Boat Trip

By Ashley Lokken

I had the goofiest grin on my face. Never had I felt so blissfully happy. The setting couldn’t have been more inappropriate, at least to someone who hadn’t experienced what I had so far that week.

I was sitting on a fish crate on the back of a boat with the wind on my face and the smell of fish in my nostrils. For God’s sake, I had just seen dozens of fish “deflated” and gutted and I couldn’t get this ridiculous, broad-toothed smile off of my face. But looking around me, I realized I wasn’t the only one and those who did not posses the jovial smile where meditating in contentment. I was simply multitasking and doing both at once.

Sure I was happy that I was, once again, on Superior. However, It was something bigger than that. I had known these people for less than three days and yet I loved every single one of them. At the end of the week, when the first session of Lake Superior Pathfinders concluded, I still did not know everyone’s name. It did not matter, however, because I had a connection with these people. I could confide in these people and they wouldn’t judge me, much the less, give me funny looks like my friends at home would when I spoke of the inner workings of my mind and contemplations of the universe.

Pathfinders was more than a camp. It was the beginning of a road to self- discovery.