ROWDY WOMAN

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Rayado is a 21 day special backpacking trek at Philmont Scout Ranch, a high adventure base in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico.

They call it a "special trek" for a reason.

As Rayado alumni, I can't actually talk about a lot of the things we did and saw; that's for you to find out when you do Rayado yourself, if you choose to. However, as a Rowdy, I do feel a responsibility to make this thing known to people, and encourage others to do it--because you can do it.

So, if the mountains are your home, or you want them to be, I say unto you: DO RAYADO.

Now that that's out of the way...here's 5 moments from the 3 weeks on trail that encompass some of the highs and lows of it all. BUT FIRST, meet the 718 Rayado Women of 2014:

I had the best crew. No question.

And the best Rangers. No Question.

I will always consider each of them my sisters. We laughed together, we fought together, we hiked together, we peed together, and they saw me cry like a baby on more than one occasion (...well, who hasn't?). 

Now for the favorites, in no particular order.

1. One day, we had a particularly hard hike up and over the mountain from hell Black Mountain that ended in a very cold torrential downpour at our next campsite. All of our things were soaked, and even our most waterproof items lost their waterproofness. We set up camp as quickly as we could, and I distinctly remember walking with Tek to put up the oops bag through ankle-deep water just beyond our campsite boundary. Ridiculous? Yes. Mildly miserable? You bet. Did I sing Everything is Awesome to myself, trying to convince myself that life was awesome even though it wasn't? Erm. Yeah, I did.

All eight of us crammed under the dining fly for dinner. A few cooked while we told first kiss stories and played the copy/paste game. That night we ate chilimac wrapped in tortillas (can you say no dirty dishes?), and Hannah, our crew vegetarian, said "screw this" to her diet and ate one of the burritos. It was one of the more desperate, hilarious moments of the trip, and while the whole world screamed "misery", our faces said "sunshine".

Cold.

2. Dude at Miner's Park told me I look like Sasha DiGuilian. Um, greatest compliment in the world? BONUS POINTS: This dude has TALKED TO Sasha DiGuilian in person. He knows his stuff. ;)

3. It was at the end of one of our hardest days that Emily unzipped our tent and looked in to find me, sitting pantless in my sleeping bag, desperately hacking at my sleeping pants with a pocket knife. We're not going to talk about HOW my sleeping pants got thorns all up in their legs, but hey, stuff happens. Solution? Chop the legs off and make them shorts. "...what the hell are you doing?" Emily asked with genuine bewilderment, to which I responded, "Shhhh. I'm just--fixing my pants." And that's how my pirate pants came into existence.

4. When the crater boys sang Men of Erin. I'm not even going to try to explain how perfect that moment was or how legitimate my goosebumps were. Holy feelings.

5. Night 6, Emily and I peeled the rain fly off of our tent and fell asleep under the stars. We had stayed up talking about where we're from and what we do and who we love, and we really started to grow close as rowdy sisters. After she fell asleep, I was restless. I looked at the stars above my head. The next day, I wrote, "...I laid in my sleeping bag and stared at the sky. A faint, sincere smile fell across my face as I felt the Christ's love wash over me. I know He's with me, I know he knows the journey I'm on, and I know He's going to help me along the way."

And you know what? He did.

I brought my family and the beyoons with me. :)