Day 3 - A Facebook Connection

I'm loving Facebook just to read the daily quips people I barely know throw out there, but last week I got a blast from the past kind of message.

"This is a long shot but I once went backpacking with a very cool girl named Cindy Fey, she was from KC, it was the early 80s. . . I think it was in Wyoming, with the Girl Scouts . . .".

Damn, some people are good with names! Her face in her Facebook profile picture, posed next to two little munchkins, was familiar. Even more shocking was that I knew exactly where to find her - upstairs in Nora's room, on the top shelf of the bookcase, in the photo album from my 10 day trip to National Center West on a Girl Scout Wider Opportunity in 1982, the summer before my senior year. Girl Scouts from all over the country and the world came to Ten Sleep Wyoming to backpack for 10 days in the gorgeous backcountry. It was so much fun.

I remember seeing an entire rainbow arcing across a hill and going to a rodeo and camping in a grove of birches and laughing so hard I peed my pants. Really. And watching an educational film about hypothermia where you get to guess which hiker collapses! And making a nasty dinner of freeze-dried tuna and green beans because somebody (me) neglected to pack the mushroom soup that would have made it all palatable. And beautiful, beautiful country.


Rachel remembered that I would go to a high spot every night to watch the sunset, while she was too exhausted to do anything but collapse. She may be thinking of this day, when my tentmate and a girl I'm pretty sure was named Mary Pat clambered up what seemed like a nearly vertical canyon wall. Look at those little green squares behind them - that's our campsite!

Here's me on the trail. Somebody get me a scissors. Do not say a word about the shorts. I know. And if you look carefully, you'll see the bitchin custom pads that Uncle Phil made for my backpack straps out of strips of orange carpet.