Once we went camping up in Chilhowee, the swiveled mountains of eastern Tennessee. We brought two tents because there were enough of us, but they still weren't nearly enough. We meant to have a campfire and laugh and howl back at the woodland creatures, but it was one of the most torrential downpours of that autumn. We entwined, curled around one another and huddled for warmth and surety. There is a picture from the following morning, boys in the back, girls in the front, and we are waterlogged and happy. Deliriously happy.

Another time, with another friend, we took a class in Wilderness Leadership and Survival and proved our prowess in both. We slept under tarps in 30 below weather in different mountains of the more northern sort. She got frostbite and I held my bladder for over thirty hours, sure that if I bared my skin to the elements I wouldn't feel it again. When we got home it was to shouts of "Welcome and don't you ever do that again!" But I believe we both pulled some of the only 4.0s in that class. I know for sure that our small group of five was the only group who slept on the summit.

I love camping, I do. And these are only two stories of the dozens that mark some of the best times of my life. This week I've been thinking about that. A lot.

See. A lot of someones have been asking me if "this", their fingers pointed in the general direction of something they deem as less than satisfying, is what I really want to do with the rest of my life. And I squirm and say no, of course not, would you? But later, when I have crawled under my down comforter and set my cell phone alarm and check my email, I think of the constants. The things that I really love to do.

And they include things like canoes, tents, dirt under my fingernails, and a million lessons in a million creations.

I worked at summer camps for ten years of my life, trying my hand at counseling, lifeguarding, directing, and bystanding, and it's in this environment that I feel fully alive, fully me, fully immersed in Who God Is and What He Has Created. And I love that. But because it was always a summer thing I have it in my mind that it could never be a full time thing.

But maybe it could?

Maybe deluges and snow that has formed a mold for my sleeping body and ghost stories and Tin Foil Dinners and the Glorious Greatness of everything out there could be what I do.

I'd be happy with that. I would.