It was all that anyone could talk about. Ever since the beginning of the year in Polish Wentur Scouts, we were being encouraged to go. I knew I wasn’t going to go no matter what but I still had a lot of questions that I wanted answered out of curiosity. I wanted to know how long was the backcountry backpacking trip? How were they going to get to Wyoming? How long does it take to get there? What is the experience like? The more I heard about it the more questions I had. I heard stories from previous years and the crazy things that ended up happening. Eventually I got to the point where I really wanted to go. I knew that I wouldn’t. Then one day in February I was in the car with my mom and my sister, Magda. Magda asked my mom if she can go since this was her last high school summer vacation. My mom said that she wanted us to go, but she would have to talk to my dad first. Later that day my dad agreed for me and my sister going.

To go I had to get a hiking backpack that was between 65 and 75 liters, hiking shoes,  hiking socks, two Nalgene water bottles, new cloths that don’t take up too much space and that are dry fit, two quick drying towels- one big and the other one small, lots of bug spray, a new camping knife, not to mention all the other camping supplies that we were going to get and it was all going to go in my backpack making it about 40lbs.

To go on the hiking trip over the summer I had to go on a mini one over a weekend. It was Memorial Day Weekend and we had to be at the House of Scouts at 6. We packed the vans and we were on our way up to Wisconsin by seven. Everyone in my van, slept for at least an  hour during the car ride except for the driver and I. We got to Crivitz around 11:30 and we set up our sleeping stuff in the kitchen. We had to pack everything for the next day so that once we eat breakfast we can leave right away. By the time we were done it was 12:30. I laid down in my sleeping bag and laid there for about fifteen minutes with the lights still on in the kitchen. That’s when I heard people starting to talk about going out into the field to look at the meteor shower that was supposed to happen that night. I decided to go with them because  I wasn’t too tired and you can’t see those beautiful stars in Chicago, not even in the suburbs. We were out in the field until about 2:30. We didn’t see the meteor shower. It turned to that the meteor shower wasn’t visible in the part of the country that I was in, but we did have an astonishing view of the stars. We went to sleep right away once we got back to the kitchen.

That morning we woke up at 5. We ate breakfast, packed the vans, and left. It was another four hour car ride. We arrived at Porcupine Mountains, Michigan around 12:30. We had to get the camping permits from the state park center. Once we got them, we started our trail around 1:30. The beginning went fine. However, once we started going uphill, I was tired. I didn’t have a lot of energy, mostly because I didn’t get a lot of sleep. One of our chaperones gave me an Emergen C packet, and I just ate it. She said that it works the same as drinking it and it always works for her. It worked a little bit, but not too long afterwards we got to our campground and set up our tents and started making dinner. That’s when I started feeling nauseous. I didn’t know why this was happening. All I knew was that I couldn’t eat dinner. I laid down in my tent and stayed in there while everyone else ate dinner. Afterwards I couldn’t take it any longer and I went out of my tent and threw up. That night I went to sleep like everyone else. The next day I was feeling better and I ate breakfast. We left our campsite around 9. We filled our water bottles up at a stream and not too long afterwards we passed one of the other groups going the opposite direction. We talked for a little bit and they mentioned how there is this great spot to get water up ahead, but what they didn’t mention was that it was the last place that we could get water from. We walked by some waterfalls and streams in the next 30 minutes. We didn’t drink much water so we didn’t need to fill up our water bottles. It started getting hot and we still have half way to go. We started to go uphill. The hills were 1000 feet tall. We started running out of water to drink. There were no streams or any other water sources to be seen. By this time my energy level dropped dramatically. I started feeling the effects of not eating the day before. I had no protein in my system. When I was almost at the top I couldn’t do it anymore. We stopped to rest for a minute. I put down my backpack. I was done, I couldn’t pick it up anymore. My group ended up splitting my things and we tried going up the rest of the way. Once we got to the top we realized that we had to climb three more hills once we go down to the bottom of the one we were standing on. We carried on with no water, dehydrated. We struggled in the hot sun, from hill to hill. On the last hill we all went at our own speed. Walking up those steps was almost impossible. I could barely move my muscles. Every two steps I had to stop and rest so that I can build up enough energy to walk up the next two steps. I was like a rusted machine trying to finish one last job while breaking down. By that time I had no protein in my system, no water,no nothing that could keep me going physically. The only thing that made me not stop despite everything that was stopping me from going forward, was the encouragement I had in myself and the thought of almost being done with the hike. I know I only had about a quarter of a mile to go and the positive mindset got me through. When I was done I swore to myself that I was not going to go on the two week hiking trip in Wyoming.

