who do you say I am

Who do you say I am
I am a hero
who barely has it together

I push hard and climb mountains
and struggle on the big words.
I walk the dark of night,
but without another,
the lonely defeat the night.


As of yet, Montana has been an ego booster. Teaching PE is like constantly working out, every monday and wednesday running at least four miles, and every evening basketball practice. The weekends are full of great hikes or hanging out with the kids. Climbed a mountian, walked through a river, took an hour drive just to see the land out here. Everything I am trying I am doing well at, except those things I told myself to work on when I came out here. I was not good at scrable till I got out here. To one person I am opening doors, to another they have closed them before me, and I dont even know if my students care. I am here, doing my best, wanting to do more, but settling for getting in great shape, constantly being tested in gym, wondering how this fits into the big plan, and worrying about making the wrong descision...

I miss school, my friends, and the life of books
I love the moutnains, new friends, and working 11 to 14 hours a day...

Stuck in the Woods

One night around 8:30 Charlie and I went down by the river behind our house. We skipped rocks for a while and decided to follow the river upstream to see where it led. Following the river was so beautiful because the sun was setting and we could see it going down behind the mountains, so we kind of lost track of time and it started to get dark. Instead of turning around and going back, we thought that if we followed a fence through the woods it would lead to the road. Well, it did lead to the road but first it led to a swamp and someone's backyard. So by the time we got to this swamp the sun was down and it was pretty dark. We knew that if we didn't cross the swamp and run across some random person's property, we would have to find our way though the woods in the dark. Charlie started to cross the swamp on some muck that was at the bank of the swamp and was pretty far when I started across the muck. I heard Charlie say, "Alright, we're going back through the woods." and I looked up and saw him knee deep in muck. He pulled his legs out and walked over to help me because by that time I had sunk ankle deep. I was holding on to him when I pulled my foot out of the muck without my shoe and had to stand on the muck with my bare foot while I pulled my shoe out. At this point I am extremely unhappy with Charlie because it was his idea to follow the fence to the road, then to top it off he says, "Katie, we are going to have to run through the woods before it gets so dark that we can't see." Now my shoes were filled with muck and impossable to run in so I took them off and began to run after Charlie through the woods. If running through the woods doesn't sound that bad to you remember that we are running through a dark woods in Montana where there are Grizzly Bears. So while I am running, I can't help but think about how much a grizzly would like to eat me for dinner and I start to panic. I started to breath heavy and talk really fast and Charlie turned around and said, "Katie don't panic on me or we will never make it home." So I calmed down and we eventually found the river and followed it back to our house with our dog Jack keeping all the animals away.

Picked up by Jesus
So, if almost getting lost in the woods was not enough of an adventure for one year, this weekend Charlie, Beth (the eighth grade teacher), and I decided we wanted to climb Divide Mountain, one of the mountains in the park. Well, we weren't exactly sure where the road was that led to the trail up the mountain so we took a guess and turned onto a "road" at the bottom the mountain. Well the road was actually a logging road and after driving around the woods for over an hour, we came to a drop off and had to back up in order to back to the main road. When we were backing up we hear a loud pop (or two) and we got out of the car to see what had happened. We looked at the tires and we had not one, but two flats. We got our stuff out of the car and began to walk the three miles back to the main road. When we got there we planned to hitch hike to St. Mary's, a town about 15 miles away. After we had walked for about a half an hour we saw a blue pick-up truck and Charlie ran to see if they would give us a ride. We joked that it was probably an ax murderer in the woods burying his latest kill, but it turned out to be an old man cutting firewood. We asked if we could get a ride and he said it was out of his way but that he would take us anyway. We climbed into the back of the pick-up that was filled with logs. There was also a chainsaw in the back so apparently he was a chainsaw murderer. While we were hanging on for dear life as the old man drove the whindy roads in the mountains, Charlie asked him his name and the man said, "You can call me Jesus."

So there you have it, the two most exciting adventures of our time so far. We are going to try to climb Divide and Christina is going to try it with us. Hopefully this time we will make it...

Katie (for Charlie and Christina)















For more photos of our adventures check out...http://www.flickr.com/photos/19123995@N00/