Non-Fiction

There are four years, 231 days, and 21 hours left on the Climate Clock. That’s how much time we have to act before the effects of climate change become irreversible. Unless we find a way to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the health of our Earth will be in permanent decline. I’ll admit, I’m no expert on the topic – I didn’t know that climate disasters are fueling a global refugee crisis or that the last seven years have been the hottest on record until I googled it a couple minutes ago. But you don’t have to be a scientist in order to see what’s happening. The signs are all around us, and yet we have failed to adequately respond.

I grew up in California, where the weather was famously lovely and predictable. My first experience with weird weather (climate change) was in 2020, about a year into the Covid pandemic. Already confined to my house for school, the August Complex Fire, which burned over 1 million acres, trapped half of California’s residents, including me, indoors for weeks. The sky was lit a dusty orange, and stepping outside without a mask felt like breathing in ash. It was both disgusting and frightening. Over the past 20 years, forest fires across the state have increased in frequency and intensity, largely due to changes in fuel conditions and the effects of global warming. Seventh grade me couldn’t quite understand the bigger picture, but still, I knew that something was very wrong.

In the summer between eighth and ninth grade, my family moved to Maine, excited to live in a place that experienced “proper seasons.” Coming from the sunny west coast, I had never felt colder in my life than I did that first winter, and yet my classmates laughed at my enormous coat and told me that,”this is nothing compared to last year.” Fast forward to about a month ago, a Snapchat memory from November 9th, 2023 showed my mom and me standing on our porch, noses dripping and eyes marveling at the snow twirling down around us. This year, on November 9th, the high was 60 degrees. Temperatures this December have been mild as well. Skeptics argue that a little fluctuation in weather between years is normal, but you can’t ignore the larger trend. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Earth’s combined land and ocean temperature increased by 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit per decade from 1850 to 1982. In 1982 the rate of warming became 0.36 degrees per decade, three times as fast.

These irregularities – whether glaringly obvious like intense wildfires or more subtly like shifts in seasonal weather – are not coincidences. They’re warnings. For years scientists have told us that unchecked greenhouse gas emissions would alter weather patterns, and now we’re experiencing the changes first hand. Warmer winters are just one of the impacts we’re seeing. Rising sea levels are threatening coastal communities. Extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves, intense storms, and flooding are causing loss of human life and destruction of property, devastating communities all around the world. This is a crisis.

When you imagine your future, what do you see? Someday I would love to raise kids of my own and share with them the fun of skiing and making snowmen in the yard. That dream seems so simple, but it’s slipping away fast as winters grow warmer and scientists predict low – and even no-snow winters in years to come. The harsh reality is that if we don’t act soon, the simple pleasures we enjoy today may not be available to future generations.

Just recognizing that climate change is real isn’t enough anymore. We’re seeing and feeling it, and now it’s time to do something. Daily individual efforts like turning off the lights, lowering the thermostat, walking and biking, carpooling, recycling, eating plant-forward diets, and thrifting should be prioritized. These small steps make a difference when we all do our part. Beyond that, we need to work together and demand action from those who have the power to make change, by passing laws to restrict pollution and supporting innovative solutions for example. Governments may ignore individual suggestions, but they can’t ignore the power of a united people, and through protest we can make change.

As a sixteen year old, I know how overwhelming this can all feel. Where can we start? What can we do? What I do know is that when humans come together and work toward a shared vision, we can create massive change. We have a responsibility not just to ourselves, but to future generations. The window is short, but it’s not too late to act. We have to speak out, organize, and refuse to let our leaders sit idly by while the planet suffers.

The clock is ticking. Four years, 228 days, and 9 hours.

 

 

Lucy Mamone is a rising senior in high school. She loves participating in sports teams, listening to music, and adventuring around Maine’s beaches and mountains.

I felt uncomfortable sitting at the table, my back to the wall. The sound of the clock’s second hand was deafening, tick, tick, tick, as if to remind me how slowly the time passed. I squirmed in my seat, the silence interrupted only by the intermittent squirt of an automatic air freshener. The windows and doors were decorated with bars, a necessity in this neighborhood. In front of me, multiple small statues were carefully positioned on the floor and on the shelves of a large armoire. They looked over those sitting at the table, keeping watch. My abuela has a particularly large statue on the floor; it was her favorite, Saint Lazarus. I had no idea why Saint Lazarus was special to abuela, but he was everywhere, in and outside her house. My abuela was a well-kept petite woman, her nails perfectly polished, her eyebrows drawn on with pencil, and her light skin wrinkled, even though she spent most of her days working inside a factory. She waddled when she walked and when she spoke it was as if she wanted the neighbors down the street to hear.

