Trail Reflection

The next day in school wasn’t mundane; I didn’t feel like a member of an ant colony, my thoughts were all over the place, discombobulated. In homeroom, tired, fading in and out of morning announcements I noticed a poster of Helen Keller pertaining to suffering. At that moment I realized that my emotional suffering could not parallel to the physical and emotional suffering my father was experiencing. As time progressed I learned to adapt to my new environment, making new friends, along with keeping

In the excerpt, Death of a Moth, by Annie Dillard, she attempts to overcome her writer's block by getting away from it all and taking a trip into the Mountains of Virginia. While taking time off, she intends to spiritually find her true self again and get back on a successful track. Only by using concrete imagery, drawing a strong parallel, and meticulously selecting a certain word choice to create points of clarity, is she able to effectively convey her inner struggle.

You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self—your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it. In the midst of evil you want to be a good man. You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human concord, things you never knew you wanted. There is a kind of largeness to it, a kind of godliness. Though it’s odd, you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead. You recognize what’s valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what’s best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is

Depression placed a dark brooding shadow over my mind. I was weighed down, oppressed by the burden of having to carry on with life. In my mind, there was a crushing sense of hopelessness that I have never felt before. The only therapy I found was taking that beautiful, freshly sharpened razor to my left arm. A sigh of relief departed me as I watched the bright red blood drip from my vein. The only burden I had was going to school and hiding my war scars. Each day, the darkness spread through me like cancer. My body withering away, I needed an escape route from this crucial disease. This all continued until the day I saw a light and the darkness began to fade

` E.B White, author of famous stories like Charlotte’s Web, once said ,"The middle track was missing, the one with the marks of the hooves…”. He continues on with this phrase, trying to connect the reader to the concept that change comes with time. In “” Once More to the Lake” by E.B White and ” Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins, both writersauthors strive to make the reader understand how nothing can stay the same throughout the tests of time. In White’s story, he narrates an experience of going to the lake that he used to visit when he was young. He takes his son with him, and at first, sees himself in his son, but eventually succumbs to the repercussions of time, proving that he is closer to death than previously thought. Additionally, the poem ”Forgetfulness” address the same topic. Billy Collins, the author, describes experiences that display memories being forgotten over time. Collins, therefore, tries to show the reader that memories tend to fade, or change, over one’s lifetime. Therefore, using diction and figurative language, E.B White and Billy Collins help one better understand that the true tragedy of time is the change that comes with it.

She said to herself scrambling through the forest ever more eager to get to the safety of the neighboring country of Salved. As she broke through the branches of a wild berry tree, partially covering her sent from bloodthirsty Shepherds chasing her, she found herself in a small little clearing about twelve feet across. Sunlight lit the clearing from two parted trees somewhere above, the only lighting in this cursed forest, towards the left of the clearing there was a mossy boulder with a tree growing around the backside. Towards the right there was a single tree branch that seems to existed on its own, pulled down by a perfectly seeming fully ripened red apple. Running down the middle of the clearing was a little stream. But as much as her legs yearned to rest on the boulder and as much as her stomach grumbled and her throat begging to be wet by the cold stream water she knew it was either just her imagination or a trap. Real or not she chose to avoid it running around the outer right side still unsealed by the

Before I took American History, movies about Indians and US Cavalry Troops influenced my childhood years. I even pretended as a US Cavalry trooper chasing Indians away and rescuing the settlers. The Cavalry represented strength, gallantry, and savior of the oppressed. However, after the lectures and the film, Trail of Tears, they provided me a new perception of the US Cavalry troops. The removal of Indians from their land east of the Mississippi river cast a dark shadow in the American history. Although the Indians reach their new home west of the Mississippi river, the abuse, hardship, and death marked their experience.

Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings . . . There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this

As I grew up I learned people unlike places are forever changing. You can change the carpet in your living room with ease but you cannot change a person so easily. I often over looked that fact as I looked over to her smiling face, laughing, enjoying herself. Did I ever think she would betray me in the worst way imaginable in a place I held dear to my heart? Did I ever think that in the place where people got to be their true selves I would have my sense of worth stripped leaving me a cold naked empty shell of a girl? That the walls took in a secret that night that forever ruined my life? That I would never look at the Arabian tapestry the same? That the once comforting smell of Ginseng & Cedar would make me nauseous as I were lost at sea?

The howling of the wind brought my eyes to open. Where was I? Focusing in the dark of night, confusion washed over me as I came to realize I was in the desert. Distant landscapes of dry and worn rock surrounded me, and beneath my bare feet I felt the gritty sand caught between my toes. I was surrounded by those rocky hills and yet as I scanned the desolate desert it seemed never ending. The irony of the nighttime desert suddenly set into my body; that ghastly wind moving right through me and chilling my bones to that of splintering ice. The need to move started me forward though, and I felt a sharp ache all over, my body trying to fight against change. Was I lost? My heart began pounding fast in my chest, the blood pumping through my veins

Oh, but if you can push your body beyond what you think it can do, strain and struggle, and endure your racing heart and your aching muscles, you will pass through forest, burning desert, flat lands that reek of desolation and loneliness, and you will enter a canyon that is lush with green trees set against blazing red cliffs. A river flows through the canyon’s bottom that is clear and filled with a bounty of fish and crawdads. In that place, it’s as if the civilization you know exists back at the trailhead and beyond has been wiped

Planning a trip may be the hardest part of the entire trip. Once you have your agenda everything else falls into place. In my trip, I had two other partners helping prepare for this spontaneous trip. Each of us had a specific duty when creating a section of the trip presentation and narrative. While creating this presentation I learned a lot about myself and about my partners as well. I believe when reading this the instructor will know that our team put in all a great amount of effort and worked efficiently to finish the project. The instructor will also learn from this, that my team was overall formal and adults when it came to solving issues within of group.

I woke up like a corpse rises from the grave, my red eyes flooded with tears. The cool air lulled my throat; dissipating the faint memory of a raging fire and loathsome vultures scavenging my flesh. As the tears coated my face, I sat up until a symphony of cracks sang from my spine. Despite the agonizing pain, I turned around and the world revealed itself as a contemporary

Around this time last year, my 2016’s New Year’s resolution was nothing more than a thought rattling around in my brain. I never felt further from my goal of paying off the debt that lingered from my first attempt at college than when it was only a few hundred dollars out of reach. Today, I find myself once again struggling with an entirely different New Year’s resolution. I made it my mission in 2017 to polish off a few of the projects that had dragged on over the last few years. I have real passions that I have always considered priorities, but have never received the attention they require. With this in mind, I know that if I want to see myself achieve these goals I must get serious and eliminate potential distractions. Therefore, when I was asked to select three words that reflect the spirit of that goal, I chose the words travel, education, and focus.

A fresh start. A new life. A second chance to get it right. That’s all I had wanted for years, and now I finally had one. That was, if I didn’t mess it up by making a fool of myself in one way or another, or finding another reason to want to die. And I asked myself again today as I stood out on the tiny balcony of my dorm room overlooking campus. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, I could almost feel it, everything that I wanted to leave behind for so long, all the demons holding me back, drifting out of my brain, away with the cool gusts of wind that swept through my hair. The past that everybody seemed to be aware of, even when buried deep inside me, the way it would seep out made people would look at me different; I hated it, I despised it, I wanted nothing to do with that poor, troubled girl who had lost everything, now it was all being left behind. I wanted to be somebody completely different, and now I had the chance. But when I opened my eyes it all came rushing back, in waves, floods, tsunami tides, it was all too familiar standing on that ledge overlooking school grounds and wishing it would all float away. Just wishing I could float away in the crisp autumn breeze that swept across the sky in graceful gusts. So I stepped inside quickly and shut the door, reminded myself that it was all changing, and today was the day, it was time to get ready, and get