My Love Affair Begins

  Any one who knows me remotely well knows that I have a love affair with the outdoors.  It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, I always want to be with her.  The start of this flame can be traced back to when I was only a wee little lad.  My grandparents have a house in Island Park, Idaho about 30 minutes from the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park and my family and I have been going on road trips there for even longer than I can remember.  The childhood trips spent in the Yellowstone area are undoubtedly the roots of my love for the outdoors, however this love did not manifest itself for quite a while.

Most of the time my family and I have spent in YNP has probably been in a car, and when I was younger I was completely great with that.  Who wants to walk when you can ride, right?  We LOVE driving around and seeing the animals.  Between my parents, sister, and myself we have more pictures of elk and bison than one could ever possibly want to look at.  Of the 175 or so nights I have spent in the area, 0 have been spent in a tent.  We have a house to stay in for Pete’s sake!!!  The amount of hiking that has been done is minimal as well.  The boardwalks through all of the geyser basins have been done (I think) and one year my mom tried to kill me and my sister by hiking the entire South Rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  There are two activities that I think everybody looks forward to the most each summer;

            

Horseback riding is really funny.  My whole family has been around horses enough to know what to do.  We're the people that show up with cowboy hats and boots on.  We look at the people who show up in shorts and t-shirts like they're idiots.  It's funny because if we really knew what we were doing and had that much experience we wouldn't be going on a trail ride, we would be riding our own horses.  Whitewater rafting is just a rush.  Once again though, we (not so much my mom) like to act as if we're John Wesley Powell going down the Grand Canyon.  My sister and I can both paddle strongly and listen to the guide.  My dad is deaf though, so he'll be doing his own thing and it usually ends with my mom hitting him to get his attention.  The point of this little interlude was to show that the things I grew up doing in Yellowstone aren't part of my normal activities, but they definitely introduced me to another world.

I remember the first time I went camping with my Boy Scout troop.  I was an inexperienced Tenderfoot and I could not have been more nervous.  I remember the feeling of dread that had engulfed my entire being.  What if I forgot something?  What are we going to eat?  Do I have my sleeping bag?  How do you pitch a tent?  I remember my mom dropping me off at the church parking lot and feeling like I had just been thrown to the wolves as she drove away.  I don't remember the actual trip, but it couldn't have been that bad because I stayed in Boy Scouts and went on many other trips.  

The trips to Idaho and being in Boy Scouts are undoubtedly where I was introduced to my love.