Summer ended yesterday.
And I don’t even know how to explain the weight of that.

There was no final fanfare.
No clear moment that said this is the end.
Just silence.
Just stillness.
Just a walkie that didn’t call my name.

But all I can see is this photo.
Two TOs—suspended midair, reaching for a high five between two different ropes courses.
No one told them to do it.
No one asked them to.
They just reached.
Because they could.
Because they wanted to.
Because that’s what this place teaches you:
to stretch across what separates you and meet someone in the air.

And I think that’s the most honest picture of this summer I’ve got.

Because that’s what we did.
Over and over and over again—we reached.

We reached from the edge of burnout.
From behind fake smiles and tired jokes.
From cracked hands, sunburnt arms, knees that buckled halfway up the hill but climbed anyway.

We reached from silence—
not the peaceful kind,
but the kind that replaces care with absence.
The kind that makes you feel invisible.

We reached across leadership that didn’t show up.
Across jobs we weren’t trained for but did anyway.
Across cold sandwiches, hotter tempers, and schedules that forgot we were human.
Across every “just hang in there” from people who never stopped to check if we had.

We reached anyway.

We wrote letters with shaking hands.
We reset the dining hall after sixteen-hour days.
We hauled coolers in the rain, fixed what others broke, and made things work with duct tape, walkie calls, and the sheer force of stubborn love.

And most of the time?
No one saw us.
No one reached back.

But we reached anyway.

Because that’s what it means to love something bigger than yourself.
To believe in a place even when it stops believing in you.
To carry it—not because you’re unbreakable,
but because someone had to.

That reach?

It wasn’t a job.
It wasn’t a metaphor.
It was survival.
It was hope.
It was communion.

It was me.
And you.
And the ones who stayed.
Not just present.
But anchored.
Hands outstretched in the storm saying:
I’m still here.
I still care.
I’ve still got you.

And now it’s quiet.
The radios rest.
The coolers are stacked.
The gravel doesn’t echo.
And our bodies—finally—feel the weight we’ve been carrying for too long.

But the reach?

That doesn’t end.

That stretch between who we were in May and who we are now—
it’s longer than anyone will ever know.

But we know.
God, we know.

We earned every bruise.
Every scar.
Every late-night porch laugh that reminded us we were still alive.
Every whispered prayer spoken into a walkie-less sky.
Every cracked, holy moment pulled from the mess.

This wasn’t the kind of summer people post highlight reels about.
This was the kind that leaves a mark.
This was the kind you survive.

And we survived it.

We reached through it.

We became something through it.

And maybe… maybe that’s enough.

Summer 2025 ended yesterday.
And I am tired.
And I am broken in places no one sees.
And I am still reaching—
but this time, maybe for myself.
Because I’ve earned that too.