when i moved to utah, i was 14. i had grown up in the south and was used to the greenest, most dense trees and mountains. i thought the mountains in utah were naked and ugly. people thought i was crazy and snobby (seriously, some people took it very personally. they’d be like “what do you mean there are no trees? there are TONS of trees!!!” and be like “you have never been to the south if you think this place is tree-sy”). i just missed home.

one time i was cutting a woman’s hair and her daughter, Femka, was there too. we were talking about how jake was from utah and the woman told me their family had just gotten back from utah. Femka said “Utah is breath-taking”. she was like 4 and i kind of got the impression that she had heard a bunch of adults saying it was breath-taking and literally thought that was the definition of utah. so cute.

so, finally, what i’m getting at is that it has taken me a long time to LOVE and appreciate the nature in utah. and i really do now. it is so beautiful there. i’m not a desert girl, and i always had a chip because of being moved from my home in tennessee to the dry, naked desert. and i think i kind of refused to see the beauty for a long time.

anyway, my favorite activity while in utah was snow shoe-ing. hands down. i love to hike, and snow shoe-ing is just winter hiking. we climbed a mountain in weird shoes! yay! seriously, it was such a great work out and it did my sea-level-y lungs some good to work hard in high elevation.

jake has always wanted to do this kind of thing when we go to utah, but it has never been able to work out time-wise and everything. after doing this, i think it will be impossible for me to make a winter utah trip without doing this again. we have to!

here i am with sarah. she is basically the queen of outdoors. jealous.

so, here is me fixing to climb the next part of a mountain.

we took a break to “hang” out. i am annoyed that you can’t see how hard it is to climb a mountain in snow shoes. in some parts the snow was waist high. i would just slide down the same part i had climbed over and over. it was really frustrating.  it took me about 15 minutes to get 20 feet of one spot.

hooray! to the top! i felt so accomplished and i couldn’t believe the view i had earned.

i had to do a toe touch to prove my joy. ok, a few things to explain this toe touch…1. maybe jake snapped it right before or right after the peak of the jump and that is why it’s not perfect. 2. maybe the snow shoes are too heavy and that is why it’s not perfect 3. maybe i’m out of shape and cheerleading was a really long time ago. nevertheless, i have troll hair, and i like that very much.

hooray.

sarah and jessie at the top. i was super impressed that jake and jessie carried their snow boards the whole way. i was jealous later though because they had so much fun going down.

we built some jumps and did flips into the fresh powder. this is jake’s..

i cannot wait to go again. i think snow shoe-ing is MY winter sport. i love winter.