It's day 2 of our Philmount adventure and we are all soaking wet from the rain the night before, but we are having a good time for the most part. Cameron seemed to be the exception, he had developed a saying that let us all know how he was feeling, “ I am not a happy camper.” This became his trademark statement through out the following 9 days which he used whenever it was cold, wet, or he was hunger. Anyways we set out on the muddy trail that morning admiring the wet landscape and headed to our first activity that was planned for our group, skeet shooting. The headquarter for the skeet shooting range was a little, old cabin at end of a large, open valley. There we were given a through lecture on gun safety from the mean, “master of the shotgun range” as he preferred to be called . Before we could get to shooting we had to reload our own shell, this I had never done before. Each used shotgun shell had be filled with new powder, pellets, and a plunge (not necessarily in that order). All of this was accomplished by using a nifty, little machine apply named a reload station that measured out the correct amounts of powder and pellets appropriate for a 12 gauge shotgun. We each filled 5 shells and headed out to the range. The range was made up of several barriers that concealed the remote-controlled clay pigeon launchers at various distances from where the shooter was positioned. It was a sweet setup, a lot better the single hand-operated launcher that I was used to. We had a blast trying to see who could hit the most pigeons with the 5 shells we each had. I hit 4 while my

brother Rex only scored 1, a fact I still remind him of to this day. We had enough fun for some of us to pay a few extra bucks for 3 additional rounds.

Finally the last shot was fired and it was time for us to leave. The morning was about over and our camp site for that night was still 5 miles away. We ate our lunch and took off through the woods. The going was pretty smooth until we reach the longest, muddiest, most challenging stretch of steadily inclined trail that any of us had see before. There were no switch backs, just a solid mile of straight, uphill madness. Soon all of our shoes were caked with about 10 pounds of mud each. All efforts to clear them only resulted in more mud stinking to my shoe. The worse part was that if we weren't stepping forward we were sliding backwards. That made resting hard. I felt like the little engine that could, fighting to make it up that hill and pushing myself on with “ I think I can, I think I can”. My lungs and legs were on fire. It seem as if the hill had no end.............., but it did and looking back down made it all worth it. To know we had accomplished such a difficult task was a wonderful feel. The last leg of the day's journey was a breeze. Along the way I had an awkward conversation with Cameron, but that's not important so I'll just end by saying that we made it to our second camp site safely.

Life is like that long, muddy hill. If we are not constantly moving forward, constantly improving ourselves we are sliding backwards. You can't be satisfied with where you're at, whether it be mentally, physically, or spiritually. If you're not improving you're losing.