Blue Babies Pink, Episode 15 The Art of Destruction

Back when I was in high school,

our youth group took a hiking trip to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

This wasn't the kind of trip where you strap on the choccoes and grab a

granola bar on the way out the door. This was the real thing, hardcore hiking in the wild west.

We had to buy expensive boots and enormous backpacks and the stuff called moleskin to keep our feet from blistering.

We trained for our trip by hiking the hills of Alabama, which is sort of like preparing for your first NBA game by playing pickup with your boys down at the Y.

We had no idea what we were getting into.

Weeks later, we met up with our guides outside Buena Vista, Colorado. These guys were legit. Mountain

bros with faces like leather, little goatees, and long hair pulled back in a scarf-like

apparatus. These guys were very cool. The first few days of the hike were total

misery, a teenage death march over rock and prairie. It rained the first day and all of our stuff got soaked.

Gore-X-S

Schmortex. I remember we complained a lot which always got a laugh from the ever

happy guidebrows. We'd hike a few miles each day and at night we'd make camp in some remote

valley under the vast Colorado sky. We packed our food, freeze-dried disgustingness, into smelly duffel bags.

I remember one night we ate beef stroganoff, which was like licking the scraps off the

kitchen floor of a waffle house in Arkansas. I was in pretty good shape back then but this trip absolutely wrecked me.

It was hell on my skinny little Alabama legs. Each step with that 35 pound pack was like barbed wire tightening around my hamstrings and cabs.

I've never been a very tough person, so I had to learn to suck it up and keep trucking through the pain.

I grew up a lot that week. The finale of the hike was our big summit.

This was where you muster every bit of remaining energy you have to hike to the top of a colossal crag so you can take a picture and impress all

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