Fall is my second favorite season of the year. (Can you guess my favorite season? That's right! Summer!) The bright color of fall leaves, the cooler temperatures, and the random rainstorms—fall has just about everything that shows how life is always in motion, changing and fluctuating every day.
One of my favorite fall hikes is Stewart Falls, located near Sundance in Provo Canyon along the way to Alpine Loop. It's a fairly easy hike that meanders its way to a stunning waterfall. Along the way, hikers get fantastic views of mountains, meadows, fields, flowers, and a variety of trees. I highly recommend this hike!
This photo is bittersweet for me. I love how it turned out but the experience of getting it was emotional. So here's a short story and some lessons I learned.
One day last fall, some friends invited a bunch of people to go hiking. About 10–12 people showed up and we hopped into three or four different cars to go. At least two cars got lost along the way to the trail's parking lot, which meant panicked calls and text messages to phones with no service. By the time everyone got there, we were an hour behind schedule, and my anxiety was skyrocketing.
The trail was also packed with a ton of people. By the time we go to the falls, there were so many people already there that it was impossible to take a good landscape photo of the falls. So I pointed the camera the other way and started taking different shots. I liked this one the best because it shows the beauty of the area of the water heading toward the valley. It was a pretty sweet moment for me.
On the way back, however, my high level of anxiety quickly turned into frustration toward my friends. We were behind schedule and I was hungry and thirsty and had other things to do (because I tend to overschedule myself on the weekends. Anxiety issues—haha!). I felt that a couple of my friends were so focused on flirting with each other that they were rejecting and ignoring me and my needs, no matter how hard I tried to be a part of the group. It wasn't a good mixture of feelings, and it eventually got to the point that I needed to escape. My feelings escalated to anger and I hustled my way down the trail to get some distance, to be away from everyone. It was a devastating blow to my ego as I allowed my emotions to rule my head. The day had become bitter mostly due to my ineffective responses to the anxiety I was feeling.
I can laugh at the experience now and mark it as one of those experiences to grow from, but at the time I felt a lot of shame, rejection, and hurt. And the memory of taking this photograph will always have a bitter aftertaste—not necessarily bad but also not the greatest either.
The two lessons I learned from this experience: changing your perspective may give you a more interesting shot; and you can't stop people from being people, but you can decide how you will react to them. I did not react well, but I did eventually learn from it. And because of that, I hope that I'm a better person now than I was a year ago. If anything, I'm way more aware when I'm feeling anxious and have ways to stop that anxiety from getting out of control.
Funny how one photo can dredge up so many feelings and memories, huh? Ah, life. :)
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