Since I am a high school student, somebody might say I have my entire life ahead of me, with all of its beautiful experiences. But despite being so young, I already have a personal breath-taking experience, which I am sure I will carry with me until my last days: my first hike to the mountains.
Though traveling is not a big deal for me today, before my trip to the mountains, I used to be a homebody. I had friends to hang out with, several hobbies, and I felt completely comfortable spending weeks or even months in my hometown—or sometimes even on my block—without going anywhere. All my demands of novelty were satisfied by the Discovery and National Geographic channels, and I seriously thought there was no difference between seeing something on the TV or with one’s own eyes.
The situation changed when one day David, my best pal who always got a couple of colorful bugs in his head (or, in other words, was always carrying out several crazy plans at once) tumbled into my room and proclaimed his disgust for civilization. I will not describe how he managed to persuade me to join him on his journey to the Rocky Mountains; all I will say is we departed in five days.
This was my first time in the mountains, so I was turning my head in all directions. Unfortunately, the weather was foggy most the time, and the higher we got into the mountains, the worse the visibility was. Even despite this fact, I still enjoyed the hike—I felt like I was Bear Grylls, whose show I used to watch with excitement: in the wild, with food and water in my backpack, carrying a flashlight and a knife. On the first day, we were making our way along the foothills; but the next day, we started to climb on one of the peaks. Though it was not that steep and high, I was still excited. I regularly hastened, and because of that I ran out of energy long before we got to the top; David, on the other hand was more well-paced.