old friends, all together now (July 06)

Pete, Brian, Leah. I almost didn't get to take this picture. My friend Brian, center, argued enough over the $3 entry fee to the Rib Mountain State Park just enough to get on the guard's bad (or at least irritated) side. Some sweet, older gentleman who just wanted to promote the beautiful view to enthusiastic onlookers spent a few minutes of his Sunday morning answering questions like, "so, if I park my car at the bottom of the mountain and WALK up, do we still have to pay?" When we finally realized it cost $3, we sheepishly paid up and drove past the guard to see the sights.

The summit of Rib Mountain, outside of Wausau, WI, was surprisingly beautiful to me. As a soon-to-be-junior in college, I had resigned myself to the assumption that the midwest held nothing of comparison in altitude to Casper, Wyoming. As a comparison to home, I attended college about 20 miles from the bump known as Buck Hill, which provoked my incredulous laughter the first few times I saw it (and now boasts itself as the original training ground of Olympic champion Lindsey Vonn, so, who got the last laugh here?) But, I digress.

What I remember about this day in particular was feeling completely serene, with the nagging sense it was all about to shift once again. Inertia, my friends: Brian, soon to be on his way to Germany for a year; Pete and Leah, to Ireland and Florence, respectively. I would stay at St. Olaf, live on campus, and continue about daily life without a sizable portion of my friends who scattered for study abroad. We took our day in Wausau as a pause to everything else: a time to enjoy each other, talk about soccer, cook dinner, drink beer... and really, without knowing, consider the transition that comes with the shift from the first half of college to the second. I had a sort of weight on my chest all weekend, knowing my trek out to the Midwest would end with prolonged goodbyes to these people. The next time I saw them, we would all be a little different, naturally. Though I can't speak for them, this completely un-posed photo exposes certain unspoken vulnerabilities in their facial expressions. Only they know what those were, and that seems to be the beauty of it.

Sometimes I hesitate to write entries with "aww, friendship!" as the overarching theme, but what started as a tribute to this July day brought up more than I predicted. That's the thing with lingering friendships, I guess. They are impossible to simply gloss over. Some are deeper than others, but the mutual understanding of "keep in touch" works. It works just fine.