Once I got home, I had more time to think about hiking. I knew that my last hiking trip went awfully wrong and I couldn’t stop thinking about how I let my hiking group down. After I thought through all my bad memories I started thinking about why I wanted to go on the hiking trip in the first place. I wanted to go because it was something that was unique. Not many teenagers in high school that live in the Chicago metropolitan area can say they have gone on a week long backcountry backpacking trip. Not only that, but I also wanted to see all the wonderful and beautiful things that nature has to offer. In Chicago we have gorgeous skyscrapers and parks that are magnificent, but I couldn’t see mountains, geysers, waterfalls, plants that only grow in the deep forest, bears, bisons, hot springs, bald eagles,  snow in August, trees taller than a two story building, and so much more. It took me a lot of thinking and a lot of convincing to finally come to a conclusion. I decided to go.

The whole hiking trip consisted of 6 groups. Each person in the group had a different job-there was a section leader, a first aid person, an equipment manager, a map guider, a programmer, a cook, two adult supervisors who were one male and one female and at least one had to be 25 years old.My group consisted of 8 people- three guys and five girls. My job was the programer. It wa a pretty easy job. All I had to do was read an inspirational quote every day to my group before we started hiking, have a topic for the campfire songs each night, have a topic for our nightly discussions after we sing at the campfire, and remember important date and times like on August 1st we had to have a moment of silence for the anniversary of the Warsaw uprising at 5pm.

We had to be in the House of Scouts at 7pm. We waited for everyone to get there and then we split into groups based on what job you had in your hiking group. My job was to be a programer. I didn't have anything to do at this time, so I ended up helping the equipment group pack. We packed until 1am. After that we talked and ate lasagna. Around 3am we started segregating everything so when the vans would come we could just pack them and start going to Wyoming. The vans came at 4am. We packed them quickly and we were off. It took me about an hour to fall asleep. I slept for an hour and then I woke up. Then I slept for another hour and I woke up again. The final time I fell asleep in the van that day and as a matter of fact for the rest of the hiking trip, I slept for an hour and a half. The rest of the car ride went by slowly. Looking out the window wasn’t exactly exciting considering that we drove in Nebraska, where when you looked out the window all you saw was fields of yellow grass that never end. That night we slept at a campsite in Wyoming near Cheyenne. Before we went to sleep, we made dinner. It was chicken mixed with some sauce that I didn’t like. I was eating slow and I couldn’t get myself to eat faster no matter what I tried. If I tried chewing faster I would chew longer. I told myself that I can’t get myself to eat faster because I don’t like that food and I have to eat slower.  This was the first time I had eaten something that I didn’t like because if I hadn’t I wouldn’t be able to go on the trip. In the past, I would not eat anything that I didn’t like. Not even at camp when we had dinner and I didn't like it and I was really hungry because we only get three meals a day and we do a lot of physical work. After we ate, we went to sleep. That night I woke up almost every hour. It’s not unusual for me to do that on my first day of camping so I wasn’t really worried. 

The next day we woke up at 6, ate breakfast, and we hit the road again. This time we only drove for seven hours, unlike the 20 hours we drove through the day before. We got to our campsite around 5. Once we set up camp we packed our backpacks for the next day because we were starting our hike then. That night when we went to sleep and once again I didn’t sleep as well as I kept waking up about every hour.
The next day was a Sunday. We woke up. We ate breakfast. We packed the vans. We said goodbye to each other and we went our separate ways. We got to Yellowstone around 10. We watched a video on the backcountry and what to do and not to do in certain situations. The most interesting thing I found out of that video is that bear stalking is an actual thing. Even in the wild you can get stalked even if it's by a bear. After we were done with watching the video we went to the beginning of the Lone Star Geyser trail. It was also the beginning of our hiking trail. The Lone Star Geyser was 2.5 miles away. Once we got there we had lunch. For lunch we had a quesadilla. We each had one. It took me forever to eat mine. I was the second one out of my group to get one and I was the last one to finish. To make it worse, we had two quesadilla left over so the people that were still hungry split them. Even when they finished their second one, I was still eating my one and only quesadilla. I like quesadilla a lot. In Chipotle, they are the only thing I like. (I know, I know, I can’t believe it either, that I don’t like Chipotle as much as everyone else).That’s when I realized that I have an eating problem. I couldn’t eat at a normal pace. Even if I tried chewing faster it wouldn’t work. I would still have to chew the bite for about a minute at a time. If I tried to swallow it earlier, I would start gagging and I would have to stop myself from throwing up.

Considering that it was our first day hiking, the rest of the day went by quickly and smoothly. That night, like the previous nights I had trouble sleeping. My sleeping problem carried on throughout the whole trip. The first week I would wake up 5-7 times a night and it took me about and hour to two hours to fall asleep.The second week I woke up 3-5 times a night and it took me only 30 minutes to an hour to fall asleep.

