Am I Caught Up Yet?

Day 5: A photo of your favorite memory.

I couldn't pick just one, so what you get is an entire summer, wrapped up in one of my favorite shots of all time.

Summer of 2007

This is my small friend (her words, not mine) Jerrianne. This was sometime in July, so you can probably guess that she picked her own clothes for this adventure.

I took this at what might be the most beautiful spot in Kansas. I still worked at Head Start, and so did my mom, so we spent a lot of time out here. It's a creek that's spring-fed, so parts of it are crystal clear and ice cold. There are waterfalls and most of the riverbeds are rock, which is kind of rare around here. It's a ten-mile drive on rough, jagged rocky roads, but it's so worth it.

This is the last year we spent a lot of time out there. Most of the summer, it was me, my mom, our friend (I call her my aunt) Phyl, and Chad, who was friends with Mom, Phyl, and Kevin, and had been around for almost all my life. Oh, and the pack of children (sometimes up to nine of them). We would hike up and down the creek looking for waterfalls and deep pools, and the kiddos would catch crawdads and try to catch tiny fish with their hands.

It was the last summer before Chad killed himself. The last few times we went out there, I remember talking with Mom and Phyl and being freaked out that he would sometimes bring his gun out there to kill snakes. We talked about how he should never be allowed to have a gun. It was the same gun he used to end his life.

But that was one of my favorite summers of all time. It was the last summer that things were really simple.

And one of these days, I'm going to hike that creek again. Somewhere, about a mile upstream, Chad carved his initials in a tree, and someday, I'm going to find that tree. That's a picture I want.