Conveniently subtitled: Why Justin is Awesome.
The wake of day two's canoe ride was the stuff of legend. Sunburnt, achy, fly-bitten legend. It was also the kind of tiredness that makes the Rip Van Winkle strategy seem like a good idea. At dinner, we sat around and enjoyed each other's company in the warmth of a local pub as the realization that we were going to just pass out when we got back to the tent set in. Truth be told, I rather enjoy that feeling. Being so tired you're about to collapse makes every subsequent step feel like a little victory. And I do enjoy victories.
Justin had to deal with quite a bit more than that pleasant/proud tiredness that I had. See, having broken his back and messed up his knees at various points, the canoe trip was a bit harder on him than it was on me. He's not the type of person to dwell on a little pain, however, and if you didn't know about the previous injuries, it would've been impossible to tell by looking that he was hurting. Even so, as we all sat and talked, we decided that the out-of-shape contingent would relax in the afternoon while the experienced campers would enjoy a nice hike through the woods.
Come morning I was even more certain that our plan from the night before was a good one. We would hit a museum in the morning, pop over to Pictured Rocks (where we were spending the third night) and while Justin and I hung out at the campsite, Tim and Christine would get an awesome hike out of it. With the day's plans squared away, I spent the better part of the early morning hours slathering aloe on myself and being as useless as possible. It was vacation, after all.
Over the course of the trip up to that point, I marveled at how amazingly comfortable my friendship with Justin had become. We did so many list items together early on, but when school got busy, we spent a solid month and a half barely talking to each other. There was no hint of that as we got out on the road. We joked, we teased, we shared stories. As we pulled into the campsite, I felt so blessed to be camping with, not one, but two of my best friends and having gotten to meet another incredibly cool person as well.
When you know someone as well as I know Justin, almost nothing they do is a surprise anymore. So even though Justin wasn't talking about his back or his knees very much, I knew he was in a pretty substantial amount of pain. We jokingly vowed never again to go canoeing. Except maybe on a lake. For a short period of time. While drinking. You know, being responsible.
Tim started making awesome campground breakfast as Justin was coming back from the whole tooth-brushing-face-washing thing. Being off in my own universe, as I often am (its nice here; we have cake), I didn't notice that he'd stopped to talk to some campers on the way back from the restrooms. He walked up with what seemed like a dual sense of purpose. Clearly he had something to tell us, but there was something else. It almost looked like he was putting extra effort into keeping a serious face on.
"So, I talked to those folks over there... and they said we could rent a boat to go out to the Lower Falls".
I think it goes without saying that both Tim and I burst out laughing. Really? A boat. After yesterday? But Justin was adamant. He wasn't rude or pushy, but he definitely didn't back down about going to the Lower Falls. He had a sort of quiet persistence about him at that moment that, looking back, was sort of really impressive. It was like he knew the right answer and he was just waiting for the class to get there. Which we did.
Eventually we all decided that the boat trip to the Lower Falls was a good idea and packed up to head over to the boat launch site. The launch site had rowboats lined up and we could see people traversing back and forth between where we were and an island surrounded by waterfalls. It was breathtaking.
Seriously.
I'm going to pause and rewind for a minute to talk about something non-trip related. At the beginning of this whole shebang, I put together that hyper-compulsive spreadsheet that I may or may not have mentioned repeatedly already. Among the many ways that possible activities were broken down was by difficulty. There were a select few things on the list that, quite frankly, I thought I would never get to do. I don't mean within this year. I mean in my life. Among them: swimming in a waterfall.
And snap back to the trip again. It turns out, one of the reasons that Justin was so adamant about us going to the Lower Falls was that an unusual trick of weather had occurred. Usually, in Spring, the water is so cold, so high and moving so fast that no one in their right mind would dare go near the current. In fact, there were signs everywhere, warning us about the dangers of going out into the river.
Careful! You might get your pants wet.
As it turns out, the water is the warmest, slowest and lowest its been, at this time, in the last 30 years. Some part of me always knew that swimming in a waterfall would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience; but I didn't know just how lucky we were to get the chance. That's when I had my "wow, Justin is amazing" moment. He'd walked over to and struck up a conversation with those other campers without giving it so much as a second thought. He wasn't nervous or shy about it. He just, did it. That sort of fearlessness is what makes him... him.
Thanks to Justin being Justin, we all got to have the kind of experience that we'll be talking about for decades. All because he's the type of guy to walk up to someone and strike up a conversation, instead of putting his head down and walking back to our site. I spent the better part of the rest of that afternoon just thinking about how lucky I have been in my life to know such amazing people.
There are not actually words for how epic this picture is.
We planned on spending just a little while at the waterfalls. Until we realized, firsthand and up close, that we could swim in the freaking waterfalls. At the falls I got a reminder of how great Justin really is. He was so completely selfless while we were at the falls, it was impossible not to notice. He walked back and forth, helping all three of us at one point or another, get to various amazing waterfall locations. He scouted out deep spots and went searching for waterfall rocks so I could have a souvenir.
And he did all that with the same unassuming quietude about him that convinced us all to go there in the first place. I've known for quite some time that Justin is pretty zen about stuff, but I really saw it for one of the first times at the waterfall. We were all where we were supposed to be and we were there because he led the way. Thanks to Justin, we got to experience this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
That's right. We're covered in waterfall. Jealous?
The words life-changing don't even begin to describe that day. Thanks to Tim, for planning the camping trip and Justin for being so open and friendly, I got to do something I never thought I would get to do. I spent the whole morning giddier than a etymologist on Wheel of Fortune. Justin, on the other hand, found a way to enjoy everything with a sense of peace and serenity. While I danced around and tried not to break my face grinning, he took everything in and seemed to truly appreciate the beauty of it.
Pictured: Serenity.
And that, among a plethora of other things, is why Justin is awesome. His calm, his inner peace, his openness and the subtle strength with which he argues for what he wants or knows is right. These are things to be admired in a person. These are the things I thought about as we packed up and got on the road to Pictured Rocks for an evening of hot dog roasting and marshmallow toasting. In the midst of enjoying the breathtaking surroundings in the UP, I found myself feeling blessed not for the experience of camping, but for the time I got to spend with Justin, Tim and Christine.
In the first three days of camping, I was shown genuineness by Christine, strength by Tim and serenity by Justin. Though I knew those qualities existed in each of them, I got to truly see them, up close and personal, for the first time. I thought about a realization that Justin had about the rock he's sitting on in that picture. The water was so unusually low that it was possible no one in more than a generation had seen or sat on that rock. All the tourists who've come and gone past the falls have known, on some level, that rocks lay at the bottom of the river, just as I knew my friends possessed those qualities. But getting to see it - truly see it - for the first time... that was something I'll never forget.
Coming tomorrow: Why I'm a Bad-Ass. (What? They can't all be serious entries.)
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