Blast from the past

Have you ever gotten back together with friends you haven’t seen in over a decade and it isn’t weird or anything? You just pick right up where you left off. Nate and Wade were really great friends in high school and Mike is the older brother of Dave who was the third member of the Nate/Wade/Dave trio. They had a great time in high school but wandered in different directions after graduation. Nathan bumped into each of them a couple of times, but it’s been years. When I posted on my facebook that we would be in the area, Mike messaged me with an invitation to stay with them. I’m so glad we did! It was a bit surreal. For one thing, they look pretty much the exact same as they did 10+ years ago, so there was no weird “who is this person? Is that them? I think it’s them” moment. Then they just picked right up and were laughing and telling stories both old and new.

I never really hung out with them back in the day, so most of the stories Wade & Mike told were new to me, but I’ve heard enough over the last 8 years from Nate to be at least a bit in the loop. Of course, my high school sphere was pretty different, so I had no reminiscing stories that they really remembered (in fact, many of the people who were important to my experience made little or no impact on theirs). It was interesting to see how different an experience of the exact same time and place can be.

Wade and Mike do a lot of hiking and backpacking which is something Nate would love to get back into. We left with plans to get together for a backpacking trip in the next year. I know Nate is glad to reconnect with his friends (he’s even talked about getting on facebook which would be a sign of the coming apocalypse if they’d had facebook back in biblical times). Even if the rest of our trip had sucked, it would have been worth it for the evening & day of great fun.

This is Wade’s dog, Jibboo, who wasn’t feeling well. He passed away a few days after we left. He was such a sweetie, and we wish we could have met him when he was feeling better too.