Throughout the whole week I had challenges that I had overcame. On the second day of the hike we had to go up a hill that was 1000 feet tall. The hill was about the same height as the ones in Michigan. The big difference was that this one was 8000 feet higher in elevation. It was a struggle but not as big as I thought it would be. I had a positive mindset and the people in my group encouraged me and themselves throughout the entire time. The third and fourth day were pretty easy. On the third day we moved our campground a mile down the road. The campsite was by a beautiful waterfall. Once we set up camp we went to a hot spring called Mr Bubbles. It had a giant hole in the ground that had huge bubbles coming out of it and there were little bubbles coming out from the bottom of the rocks in the ground. The only thing that made that day not so good was that my knee started hurting. The fourth day was also a relaxing day. We stayed at the same campsite as the day before. The group decided that in the morning, the guys were going to go to the hot springs, and after lunch the girls would go.

The fifth day was the first day it rained. It didn’t start raining until the very end of our trail. That day we hiked 6.7 miles. It didn’t rain much that day, but it was the beginning of the rain that we had for the rest of the trip. The sixth day we hiked 10.9 miles. Surprisingly, it was one of the easier days. Even though it was one of the hottest days and we spent a lot of time walking in the hot sun without shade, it went by quickly and smoothly. The seventh and final day started great. 9.1 miles and we were going to be done with the one week backcountry backpacking trip. We went to Union Falls in the morning and afterwards we headed down the trail. We had to go uphill a little bit and I could barely make it. My eating problem was catching up to me by then. I couldn’t eat fast enough to get enough energy from the food that I need. Once I made it up the hill, it got better, but it still didn’t prevent me from being disappointed at myself because I felt like I was letting my group down. By not being able to have solved my problem, I have slowed down my entire group at our finest moments of hiking that week. To make it worse that day we didn’t have a lunch. We made it through to the end at Grassy Lake right at 3 just like we had planned. Once we got to the parking lot we looked around and everyone had one question on their mind- Where was the van? The van was supposed to be dropped off for us at Grassy Lake the same day that we started our hike. Two of my group members decided to walk up the road to look for it. Five minutes later the van rolled down the road. We packed the van and drove on. Once we were in the van I had time to think and that's when it all sunk in what we had just done.

The second week had its own challenges that had to be overcome. One I wasn't aware of until two days before we were going to start our three day backcountry backpacking trip. We were going to climb a mountain. On a normal circumstance I would be very excited, but considering I was sleep deprived and I had an eating problem, I was nervous. All I could think about was-How will I handle going up a mountain? Is it even possible for me to do it? Will I have enough energy to do it? Do I have enough time to mentally prepare myself for it?

We left early that Monday morning. We started on the Heart Lake trail and hiked 8.3 miles. On the trail there was a part where we went downhill a lot. I made a note to myself to mentally prepare myself to go up that hill on our way back to the van. Also, while walking it rained. My water-coat got soaked.  We got to our campground and set up camp. The campsite was right by Heart Lake and the view of the lake was incredible. 

The next day instead of going on a day hike to Mt.Sheridan we decided to hike back to the van and go see Old Faithful. There was no point of hiking a mountain to the top to only see white around you. After all, the mountain was covered in clouds and it was going to rain. Also, we have been in Yellowstone nine days by then and we still haven't seen the main attraction, Old Faithful. On the way back when I went up the hill that I was preparing myself for, I didn’t do as bad as I thought I would. I went up the hill and I thought there was a lot more to go up still. It turned out to be less than I had anticipated. Once we got back to the van we called into our home base in Chicago to let them know we had a change of plans. That’s when we found out that 4 out of the 6 group didn’t even go on the three day hike. The Monday morning when we left the weather forecast said that there was a 60% chance of rain and 40% chance of thunderstorms. Later on it changed to 100% rain and 100% thunderstorms. We didn’t get that information because our group was one of the first ones to leave. Despite the rain threat we carried on with our plans to see Old Faithful. The rest of the trip was great even though I still didn’t get a good night's sleep until I came home.

I had faced many struggles during and even before I went off to Wyoming. I had problems with eating and sleeping, but in the end, I somehow pulled through. It wasn’t easy. I wanted to give up at times. The trip itself was definitely an adventure worth exploring. I had fun and would do it again. My struggles that I had faced taught me that if I put my mind to it I can do it. After all, I did make it out alive and in one piece. One day I hope to go back to Heart Lake and hike up Mt.Sheridan. Hopefully if I do it, I will have a nice rested night before hand and I won’t have an eating problem.