My younger brother, Will, wore his favorite shirt until it nearly busted at the seams and appeared cropped. At the time it was definitely also my mom’s favorite shirt of his. It was the softest cotton, the brightest sunflower yellow, and showed a picture of a brown camper van, with the words happy camper in a plain font across it. It wasn’t until I was riding in a hot and stuffy camper van for the first time that I realized that I wasn’t a happy camper. Shockingly, the weather didn’t have an effect on my unhappiness, but rather the long hours on the road where I could only look out of a window. My company was beautiful, my family, and despite the 100 square feet we had amongst the four of us and six months of sheltering in place under our belt, the confinement was acceptable. Staring out the window of course gave me time to think. Time to see my life in slow motion as if I wasn’t the one living my life. Similar to the narrators in the books that I was reading at the time. Watching cacti fly in 60 mph blurs, or rather the other way around, watching the car leave the cacti in their dusty regime, all I could do was think. I felt like a cactus. Not prickly, or dry, or steadfast, but lost in a blurry cloud of miscellaneous particles. I contemplated my life decisions in this little brown camper. I didn’t have much else to do. However, I inspire myself to be promoted from a cactus to a camper. A happy camper. I was truly unhappy in school. My small private school that prided themselves on their community preaching spiel. I buried myself in work, which made me a happy camper but shut out the rest of the world and things that made me sad each day I set foot onto the picture-perfect campus. Imagine going on a long road trip, to Zion like I was, and having the blinds shut the entire time. Imagine sitting in a dark camper, neglecting to rightfully use the window shades. Now that camper experience does not seem nearly as happy, for you would miss all of the cacti and “gorgeously prehistoric” rock formations. My mother’s enthusiastic lecture wouldn’t make any sense without you seeing the view. At Laguna Blanca School I worked hard and played hard, on the tennis court too. I was in an environment where the favorite kids literally won everything, everyone couldn’t help but act better than everybody else, it was like a small United States of America. It was corrupt. It was unfair. Biased.. I felt neglected and utterly unloved, like a singular cactus on a plain of thousands, but I was the purple cactus while the rest were huddling up together and green. In that camper van, I realized that I needed to make some changes and become a happy camper! Henceforth, you may have noticed a disparity in my transcript, during my junior year, I transferred schools. Oooh, the new junior. People say it's terrifying don't they and oh that's the most painful year to transfer. Well, I think that I am doing quite alright at the moment. From here, as I hiked to the top of the canyon ridge and I promised myself that I would continue to reevaluate my life in order to achieve the ultimate happy camper status. Plain and simple. As my mom said, that shirt really does deserve to be framed. 

I wanted to instead be the happy little happier van speeding off to its next beautiful destination, housing the ones I love most. Ready for adventure, not watching it go by in the blink of an eye.