On a lighter note...(or, Earnest Confessions)

I have a confession to make. Two, actually. The first is just embarrassing; the second is a real concern.

The first one is this: I never learned my states. It's true. I'm terrible at geography. I'm not exactly sure why this is - maybe I skipped that day in fourth grade. Except I can actually remember having to learn all fifty states and their capitals, and I remember that I wasn't very good. We actually spent a month or so on the subject (it's hard to gauge time like that now; when you're young, a month can seem like a year) and the teacher would make us stand in front of the entire class as she pointed to each state and we had to name it and its capital. The weird thing is, my memory works in very odd ways. There are certain movies I only have to see once before I can practically recite them, and memorizing entire Shakespeare monologues for school plays never seemed to bother me. My states, though, (and my multiplication tables, but that's a whole different story) for some reason just didn't come naturally to me.

Since then I've never really had a desire or an interest or a need to learn them, and despite a few embarrassing moments in my life there's never been a time when I've felt that I've really needed to know them. So I don't. I would say that I know about 20 out of 50 confidently, and yes, Illinois is one of them, thank you very much. Really, that's pathetic for a 21 year old soon-to-be college graduate.

Obviously a need to know my states, and know them well, has arrived. It's time to stop being a lazy citizen and make myself work to learn something I should have learned 11 years ago.

So that's my first confession, and my first goal before we leave: to learn my states.

The second confession is, as I said before, more of a deep concern. See, we're beginning to learn very quickly that backpacking isn't about how small you can get things to fit inside your pack but how light everything you carry is. Long-term backpacking like we'll be doing calls for you to only take the lightest and most essential gear and supplies to sustain yourself. Naturally the things that enrich your body come first - good clothing, solid first aid kits, water, food and so on. This leaves very little room for things to enrich your soul - like books. I really love to read, and I've been getting so excited to be taking so much time off from school and T.V. and other things because it meant I could really enjoy some good books.

The real problem, and deeper confession, is this: I'm a huge Harry Potter fan, and anyone who doesn't live in a cave knows that the 7th and final installment of this series releases in July at a point in which I have no idea where we'll be or what we'll be doing. I'm also guessing that it's going to be a pretty heavy volume, so I can't imagine how I'll be able to carry it around.

I know Katelyn and Lauren also read Harry Potter...I don't know if they're as enthusiastic as I am, but maybe we can work something out where we all take turns carrying it? After all, we're a team and we're supposed to be supporting one another. Toting each other's heavy books around should fall somewhere in that category.

Then again, I wonder if we're even going to have time to read anything. Jane McKinney told us that she usually reads two books a week but on their walk she was too tired to do anything but sleep at the end of the day. Wow. Too tired to even read. I can't even fathom that sort of exhaustion. Still, I hope that somehow, someway, I'll be able to have time for it. I don't know if I can wait until December to find out what happens to Harry.

So those are my two confessions. I know one is pretty sad and the second is kind of nerdy, but I don't care. These are things I'm worried about, in the midst of everything else.