624-Oscar-8

Day 0:

The first sound of Philmont was the hydraulic hiss of the charter bus. The noise forced my eyes to open and my body to sit straight, causing my neck to crick. Rubbing my panging neck, my first sight of Philmont was through a window. Even so, it was a glorious view. We passed a sun-colored sign covered with dangling old boots. The sign was barely readable, but it proudly brandished the words 'Philmont Scout Ranch'. Behind the sign, there was the wall-less welcoming center, where trailbound and homebound crews lined their backpacks and prepared for departure either into, or out of the mountains.

Behind the welcoming center was a sea of desert-color tents. For those that were occupied, open flaps hung over the side of the tent body, letting in cool air and preventing the interior from becoming an oven. Sandy dirt covered every square inch of non-paved paths and patches of cotton drift through the air, clustering in windless parts of the buildings and blowing into our eyes.

I stepped off the bus to breath in the open air. My crew comes from a much lower elevation compared to Philmont, by a few thousand feet, in fact, so the first breath of air was a surprise. The oxygen was much thinner and (I never believed it would be possible to tell the difference at first impact) cleaner.

"Ashton!" My crew leader, Stephen (He told me that he would like to be called 'El Presidente'), called from beside the charter bus. The loading doors had opened and the rest of my crew was already grabbing our backpacks. I rushed to pull my twenty pounds onto my back, then hurried to the welcoming center, where we formed a gear line. After the gear line was set, I stepped into the open center, and met up with the rest of my crew, who were sitting and dealing cards on a large picnic bench.

There were eleven of us: Rithvik, Alex, Jacob, Mark, Stephen, Dillon (purposely misspelled), Jonathan, Tim, Kyle, Max, and myself. Including us, there were three adults: Mr. Murphee (Mark's father), Mr. Ford (Kyle's father), and Mr. Buhler (Tim and Stephen's father).We had all been training for a year for Philmont, and we were all prepared to venture forward, both physically and mentally, into the mountains.

After ten minutes of waiting, and joking who our Ranger was going to be... he arrived. He was young, couldn't have been more than twenty-two years old. He wore the standard green Philmont polo and beige pants, but on his right arm was a black, unattached sleeve and glove. We all noticed it, and he undoubtedly noticed us noticing it, but he discarded it, and introduced himself to the adults and us.

He introduced himself under the alias "Trip". He told us to take up our packs and to follow him to our tents for the night. I lift the tent flap to see that old metal cots had been set up for us.

For the rest of the day, we explored the entirety of base camp. We visited the large,crowded trading post, we saw the Tooth of Time far in the background and stretching tall into the sky (The large mountain had a tall, flat cliff. At the right angle, it looked like a tooth), and we were led to the to welcoming campfire. There, some of the staff members put on a series of skits to introduce us to the history of the ranch.

When we returned to our row of tents, we passed out the packaged food for the trek and divided the troop gear. Even if my backpack gained an extra twenty pounds (it was now forty in total) I to bed in high spirits. We enjoyed the old, dusty and discolored mattress' we had, because even if the spring-cots did squeak like a mouse with a megaphone, that was the last night we had with any kind of bed for two weeks.

I fell asleep writing. For the trip I had taken a risky bet: I brought my main writing journal, that had almost everything I had written off-computer in the past four months, which totaled to almost three-hundred hours. I planned to bring it in a waterproof bag, but even so, I was afraid it would begin raining when I had it out, or that I would put it down somewhere and forget about it when we left the campsite.

Regardless, at the time of Philmont, my life was difficult. I was confused with a lot of things and struggling to figure out my place in the world. Writing was probably one of the only things that keeps my engine running, and I knew that losing a notebook would be a crippling punch, but I knew I would be able to recover. At least... I hoped I would.