we returned to pittsburgh late saturday night/early sunday morning after a 7-day jaunt to bishop, california. because of our late arrival (home at 12:45a) and the time difference, the boys and i woke up sunday morning after 10 am. oh dear, it’s going to be a long journey back to real time and life. seb and oren are doing their best to get into a routine, though, and were immediately bickering over their toys in the living room.
it’s like we have been through a time warp, the reality of the trip just a memory now, subject to my whimsically forgettable mind. when my fingertips regrow their skin and the bruises from climbing fade, the trip might go with them. did we really go? did we really climb six out of seven days on boulders strewn at the feet of the sierra nevadas? did we really just spend almost eight days with our friends jason and kathy and their daughter mckenna? did we really, just on friday, say goodbye to our friends paul and april and their dog morgan and make plans to see them at christmas time? when my tan arms and face pale to pastey white, will i also forget that the weather every day was 80 degrees and sunshine?
we did. all these things happened, and we have pictures to prove it. though our camera suffers from the same forgetfulness that i do, and it lost some of the pictures we took. they just vanished into thin air. i’m not much of a picture-taker myself, which explains why there are so many photos of me compared to brian. i’m beginning to realize the importance of picture-taking and video-recording on trips like these. it’s not just an ego boost (hey, look at what i did!); it helps to remind us that it happened and remember the details that easily slip our minds. so does writing about it. i attempted to keep a journal of the trip, and i think i did an okay job this time compared to other trip journaling. so i’ll be able to revisit that too, and perhaps share some entries here. like this one from sunday, october 19, first full day of climbing:
there is a lot of stuff (boulders) for the boys to climb around on. seb climbed as much as we did, i think. even oren can scramble around. and of course there is the dirt–the dirt we tried so hard to keep seb out of when he was a baby. they were rolling around in it, digging holes, etc. i think we’re going to have to loosen the reigns on seb climbing a bit. brian and i are both fearful that he’s going to get really hurt, but he has such a sense of caution, i don’t think he’ll get reckless.
we left seb go a bit and do what he wanted climbing-wise as long as it wasn’t too tall. the one rule for him that we stuck to was, “if you don’t think you’ll be able to get down, don’t climb up.” so we watched him, and oren to some extent, climb little mini boulder problems. we watched them climb to the top and hear them say, “did you see that? did you see what i just did?” and at the end of the day when i asked seb what his favorite part of the day was, he usually said, “the climbing.”* this warms the cockles of my mama-climber’s heart.
i hope to be posting more about the trip throughout this week because there are many more things to tell.
*we asked oren this question too, and he would answer the same as seb. monkey see, monkey do.
Posted on October 26th, 2008