Snow in July

            We had been driving for eleven hours straight before reaching Sandy, Utah- a small town near Salt Lake City. My family- mom, dad, sister, and brother- and I all hopped out of the van we now dreaded. We had left Portland, Oregon, bright and early that morning and were so glad we weren’t stuck in the car anymore. We were halfway to our destination, Colorado Springs, Colorado, to visit family, and had stopped here to spend a few nights with some old friends of ours. We unloaded our suitcases and quickly went to sleep.

            The next morning, my legs felt looser and I was ready for a day I had been waiting for a long time. Today we were going on a hike to see snow. I love snow, and in Oregon we barely ever get any. The best part about it, though, was that I was going to see and touch snow in July.

            We drove into a parking lot near Snowbird Trail, parked the car, and set off on the excursion I had been so excited for. We walked over streams, by freshly bloomed flowers, and under tall, dark green trees and after thirty minutes, we still hadn’t seen any signs of the snow. We asked people along the way and they either didn’t know where the snow was, or they said, “You’re almost there.”

            On the way to the snow, we saw so many different and beautiful different types of flowers and plants. I remember seeing mountains in the distance, and the array of all the colors of the rainbow on the flowers, all with a background of fresh, green grass. It was the most amazing landscape I had ever seen in my life. The sun was just over head and there was not a cloud in sight.

            After trying many different trails and asking tons of different people, we saw in the distance exactly what we had been looking for, a shimmering mound of snow. It wasn’t the whitest or cleanest snow I had ever seen, but after trying so hard to reach it, it was all I could have hoped for. My mom, my mom’s friend, and I all had a snowball fight after admiring it for a while. It was just what we needed on the hot July day.

            I rolled up some of the cleanest snow I could find into a ball and carried it with me back down the trail. It slowely melted away but I will never be able to forget what it took to find it.

            As I look back on pictures and recollections of the road trip, this one day stood out the most. The beautiful scenery took my breath away and the snow felt like it had just come from the clouds. Even though it took work and determination to find the snow I’m so glad we never gave up. Just because we didn’t find the snow right away, we had an amazing expirience finding it, and that made it all worth while.