

ate...

explored the wilderness...(I'm right there in the middle, kind of small, under the tree)

and went to the International Space Station.

Ok fine...only the last one is a pic of the real me. The cute blue squirrel is just my best buddy. :D I've been hesitant to post pics of me online, but on the other hand, I'm also a teenager living in the 21st century, so I probably should just get used to the idea that my identity will be stolen one day and someone will come and kill me and eat me or something. (cough hanini cough). On the other hand, if I'm up at the International Space Station, nobody can hurt me short of shooting down the space station. And nobody can do that. Right???

Anyways, the other highlight of my vacation, besides going up to the ISS, would be the "exploring the wilderness" part, well, at least some of the not-so-wild wilderness of Yosemite National Park. It's such a beautiful place...waterfalls, sheer granite cliffs, spectacular panoramic views. I didn't expect any snow to still be there in April, but a storm last week dumped a bunch new snow into Yosemite. I got to play with snow for the first time in...(insert big number here) years! (I already lost count...it's been like eight or ten years now)

I guess the best part was when I hiked with a friend down this trail, trying to reach a waterfall called Vernal Fall. However, after three hours or so, we finally called it a day about 2/3rds of the way in at Clarks Point. The view was fantastic and totally worth the treacherous, harrowing climb, but we were tired and calculated another hour before we can actually reach Vernal, so we turned back. The trail itself was, in many places, covered in about two feet of snow, and on the switchbacks climbing up the mountains, there was absolutely no room for error - as in one slip on the ice, and you fall to eternity. It's things like that that give you a new, refreshed perspective on life. You couldn't even find the trail, you just had faith that the footprints you were following led somewhere. But we could see Vernal Fall very clearly from Clarks Point. And it was just such an absolutely amazing scene.

Hiking up those cliffs on the winding switchbacks through icy snow where one slip could make you fall a few hundred feet and kill you (or at least make you break a leg or something)...as Calvin's dad likes to say, "It builds character." You find things that you can learn that you don't learn in classrooms. For example, I learned not to rush and to slow down and identify what is powdery snow I can step in and what is slippery ice that have absolutely no friction at all. (If it gleams a little, it's slippery ice, and if you step on it, you automatically slip. If you shift your weight onto it, you slip and might nearly fall to eternity.) Luckily for me I learned this in a more forgiving place where there was extra snow padding my fall. I also learned not to take such a hike with normal tennis shoes. My friend had hiking boots on, and never lost traction. And he got home with his feet dry too.

But still, I'd rather die there than in calculus class. :)

Take a moment and just imagine. You're standing at the top of a snow covered canyon. In front of you you see a majestic waterfall, the sound of the rushing water reaching your ears, the gentle mist of water spray drifting around you. To your left, the trail leads onward, uphill, through more snow, disappearing into the slope, bending into the alpine trees. To your right, a guardrail separates you from a thousand foot fall. Looking down, you see the granite valleys, rocks and trees blanketed with a layer of snow, the river rushing far below you. You look further on to the other side of the canyon, far away, where more granite peaks tower up, up, and above you, lined with trees and dotted with snowy white ledges.


Or you can look at some of the pictures I posted, or just Google it. But I like my way more, even though it's just a pitiful attempt to try to write something somewhat nice and meaningful. :)

Still, nice, is it not?