As I sit here writing this, I reflect on the summer I have just had. By the time you all will be reading this, I will only have a few days left to my summer in the backcountry of New Mexico, and I'm not too sure how to feel about that fact. Part of me is happy. Though I certainly haven't hated my summer in anyway, I definitely miss the aspects of the real world that I currently am living without. Another part of me, however, is starting to feel really sad. I'm about to leave the cabin in the woods that I have lived in for the past three months. I'm about to leave the little family I have found amongst my coworkers, and I have no idea when the next time I will see them again will be. Though I may not have had as amazing of a summer as I had hoped to, one thing stands true, and that is that I am going to miss a lot about this summer.

In the show "How I Met Your Mother", there is a concept called "graduation goggles" that is brought up multiple times throughout the series. The basic concept behind "graduation goggles" is that once you leave a place or a person you start to see the good things about it/them that you never noticed before. In my experience, this has happened more than once with my summer job. Though last summer will always stand out in my memory as my favorite summer so far, it doesn't change the fact that in the moment during that summer there were often times where I wasn't having as much fun as I hoped to be. I was sad a lot. I missed my boyfriend (now fiancee) a lot. I felt lost and sad a lot of the time, yet here I am now looking back on that summer with fond memories.

And now, as I face the very last week of my summer job, I am beginning to see a recurrence of the "graduation goggles" regarding my time this summer. Because in all honesty, even when I felt like everything was at it's worst, this was actually a very great and eventful summer. First off, I got engaged. That alone should make this summer gold in my memory. However, there's more to it than that. I've gotten braver and more confident in myself. I'm a very codependent person normally, however now I am able to undertake tasks by myself that I have never been able to before. Also, I have lost a lot of my dependence on technology. I am not going to deny that I love Instagram and my phone and texting people. Those are just things that I love. However, I'm not as dependent and addicted to them. I actually am able to find other ways to spend my time.

So yes, this summer wasn't the best summer of my entire life. But I am going to miss it. I am going to miss the seclusion and the beauty and the camaraderie and the ability to be brave on my own. Here's to my adventures in the backcountry this summer. May I never forget them as long as I live.