Beyond the North Star

I know the title sounds super dramatic, but this is not some rant about the beautiful complexity of the galaxies or a theatrical poem describing the wonder of the universe. This is a journal I found about two days ago. I wrote it at the very (VERY) end of my freshman year. May 24th, 2011 to be exact. I was on an adventure trip with my school and was completely amazed at how strange it seemed. (Yes. "Adventure" and "School" were just used in the same sentence.) We are a very unique school to put it lightly. We take one week off each quarter to have a lot of fun and we call them "Intensives" to make them sound scary. The first week of school, we all go camping. The next three are our choice. We are allowed one "Adventure Trip" of the three Intensives. Our school shares a name with the North Star hence the histrionic title. Anyway, enough ranting about how cool my school is. Here's the journal.

I'm supposed to be in Montana right now. But it seems that the highway is underwater so we had to reexamine our options. Plan B was to go to Moab, Utah. Plan L was to come here, to the Great Sand Dunes of Southern Colorado. So last night, instead of learning about General Custer's last stand, we took a night hike out to the dunes. AND EVERY STAR IN THE WHOLE WIDE UNIVERSE HAD COLLECTED ABOVE OUR HEADS. It was gorgeous. And strange. (Because who was pointing out the constellations to us? Our world politics teacher of course! Who else?) But mostly gorgeous. If I was still at Poudre, I know exactly what I would be doing! I would be losing sleep over the pointless final project that was assigned months before that I'd never started even though it was due the next day. If someone at Poudre had told me that in five months, I would be a GOOD student going on a cross-state adventure with my classmates, I would probably start to think they were "special" if you know what I mean. And now here I am, sitting at a campsite far, far away from Montana; my teachers napping fast asleep in a tent not 10 feet away from me, a girl from my math class reading a book next to me and some crazy middle school boys are at a site across the road, digging a hole in the sand. Before you say that's crazy, it's even crazier that I'm supposed to be in Montana with these people, pretending to be a Crow scout while learning about American History through a reenactment of the Battle at Little Big Horn and NOT through a textbook. Right about now, my Poudre friends are headed home to study for finals and I am dumping sand from my shoes while discussing whether or not we should go to a Gator farm tomorrow. I love school for the first time in my life.