I spent my eighth grade year at the Aspen Middle School, which is not surprisingly in Aspen Colorado. In all honesty, Aspen is not my favorite place. I love warm weather and going to the beach all year long, instead of wearing three different jackets to school in the morning and being called a marshmallow.

But going into eighth grade was especially daunting. We all knew that the second week of school we would be leaving on a week long backpacking trip, where we would hike some thirty miles in three or four days and arrive at a small town called Marble.

Let me just tell you that we had not been thrown into something we weren’t prepared for. In seventh grade the ODE trip is a week spent on the Colorado River rafting. In sixth grade the students go on a hut trip, and in fifth they spend a week camping in Moab, Utah.Read More »