Take Me To Church, Ish

Sunday 5 April

So yesterday was Easter, which, because I'm an atheist, I skipped church and went on a hike instead. Which is pretty much the same thing when you're me.

Woke up after a solid night of sleep, which was super nice! Then I got my life in order and drove home to the Rad Arvad. The drive was nice—a little breezy on 93, but whatever. Found myself in an extraordinary good mood, which is rare for me. I'll take it, though.

I was fed Real Food by my mother, who worries about the fact that I eat mostly crackers and pizza and Rockstar (it was amazing. Dietary variation, who knew we lived in such a world?). We then climbed in the car and went on a hike up on Goshawk Ridge in the Doudy Draw Trail System, which was really pretty! Ellie also bought a selfie stick, which is probably the greatest invention of all time, and my mom and her and I took a bunch of photos in the canyon that looked a lot like an album cover. Fun times with the Roses.

Sunglasses Swag With the Rose Girls

There was also a metric tonne of Pasque flowers blooming. They're these really lovely purple flowers that always bloom right around Easter, despite the weird variance in that holiday (honestly, I've never quite figured out why that holiday varies, and if you have any information for me that would be very nice to know). Also, fun fact: they can be used to treat PMS, but excess use can lead to cardiac failure and death. Being a girl is really hard, believe me. The things that can help you often end up killing you.

Pretty and Deadly: My Aesthetic

After that, we drove home and engaged in the suburban tradition of egg dying, which always makes me feel a little bit like Faberge in the Romanov Empire. My family was also more keen to make eggs for Evan than they were for anyone else, which was pretty great. Evan, you're in. You did it.

We then had Easter dinner (and by "Easter dinner" I mean "steak for everyone but Maggie who just ate a lot of potatoes and then there was some weird family tension at the end hooray holidays"), which was kinda nice because I got to see everyone at once instead of in small doses of each of them individually. We talked about Andrew Jackson instead of Jesus, which I really appreciated tbh.

I then took a shower (I love the Shire but its water pressure is SHIT and real life water pressure is my favorite thing) and talked a little bit with Miss Ellie for awhile about her high school experience, which is vastly different than mine ever was—she has a social life where I just did a lot of homework and she hangs out in the athletic hall where I hung out in the band room. Kids are also so mean lately, and I don't understand it.

I miss that girl a lot, honestly. She's one of the few people I can converse with using complete honesty in this life, and for that, I'm sorry. If you're one of those people, I sincerely apologize. My brain is a bramble patch at best, and I'm both honored and upset that you have to put up with it.

Anyway, I ended up driving back up to Boulder and then edited my literature review, which is still a veritable trainwreck but I was too tired to care. The theory looks better, however, and the introduction is the best thing I've ever written #goodenough. I then fell asleep reading about Edward Snowden and the USA PATRIOT Act for a presentation I have Thursday. Typical nerd action.

Like I said at the beginning, hiking is my church. I've never been good at the whole "religion" thing, mostly because I'm incredibly bad at taking leaps of faith and committing to things (the main reason I'm a double major is because I didn't want to make the hard choice between the two things I love most and fully commit to one of them). It also feels like I'd have to give up a lot of my own autonomy in committing to most of the religions that have a following on this rock in space, which is the single most important thing to me in this life. I want to feel like I have a choice. Maybe I don't. But that construction helps me get through the day. At the end of the week, all the decisions I've made are truly mine—the good, the bad, and the ugly ones.

But I feel like the point of most major religions is to give us some reason to keep living. To believe that our existence on this lonely planet has some abstract meaning or another. And maybe it's because everything is so beautiful because of the endorphins pumping through my blood, but the sky always looks bluer and the wind always feels nicer and the sun always shines a little brighter after I hike and engage with the earth. I'm not so scared about the future or about the ways that this life might turn out, and it gives me a little moment where I'm just glad to be alive. Because even through all the fear and the anxiety and the pain, there's always a moment where being alive is a beautiful and wonderful thing when you're on a hike. And I'll take that above everything.

Almost caught up for once, who am I?

Thanks for reading :)