Snow Days.

Last week, I went on my last trip for the year with Tafe. It was a bushwalking/navigation assessment, out in the Kanangra-Boyd National Park (near Kanangra Walls).

It was a bit of a slog for all of us, in some ways. We had two and a half days of practice before we got to do the assessment; pretty much all of us just wanted to get it over and done with. It was freezing cold, we had some pretty thick scrub, and two injuries that meant we had to backtrack a bit. And I was certainly feeling a bit of that as well at some points. I know there was one point in the navigation assessment that I was completely lost, had no idea where we were, and was pretty much almost in tears.

But. It snowed! On the first afternoon, it started snowing quite lightly. By the time we got into camp, we had some absolutely beautiful scenery. And then we got up in the morning - it just looked so amazing. I've been to the snow before, but the snow has never come to me!
One of the guys had never actually been in snow before, so he was absolutely loving that.

Of course, that did make it frightfully cold, particularly at night, but it was nice for a while. And it's certainly not something I'll forget in a hurry.
I also ended up doing fine for my written and navigation assessment, which was good.

And the thing is, it was my last trip with that bunch. We don't have any more trips left this year with Tafe, and next year is looking....different. Not quite sure how yet, but yeah. Will probably do another post on that when things are a bit more worked out.
But we've been through a fair bit together, as was mentioned a couple of times on the trip. We've had sun, rain, wind, hail, thunder, lightning, and then we had snow. But more than that, we'd been through all these experiences together; helped each other grow, and become better at what we were trying to do. We grew together as a group. We made each other laugh, and had some fun times together.

I've certainly got some great memories with those guys, and it is a bit sad that that's coming to a close. But hopefully this won't be the last I see of all of them, and I know that they're pretty happy doing what they're doing. Which is good :)

In other news, there are only four months left in the year. And most of it, for me, is looking very orange. Orange is camps and trips. I've got one almost every week from now until the end of the year. It's going to get pretty full-on.
Hopefully, that'll also mean that it passes by fairly quickly. Cause I'm getting pretty tired, and it's starting to get to me. But yeah. Got a few that I'm looking forward to, though. :)

In other other news, I've just released a new digital album! You can check it out here: http://brendanjamesraymond.bandcamp.com/