cliff jumping « nakedthanks.com

Posts Tagged ‘cliff jumping’

Karin thanks the head honchos at Deer Hill

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

deerhill2

I don’t know where my love of adventure travel comes from. Certainly some of it comes from my international parents who have both traversed the globe. And a part comes from plain old curiosity. But I attribute a lot of it to Deer Hill and my amazing leaders. I did Deer Hill (like Outward Bound or NOLS but cooler) when I was in 10th grade and trying very hard to figure out life. I was pretty sure the meaning of life was freedom, the Grateful Dead and cute boys, but I couldn’t be too sure. Deer Hill helped me realize that life is also about community, playing with dirt, and having fun!

Of course I also had this really hot counselor named Jason who wore a cotton shirt sleeve on his head, sun bleached shorts and carried an ice pick. I basically thought he was god. So that hot boy thing continued to ring true.

There were so many things that surprised and inspired me during my Deer Hill days. One, was that after a month of living, I only had a ziplock bag of trash. Now I take out a Santa Claus sized sack every week. Then, I had a tiny handful after a month. Amazing. I also learned that mountain goats love to lick pee. I learned that one the hard way of course. I was innocently heeding nature’s call behind a large rock when I was basically violated by mountain goats. But I recovered.

As I get set to go to Nepal in less than a month, I hope I can travel with the same curiosity and gung ho attitude I had when I was half my age!

Here I am cliff jumping from god knows how many feet. I was screaming loud enough to kill an entire village during that fall.

That speck on the left is a very tan 15-year-old me with a really big and heavy backpack. We're on the Continental Divide and I think I forgot the word shower at this point, but it was such a blast!