More Pine Valley Mountain

So you peeps might be a tad bit sick of hearing about Pine Valley Mountain by now, but I'd like to say what my perspective is/was. I was told I was going to have a horse, but after the big hullaballoo with the truck and them not being able to take as many as they'd like, peeps had started walking up the mountain, and I was kind of just chillin, waiting for someone to tell me to start, or if I would have a horse, or something...so I was told to just start walking and they'd pick me up or Dean would pick me up on the way down. Lies, all lies.

I start walking up this trail, and it's a switchback trail, so it's not super steep...at first, but then it starts getting more and more steep, and I'm getting out of breath. (hi-I'm fat, Have you seen me?) So I'm struggling up the mountain by myself, just taking breaks when I need it, but I'm coughing my freaking lungs out. (I had bronchitis 4 weeks ago.) I guess my coughing alerted Uncle Heebs who tells Carissa that either he or she needs to walk back and get me, but then Ang and Jean say that She's our sister, we'll go back. So, they come back, and then while, I wouldn't say yelled at me to keep me going, they forcefully tried to motivate me up the mountain. :-) It wasn't that I didn't want to keep going, I just wanted to walk at my own pace, and stop a lot. One funny thing was that we passed Dean coming down with two horses and a donkey to get more of the packing, and his mule was tied up in his lead rope, and kind of hopping on 3 legs, and we were like Dean, hey your donkey is tangled up, so Dean gets off his horse and is on the ground bending over it, and when I, the ever smart-mouth say to Dean, Hey Dean, I like your @SS. He starts laughing his head off, and then says, the best part is his name is Weiner. Man, you should of heard the jokes that flew then, Me, Ang, and Jean were making Weiner jokes (We're gonna tell everyone that we passed Dean but his Weiner was tangled etc etc. Dean saying look how good he was with his weiner) The weiner jokes flew on both sides until we couldn't hear Dean anymore.

Braden and Uncle Mac caught up with us about what Braden said was 1/2 of the way there, and was like, does anyone need to ride the horse? Ang and Jean in union are like, Erin does. So Braden gets me on the horse, and then just says, she's rope trained, I'll just walk in front of you, and Mac will follow behind. So we go another mile or so and we get to this embankment of snow, it's about 7 feet across and covers the entire trail and it's about 2 feet deep. Well, I just let my horse eat snow, and Braden is standing to the side, and Mac is behind me, and we are trying to decide if we should try to walk way below the deep snow, or if we should go above it, when my sweet horse all the sudden does this GIGANTIC lunge, and knocks Braden down in the snow, and just takes off. It jumped the snow. It was not cool. My sweet horse named Brandy, basically ran down the rest of the entire mountain while I white -knuckled it. I was talking to Heebs today, and he was saying he turned to Carissa and said, oh here come all the horses, but no, it was just my sweet one, RUNNING on pure rock downhill. Heebs was like Erin, where is everyone, and where are you going? I was like, I lost them a long time ago, and I'm going where ever this horse wants to!! Then I just ran past them.

There was a lot of stuff I liked about this trip. The main being the family connection. There were a lot of peeps there that I didn't know very well, that I got to know a lot better, like Dean & Patty, who were amazing!! I got to know Becky a lot better and came away thinking she was totally cool. Uncle Mac and I were alone together for like an hour and just got to talk. That was pretty sweet.
I loved being there by the tree. John made a comment to some of us, and said, where is the spirit world? We were like...Um, here on earth? He was like, right, so don't you think that it would stand to reason that if this is the spirit world, then spirits are around us, and don't you think that Grandma and Grandpa would be here since we are honoring them? Everyone wrote in the notebook, their thoughts and feelings about how we felt while we were there, and Carissa just sat down and wrote the most amazing poem. She's got talent. On Friday night when we had the "meetin" we first got down to business about the packing and stuff in the morning, but then it turned spiritual, and John talked to us about familes, and about Elijah, and then Elisha and how in our family we are all welded links, and do any of us want to become the link that becomes undone, after we've had so much done already for us? Then then Uncles talked and told stories and a little bit about Grandpa and how grateful they were for him, and how they were raised.

I have to tell this, but I almost don't want to. While we were saying a closing prayer, the thought popped into my head that we should sing Families can be together forever. I immediately dismissed it, because we were done with the meeting and it was during the middle of the prayer. The thought came back again, but stronger that as a family we should sing familes can be together forever. I kept trying to dismiss it, but it just kept getting stronger and stronger. The spirit was so strong, that by the time the prayer ended I was bawling my head off, and I could barely talk. I stood up, and asked everyone if we could please sing that song, because someone else wanted us to sing it. I couldn't stop crying enough to even sing. Afterwards it was awesome because a couple of people came up to me and they were crying and they gave me a hug and said they felt it too. Heebs asked me to tell some people about it today (Sun) and I started crying again because I'm a big baby, and even as I write this, it's made me cry again. sweet.