One More Writer

So I find when I don't update my blog for 3 months, I have a million things to talk about but no real desire to ramble for that length of time at four in the morning.

Here are the headlines: Lillian and I are broken up, for good. I just got back from backpacking alone for 5 days. I am going to Willamette Law School this August. And I am taking steps to put God first in my life after a long hiatus.

The Lillian thing is just one big unfortunate tale. I love her, she loves me, but we couldn't seem to work through past issues. I was tired of being hurt, she was tired of being a one-man woman. We made an abortive attempt to be friends, but at this point she seems to need to follow her own path and make decisions to help her grow. These decisions have the undesired side effect of mashing my heart into tiny little pieces, so I told her yesterday I didn't want to see her again and was done waiting for her to get it together. My head tells me I'll never see her again. I have hope, but any future with her is just a dream at this point. Honestly, I need to grow too, and I need to put my relationship with God in front of my relationship with women. It's something I'm bad at and something I've been avoiding, but now that I'm laying here bleeding on the asphalt, I'm just about ready for a helping hand from God.

Backpacking was fantastic and awful. I started out last Monday with a 58 pound pack on the hottest day of the year, hiked 8 miles the first day, got lost half a dozen times and ended up 3 miles north of my original target. I spent a muggy night by a burbling little creek and hiked to the nearest down the next day down 10 miles of asphalt. At that point, I called in the cavalry. Dad came a runnin, and the next morning I found myself car camping at the coast (I'll call it backpacking because, well, I DID take my backpack with me.)

Me and the dog found lots of time to play, to rest and to enjoy the mountains, the ocean and countless species of insects and spiders. He is a bug-killing machine, by the way - I've never seen so many flies perish in the jaws of a canine. Being alone in nature was wonderful. The last time I took a hike alone was 3 years ago, after Ali and I broke up. That hike lasted 3 hours and I was terribly lonely and afraid the whole afternoon. This time, however, I was able to take time and listen to God, instead of running away. It felt right.

As for law school, I don't know how much I've written about it here, but I'll be learning the trade of a barrister this fall at Willamette in Salem. I'll be making the 60 mile move in mid-August (classes start a few days later) and try for the first time since high school to land a 4.0. I don't really care about being a lawyer yet but I'd love to be the first in my class at law school - it should be a welcome change to be challenged at something, to be around people who are way smarter than me.

In other news my friends are wonderful. We've been playing Disc Golf almost every day. I'm getting decent, sometimes getting within a stroke of par. Oh, and I got my first bee sting yesterday - the peril of going bareful on a field of grass and clover.