Every summer we traveled across the country to visit my abuelos, who live in the only city they have ever known in this country. They left Cuba in the early eighties when Castro allowed those who had gone against the government the freedom to leave. My father was nine years old when he crossed the border from Mexico into Laredo, Texas. The federal government ultimately apprehended him and my abuelos. My family does not discuss this trip or their life before the United States. It is as if it never happened, as if they want to forget. I have always been curious, but as a high school student now, I’d become much more aware of my family’s complicated and mysterious past. abuela and abuelo had overcome countless obstacles, my abuelo being a political prisoner, having already been caught once trying to escape. I wondered what it was like for him to be so desperate that he would leave Cuba in the middle of the night on a raft made of old truck tires only to be caught and sent to jail. My abuela’s father, my bisabuelo, was the bodyguard to Batista, the dictator before Castro. I only know him through his picture that hangs on the wall in my family room, as he passed in a tragic car accident shortly after arriving in this country. He had a chiseled face with high cheekbones and an angular jaw. His muscles could be seen through the guayabera he wore. How did he become a bodyguard? Did he practice martial arts? I had many questions and stories I needed to hear, but my Spanish was not proficient enough to get answers.

I sat at the kitchen table, my abuelo to my right, looking at me with anticipation of something spectacular about to happen. I rested my arms on the kitchen table, the protective plastic covering stuck to my skin, making a crinkling noise when I moved. The statues looked at me as if they expected something of me, too. The eyes of the large statue of Saint Lazarus seemed to follow my movements. His clothes were mere rags draped over his body. My mind was empty, trying to conjure any word I could remember. I had studied this. I knew how to put sentences together and even write but in the face of my grandfather’s quiet pressure and my own desire to communicate,— nothing. My abuelo was a dark-skinned man with little hair, multiple gold necklaces, and a bracelet. He wore a starched cotton white shirt, pressed jeans, and a leather belt around his rotund stomach. His skin showed the many years behind him, wrinkled from the sun. His hearing was failing him after years of driving a truck, the constant hum of the engine taking a toll. He waited eagerly for me to talk to him, he hoped this summer visit would be different, this would be the summer we would have our first conversation. Clearly disappointed, he looked at my Father, his face sagging as a defeated expression overcame his countenance. He blamed my father for my ignorance, as did I.

I wondered why my father never spoke to me in Spanish. It would have been easy to learn had he made the effort to speak in Spanish when I was young, but he rarely made the effort. Maybe it was too hard, being the only native speaker in the house. He said he wanted me to speak in English, but now I can only speak in English, and I can’t talk to my abuelos. It was as if my father wanted to erase that part of his life and with it, our family history. When my father came to this country, he was placed in special classes for children who couldn’t speak the language. He faced discrimination, sometimes so subtle he didn’t even realize it was happening. Maybe he didn’t want me to experience what he had lived through, maybe downplaying Spanish was his way of protecting me from the world.

Studying Spanish in high school was a challenge from the very start. It was hard, it was easy, it was up, it was down. Here I was, half-Cuban, and I couldn’t even keep up with my classmates.

Summer after summer, during our yearly visit, I sat at the kitchen table in that tiny two-bedroom house with my abuelo to my right, always wanting more from me. Couldn’t he see? It was not my fault that I could not speak Spanish. I reminded myself of this routinely so as not to feel that guilt. To not feel like a disappointment.

As the years passed, I progressed in Spanish, and in my understanding that I had blamed my father for so long for my inability to speak to my abuelos, I forgot I had a part in my success and my failure. One thing I knew was that a part of me needed to speak to my abuelos, I needed to hear their stories, their struggles, their triumphs and disappointments. My time was running out, they were both in their eighties, and I feared they might die before I had the chance to have a conversation. I wanted to know why Saint Lazarus was everywhere; maybe he was important to me, but I just didn’t know it yet.

This day, I sat at the kitchen table, my back to the wall, my abuelo to my right. He was waiting for me, as he always did, every summer when I came to visit. The sound of the clock’s second hand filled the silence, the automatic air freshener squirting mist into the air, the statues, the plastic-covered table, the steel bars on the windows and doors, it was all as it always was. The only difference was that today my father sat to my left. He was a particularly tall man, much taller than my abuelos with large, inquisitive eyebrows. His cologne was a bit overwhelming, and he sat with his arms folded across his chest, in a somewhat defensive posture. I had always turned to my father for help, asking him to only speak to me in Spanish. My requests were well received, but he would always revert back to English within a few minutes. It was clear that if I wanted to understand my grandparents I needed to make my own effort; no longer could I expect my father to do it for me. I turned to look at my aging abuelo, and in that moment I felt a renewed sense of purpose.

