bluebutton32

Take the three hour tour! I went on the six hour tour and it was just too long. The weather was nice and I enjoyed getting the traditional Keralan lunch, but the six hours on that boat became tiresome. This also seemed to be the general consensus of people I talked to about the tour. It was pleasant and interesting and beautiful, but six hours moving so slowly gets to be a bit long.

Luba really wanted to sleep outside. We talked and talked about where we could do it and finally decided it would be warm enough one night to actually go. We talked about the numerous fields on campus or the parks a couple blocks away and finally decided we would hike up Spencer’s Butte and watch the sunrise. I was very excited. I’ve lived in Eugene for more than half a year now and I had hardly been off campus, and never out of the city, and I missed the forest. We have one experienced backpacker with us who makes sure we’re warm enough and have enough of all of the stuff we need to make the trek and sleep on the top of Eugene’s highest point. We drive over at around 11:30 at night and it’s pitch black and cold. We start climbing the mountain, tripping over rocks and roots sticking out of the ground since we only have two flashlights for six people. We are highly intelligent college students.. Finally, we follow the paths and climb the boulders and we get to the top. All we can see are the few lights shining throughout Eugene at whatever hour in the night it ends up being by the time we get all the way up there. It is freezing. We put all the clothes we can on, but can’t even sit in a circle because it is just so cold. Again, as intelligent as we are we have two sleeping bags. We have several other blankets, but we all know we’re going to be cold tonight. We lay down, two people to a sleeping bag with the others scattered about wrapped in blankets and just take in the coldness and stillness and all around freshness of being on a mountain in the middle of the night in April. I lay on top of my friend completely covered by our shared sleeping bag and don’t sleep all night. I get startled when he gets out of the sleeping bag to see the sun is just barely starting to come up. It is amazing. Freezing old, but so spectacular. The few thin clouds there are in teh sky are radiating the early sunlight through the sky and it is so still and calm and magical. We wait, piled on top of each other, until the bottom of the sun is over the horizon and pack up and start the trek down the mountain. It is so nice being in the forest and away from the cement of Eugene. The trees are so huge and there are plants just everywhere. It’s all so green and alive. Eventually we get down to the bottom and head back to our tiny cement cells overlooking the manicured and planned out fields of our beautiful campus, but I can’t help noticing the cement winding through the weedless grass and thinking it’s just not the same.