So I've realized that my posts used to be kind of deep and soul searching and now they're not so much. I really hope that I don't appear to just be throwing things out like oh! look what I did today! But the purpose of this blog was for me to get over my fear of things and to document it...have I done that...not completely but for awhile it really helped me work out a lot of different things that were going on in my life. Do I still think way more than the average person...probably most likely but maybe not near as much to the degree I used to. Do I have life figured out? Heck to the no. Do I still have fear? Most definitely yes. Am I trying to overcome it? Yes. Am I sometimes just trying to avoid it and cover it up so I don't have to face it? Yes.
I realize I shouldn't do that. I'm slipping back into my old self at times. The person who ignores things so I don't have to deal with them but at the same time I do feel like I have made progress in trying to be more proactive. So I hope I don't appear to be trying to shove the things I do into people's faces but I am trying to share what I learn from my experiences. Hopefully it's helpful. If it's not then I apologize but, it is another way to keep my own personal history as well. Stay with me please. I'm just another person trying to figure out life just like everyone else.
I did just return from a camp out to a place called Posey Lake. I loved it. It's just before Escalante, passed Hell's Backbone and Pine Creek. I think it's a pretty new area because it wasn't on Google Maps. We had to type in it's GPS coordinates to find it. I would recommend it to anyone! It was a bit of a drive but well worth it. The landscape there is absolutely fascinating to me! Yes it's a fire forest waiting to happen but I recommend driving Hell's Backbone by the light of a full moon. The landscape was so eerie and the way the moon lit up the cliff sides...mhmmm. It was beautiful. The campsite only cost $10 a night, there were bear lockers at every campsite and get this: the outhouses smelled like Pinesol! Sweet huh? Usually I prefer to squat on a bush because 1. I feel more accomplished because I can successfully pee in the outdoors and I like to continue to validate myself in this success 2. I used to have an irrational fear of something living inside those and either pulling me in or biting my butt 3. Sometimes the breeze on my underside that you get from sitting on those pots freaks me out and 3. the smell is usually so overwhelming it's not worth it for the thirty seconds I'll be peeing in there. But they were clean and smelled good so I used it every time i went and that was sweet and probably too much information. They also had fish filleting station between all the sites with a nice fire pit at each site.
We drove down to Hell's Backbone in the day time, stopped at some cliffs on the way and chucked rocks off the top and pretended to imagine what it'd feel like to be a rock falling through the air like that. That landscape is just indescribable. It's so different, almost random yet, the pine trees at the bottom of the canyon seemed to be planted there like you'd see on one of those big foam diagrams of landscapes. We stopped at pine creek...I'm pretty sure. We hiked down by the creek and followed along the side of it. We found a cool little waterfall next to these beautiful sandstone walls and then crawled back up this tunnel. I will say that with as hot as I was expecting it to be it still stays pretty cool because of all the wind but do not be fooled. You will still get sunburned.
The fishing was good I thought. Rainbow, brown, and brook trout. Mostly brook trout. Those fish are absolutely beautiful! Bright yellow power bait dropped right next to the docks worked, a little Neapolitan looking spinner also worked during the day. The bugs are out in the morning and as the sun is setting and some little punks were slamming fish like crazy with these flies they had on their rods. We only had about 4 flies and none of them were hitting like we would like so we got the bright idea to make our own flies. We made one with fibers from a pine cone and wrapped a piece of my hair to look like wings for a bug and we ended up catching a fish on it that night! It was so sweet! Probably one of the best moments of my life I would say. We also used a mosquito spinner that hit the fish pretty well. We also found that if you can cast right into where the fish are jumping you can usually catch them quickly on the reel back in. Really quickly.
Fly fishing seemed to do well and it didn't seem to make a difference if you were on shore or on a boat. Fishing was good.
Oh! I have this super irrational...maybe not completely irrational...fear of snakes. I hate them! They're so freaky. People used to ask me why I was so scared of them so I checked out 4 different books of them from the library so I had logical reasons. It probably wasn't the best idea to check out ones on the worlds most poisonous snakes. Anyways I did see two snakes in the water and I decided...once we determined they weren't poisonous...that I was going to catch one so I could overcome my fear. I was getting pretty close and was really thinking about it but, I never had done that before. My good friend ended up catching it for me and then after I saw that he was ok he let me hold it. It was really neat. The way those snakes more is amazing and the way they feel on your skin is really neat. They still freak me out and the one we caught was tiny. I saw a bigger one later that day and even though it was the same kind of snake I was not about to try to catch that one. Baby steps right? Fear can be overcome by learning and experience right? or it can just ingrain that fear more I guess if the experience is negative but my hope is that as I learn and experience more about life I can choose to use that knowledge in a positive way that will propel me forward.
....I learned a lot today but, I feel like this post is getting a bit longer...so I'll save it for another time. Maybe tomorrow. I promise some pictures as well. Goodnight.
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