21

I turned 21 years old today!

I'm feeling extremely grateful for everything that I have experienced in my life. The people I've come across, the places I have traveled, the fears that I have faced head-on. I have learned a lot in the past year, maybe I've learned more this year than any other year of my life, because I feel like I'm starting to learn how to live life in full.

Something that has been drifting across my mind recently, is happiness. I'm being conscious in the times where I feel the overflowing happiness, spilling out of my mind and soul and holding on to that. In those moments of pure joy, no one can steal that feeling from you. No matter what happens in the future, or in the moments previous, those times of deeply rooted contentedness cannot be changed. I'm looking back at those times in my life with graciousness and appreciation that they made such a big impact on my soul. Knowing that forever they will be perfect moments. Like, when I first got out of the car in Yosemite, years after the place had been a fear for me and these words from Dante rang in my ears:

This mountain of release is such that the

ascent's most painful at the start, below;

the more you rise, the milder it will be.

And when the slope feels gentle to the point that

climbing up sheer rock is effortless

as though you were gliding downstream in a boat,

then you will have arrived where this path ends.

Like, when I watched fog settle over the Golden Gate Bridge in the afternoon, and watched triangle shaped boats sail in silhouettes underneath.

Like when you witness something so pure and whole that it feeds your soul and encourages you to continue.

Like today when I finally got to talk to my soul sister, Ella, who is in South Africa.

Or when I sat in a rice paddy in Sumatra and thought to myself, I can do anything now.

Moments of complete happiness that no one can take from me. Moments that are so clear and perfect they will always be the ones that I will turn to when I feel sadness coming.

Today I have been able to spend the day exactly how I wanted. I went out in to the wild with my puppy. I explored, took photographs, and I sat down and wrote down everything that I was feeling on this exact day. I saw a fox (which is good luck) and sat all dreamy eyed under a navy blue sky as a couple pronghorns ran across the horizon. Finally, I dragged my favorite books out with me in the middle of the field, and copied all of my favorite life quotations onto some blank pages.

Tonight, camping, whiskey, campfire.

I'm feeling exactly happy.