2011, in rewind.

There is a part of my mind that tries its best to live in the future, dreaming of where I can travel, thinking about how photography is going to work out, excited to be twenty-six (couldn't tell you why, but it's always seemed like such a fun age to me). But then, there's the part of my heart that knows it's meant to be here, now. I'm meant to be present exactly where I am, with the people around me. Moments matter. On a scale of one to very cliche, I feel like that sentence tips the scale, but it's a lesson that I have to relearn every single day.
2011 was such a good year. Big picture, it was a year of tremendous growth spiritually & emotionally. It was a year that deepened my friendships, introduced me to some of the coolest people I've ever met. It was a year of trusting and overcoming an enormous amount of fear.
But I don't think like that, in big picture, and I don't remember like that. I have pictures in my head of the moments that offset those lessons that I learned and conversations that deepened those friendships. I have pictures in my head of instants where I was completely present and able to realize that my life is never going to be the same. It's those moments that really make me say that 2011 was such a good year.

I remember:
1. Skiing down a mountain in Colorado in March under a perfect blue sky, feeling more freedom than I had in a very long time.
2. The first time I ever met a bride for coffee. Not knowing what exactly we were supposed to talk about or how I was supposed to lead conversation, I jumped in and came out realizing that I don't love many things as much as hearing a person's love story.
3. Sitting in an upstairs room of the old Young Life house the night I met my friends Kenzie and Lauren, who had flown from California to play with me for a week, talking about life and dreams and photography.
4. Making the decision, right when I got to my house in Chile, to go out into the family room and play with 6 year old Catalina and 2 year old Fernando. It would have been easier to let my room be my home when I was there, but I practiced more spanish, felt so much more comfortable because of the time I spent with my host family.
5. Riding on the second story of a double-decker bus, driving down the 29-curve pass through the Andes mountains, unable to see the edge, on the way back from Argentina. A lady screamed at the front of the bus, and I was sure that my life was about to end.
6. Taking the metro to the last stop in Santiago, hopping in the car with a chilean guy to take us to a trailhead, and climbing to the very top of a mountain with Lydia and Carly. We had planned on hiking to a waterfall and had brought swimsuits, but when we ended up on top of the mountain we put them on anyway.
7. Answering my very first phone call when I worked in the office at Frontier (after Meghan gracefully handled at least twelve), "Frontier Ranch, this is Haley." With something like 20 lines to cover, I overcame my fear of phones by day 2.
8. Sitting against an Aspen tree journaling about the lyrics to "Come thou fount" and then having a conversation with my friend Alissa about what it means to be set free from the broken world that we live in.
9. Reaching the summit of a 14,197 ft. mountain, saying over and over out loud to my friend Hannah that it was one of the coolest things I had ever done. No other words really sufficed.
10. Literally tackling, kicking, wrestling with Lauren in the ocean at Bald Head Island. She constantly surprises me, this time with her scrappiness. I don't think I've laughed that hard since.
11. Sitting in the aisle as I photographed my first real wedding, realizing how many fears I was overcoming in one day, but not being able to think anything other than "I want to do this forever."
12. Having coffee with Lauren Jackson at Summit, being overwhelmingly grateful for the business questions she answered for me as I furiously typed notes in my iphone. I learned so many things that night that I didn't even know I needed to learn.
13. Posing like a lion beside a lion statue in Savannah with my friends Amy, Allison, and Annie in the pouring rain, freaking out because a random lady had informed us that spanish moss carried lice and the rain was bad news. (Untrue, we hope.)

14. Walking into an empty Anthropologie at 6 AM with Taylor on our first Monday morning as visual display interns, wide-eyed at the idea of getting to craft as a job.
15. Turning in 4 papers, 60 pages, in under 5 minutes and realizing I was 100% done with college, learning about medieval Spain and conjugating German verbs. So far, being a college grad feels quite a bit like being on Christmas break. I think I like it.

These moments are each so memorable to me; who I was with, what I was learning, what my brain was processing (usually way more quickly than I could articulate)... they made my year. I'm walking into 2012 with just as many dreams and questions, but these moments give me such peace about the future, reminding me that I'm so not in control of my life and that I can be grateful for all the joy and excitement and wonder as it is thrown at me.






my sweet friend Kenzie took these so I could have some sweet pictures WITH my friends...