Reanimation

And there goes June. It’s been a splendid month, and though poorly documented, it hasn’t been the worst in history.

One nice thing about school was the cyclic nature of life, in that every couple months there was a built-in milestone that forced self-reflection. A new school year. Winter vacation. Second semester. Summer vacation. The calendar of the outside world has a tendancy to swirl together in an orgy of mingled chaos and order, and it comes as a shock when you look back and realize how you miss those benchmarks. I believe strongly in the infinite malleability of the human spirit, one’s ability to adapt to just about any situation, but it definitely takes time to recover from sixteen years of cyclic conditioning.

Anyways. June has been great. It was the end of May when I remunched my leg, so June has embodied my full recovery. About four weeks ago I started climbing regularly at the Gym, and yesterday Jody and I finally went up to Smith with the intent of shooting up Super Slab. We got rained and thundered out and ended up at the Gym anyway, but at least the intent was there and I spent fifty dollars on anchoring gear. June has played host to a number of great bike rides, including the Deschutes River area and Post Canyon. This past weekend I climbed up from the Skyliner trailhead and dropped in on lower Whoops Trail, which is a two mile downhill crank with tons of bump-and-jump riding. I only crashed once off a whoop, ending in a mess of dust, sweat and a smattering of blood.

The String Cheese festival at Horning’s Hideout also took place in June, and the bliss of that weekend continues to echo throughout my entire life. Mark set up a slack line in our camp, and after two minutes of trying that thing out I knew I was hooked; not just on the balancing and concentration facets of slack lining, but on the social scene of it as well. Just over a week later I found myself setting up my own slack line in Drake Park, and four hours later packing it up in the dark, after having helped more than fifty strangers try it out.

More than anything, my June absence represents a renewed worship and presence in life; from the mind, to the body, to the spirit. July will inevitably have its own personality as well, colored by a Bendian Fourth of July Celebration, a mid-month trip back to Minnesota, and an aching desire to go upstairs and killboard the River again. July will definitely offer more climbing, more biking, more killboarding, and more slack lining.

The greatest hope of all, however, is that July will host even more fleshy contact with lovely people. With that, I’ll be seeing a lot of ya’ll soon.