snowy, stinky reunions

sorry. we accidentally posted these pictures early. now, you can see what they all mean....

Here we are packing for the trip. You can tell we have no idea what's coming. We're smiling.

As you can see from the sign, this is the beginning of our "Making of a Walking."
(Anasazi lingo for moving forward, in a positive way, in life.)
We actually got quite a bit of mileage out of this one.

Stopping for a lunch break on our way to the trail,
Kimberly picked up some bananas and yogurt, Lindsay bought carrots and a ham sandwich. This mom picked up a hot dog, a slice of pizza and a cup o joe. You guessed it, she is from NYC.
We must have been nervous; this had us in stitches at the time.

Final D*: Bloody Basin, Tonto National Forest.
*Anasazi for the "final destination"

On the way to "final d", Kimberly asked our driver to pull over if we saw a bush or something so she could use le toilet. We looked up right then, and saw this glorious little number.
Keep in mind, we're on a dirt road, with no sign of civilization in sight.
We took this for a sign of good things to come.

Kimberly with Gina, of Anasazi Alumni Services. From the Army poncho you can see it's already raining, as it would do for three straight days.

the crew of parents and guardians
the baton started to pass
the hat ensembles are a bonus.

our hike to paulette.

it is safe to say that she smelled worse than she looks.

this is where paulette slept. she never figured out how to make shelters work, so she just did this

the making of a fire
anasazi doesn't believe in matches or lighters
all fire is made from "busting a coal" or "busting"

busting

tandem busting.

everything was wet so we would bust a coal but then
we couldn't blow it into flames because the tinder was too wet.

here, i'll do it

finally, a coal and some tinder. these are the hands of paulette and new dad dave.

almost there.
just so you know: this is an hour into being at paulette's camp

our tinder was too wet.
ezekial, co founder of anasazi,
came by and gave me some really good avice about body positioning
and all sorts of good stuff
we had busted out the bottom piece
so when he came we had 2 pieces of wood tied together
he gave us props for resourcefulness

Ezekiel left. we eventually used toilet paper to get the fire started.
then paulette made us dinner.
pizza
we had to "loveup" our sundried tomatoes and garlic
to "loveup" means to chew and then spit back into your food.
raw garlic BURNS

you can't see it, but there are ash cakes (aka pizza crust) in the ash.

the stuff in the cups is toppings.
onion, garlic, sundried tomatoes, water, powdered cheese

dale, the therapist. the making of a hero

i got too cold and went to my sleeping bag. this is lindsay and paulette by the fire late the first night. i think it was probably 9, but in the wild, 9 is late.

for some dumb reason we forgot to take a picture of where we slept. tate built us a shelter of a tarp. it was about 1-1.5feet off the ground. we had sleeping bags and army ponchos. we made a HUGE leaf bed that looked as though it would be nicer than my simmons beautyrest. unfortunately, leaves smash down to nothing. we were in a sandy creek bed, so it was really cold. the heated rock i placed in my sleeping bag got cold in the night.

my worst fear was that the fire would go out. it rained and snowed all night long. i kept waking up wigging out that the fire had gone out. it almost did but we resuscitated it.

the making of dirty clothes

the making of awesome hair and coolness

this is what our shadow calls "the making of a pissing me off"

things got a little rocky with the fRamily. reuniting was difficult and the transition from being with peers to being with guardians was hard on paulette. so lindsay and i went on a hike to get bit of a break.

the making of a pooping

the making of a feral paulette

vogue

kimberly and debbie
please, enjoy coka-cola in moderation
i learned the hard way

tate: our trail walker

sayonara tonto

cleaned but not shorn
goodbye firesmoke dreads