reflections

Mohawk "Donut" Lake For those of you who haven’t heard me rambling about hiking, or the seen the many mountain pictures on my Instagram feed, I love Colorado. I’ve gone at least a year for as long as I can remember so I have many memories of hiking adventures. But the one that stands out the most to me is Donut Lake. Our expedition to Donut Lake took place one summer in Breckenridge when I was around 12 years old. My younger brother was less than a year old at that point and couldn’t go on long hikes, so one day my older brother and I went for a longer hike with just our family friends Justin and Sheena. Justin and Sheena were barely in their thirties, tons of fun, and two of the people I looked up most to in the world. I was so excited to go hiking with them.   The morning of the hike, we devoured a dozen donuts between the four of us, drove up to the trail head and got started. The hike was supposed to be an easy two mile walk up to a series of lakes. The first ...

I was hanging out with my five year old brother tonight when he asked me if I wanted to do a maze in his coloring book. At first I said no, but when he insisted (“There’s enough Katherine! We should share the mazes), I agreed. He handed me the book and a blue crayon to do the maze with and sat down next to me to watch. At first I didn’t use the crayon at all: I studied the maze—starting at the end because I heard somewhere that makes it easier—until I was sure that I knew the correct path before I started actually drawing on the page. My little brother was so confused why I didn’t start right away, and then impressed when I completed the maze correctly “on the very first try!” He had no idea that I had actually plotted out my path beforehand, so when it actually showed I would be perfect. All of his mazes were abstract compositions of crayon lines, trailing back and forth countless times until he found the end. Now I wonder why I so naturally decided to take the approach I did; w...