"Bitter Sweetness"
Quinn Moore
As I awoke this morning, at the crack of dawn roughly five am I thought to myself “this is way too early to wake up and still function properly!” Once I got out of my bag, I started to prepare for the day. While I was getting ready I realized with a bitter sweet sigh that is was our last day of the backcountry portion for our expedition. I was fairly sad that this portion was ending. After the group finished eating and cleaning up breakfast, they then began to pack up their kayaks. The group packed the kayak’s and got out on the water in record time! After that the group headed back to our final stop, Casa Azul. Once we reached the house it meant the end of our sea kayaking expedition in Baja California. Realizing how close the end of the backcountry was for us I started to get mixed feelings and thoughts. I started to think of our first day on the Grass River in Canada, when we stopped at the first campsite that left a bad taste in our mouth! The site was atop a very steep hill and the widow makers surrounding the site didn’t make it any better. Widow makers are dead trees that can fall down at any moment by the way! I remembered how inexperienced the group was. We even had problems setting up some of the tents! No one knew how nervous I was because I have never been on a long canoe trip like the one we had. I reflected on how I have grown since the trip, and it makes me feel proud. Back to matter at hand. I don’t know how many pots of boiling water was spilt that day, but let me tell you we wasted a ton of fuel trying to cook one meal for ourselves! I remember the stories Jeff told us during dump school, and how uneasy everyone was to go to the bathroom in the woods. At this point we were all strangers to one another; we didn’t have the emotional connections yet. The next though that flooded my mind was about our first rapid. One of our boats tipped over and another one went down the wrong way. Man Jeff was very upset with us that day! The next thought I had was about the day we got off the river. I won’t go into a lot of detail but let’s just say it was very long and very cold and it had to been the worst day on the expedition! After the group finally paddled back to Casa Azul sadness started to build up in my heart. This trip marked our final stop in the backcountry. No more funny moments with one another, no more time without the temptation of technology, no more emotional rollercoasters, and finally no more pooping in the woods. The last one I wasn’t so sad about though. The cleaning tasks kept my mind off of my negative thoughts for a while but eventually they flooded my consciousness once again. After dinner I got ready for bed, and I laid awake for a long time before I finally was able to rest my mind. Before I dosed off I was able to write my tale in this journal. As I wrote in this journal I said farewell to the backcountry experience. It was a long and difficult experience but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world!
“Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it” – Confucius
“Roses are red
Violets are blue
Farewell backcountry
I’ll miss you too”
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