I noticed the large statue of St. Lazarus on the floor, with rags covering his body and two dogs at his feet looking up at him. My abuela was in the kitchen cooking. The smell of freshly fried empanadas filled the air. She brought the empanadas to the table and sat across from me. Her drawn-on eyebrows gave her face an expectant, somewhat surprised look; I wasn’t sure if that was the look she was going for or if she just ran off course with that eyebrow pencil.

I began to speak to my abuelos in Spanish, not perfectly, but with an understanding I had never had before, and while not every word was correct, they understood me. The words flowed out of me, question after question.

Saint Lazarus is the patron saint of the poor and sick, who some say Jesus raised from the dead. He was a beggar with wounds on his feet and two stray dogs that traveled with him. He embodied the struggle of the impoverished, the struggle of my abuelos. For this reason Saint Lazarus was everywhere—the most sacred saint in all of Cuba. Now I understand.

 

 

 

Andres Gil is a first generation Cuban American. He is a junior attending public high school and is interested in the assimilation of minority populations in the United States. Most of his writing is non-fiction centered on the complexities of cultural identity, family history and his own path to understanding his roots. This particular piece is about his personal struggle and desire for connection. It touches on the different views of a multi-generational Hispanic family in the United States.

I once lived in Illinois, in a suburb an hour’s drive west of Chicago. In summer, the scent of freshly cut grass would permeate the heavy air, thick with dew and traces of citrus. A nearby fishing pond nestled into an embankment between my old neighborhood and the woods. At its edge stood a weeping willow, with leaves that tickled the water’s surface, casting a shimmering gleam in the sun.

Some evenings I would meet my friend, who lived some streets down from me, and we would go for walks, giddy from the prospect of going somewhere by ourselves. At home, I would complain about the grandmother next door who furtively plucked mint leaves from our yard, complain about the relentless mosquitos that attacked me in the evenings when I played backyard badminton.

Alone at night, unable to sleep, I would listen to the muffled roar of the freight train that ran just beyond the pond. I would imagine myself standing before the train as it rumbled past, barely illuminated by the full moon that shone singularly in the dark violet sky. On the bus to school, I would sit looking out at the town’s low-rise brick buildings and strip malls, the neighborhood entrances lined with neatly trimmed flora bushes. The comforting familiarity of it all, of the suburb where I had lived nearly all my life, contented me in a bare and sincere way.

The older I became, the further I drifted apart from my childhood friends. The brief but awkward occasions we would see each other did little more than to highlight the adolescent retreat with which we now constrained ourselves, a manner vastly different from the carefree interactions we once shared.

I remember saying goodbye to my school friends when I moved, those with whom I was close enough to seek out in the hallways but not nearly enough to invite to my home or spend time outside of class. Sometimes I imagine myself walking through their high school, the high school I would have attended, silently observing their appearance and behavior, probably changed, perhaps matured. Mind you, never in my true physical form would I imagine myself doing this. I would only do this had I the ability to incarnate into an invisible, shapeless body that is unrecognizable, unable to be sensed.

Sometimes I wish to see how much we have grown in the absence of a shared presence, like two flowers stemming from a common root, each its own entity, all the while remaining deeply interconnected at the core.

Sometimes I imagine myself returning to my hometown, years or maybe decades later, driving under the kind blue sky, greeting the oak trees that lined the sand-colored sidewalks, the glistening pond and weeping tree, the high school I had always envisioned myself attending but never did.

 

Anusmara Gunturu is a high school student living in Northern Virginia. Her work has received recognition from the Scholastic Awards and has been published in Teen Writers Project Quarterly Lit Zine and Remington Review. She believes in the power of flash fiction and its ability to share thought-provoking, introspective, and resonant themes with an audience. Outside of studying and daydreaming, she enjoys reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories.

It’s a Monday afternoon, and after getting home from school, you sit down at your desk. You have a lot of school to do if you don’t want to be up till midnight doing trigonometry. But even thinking about school is daunting after such a long day. You just need a break before you get to work. So you turn on your phone, and before you know it, start scrolling through reels.

Just a couple minutes and then you’ll get back to work. Before you know it, your mother is calling you down for dinner and you got nothing done this past hour. You look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself: “What just happened? Where did I go wrong?”

It’s a situation that we all end up facing sooner or later. You have now contributed to the two hundred billion reels that are watched on Instagram and Facebook alone, every single day (Demandsage). This is one of the many reasons so many people struggle with paying attention and getting things done. It’s a scary reality that our attention spans now less than a third of what they were just twenty years ago (Microsoft). So with all of these distractions, what can we do? We can stare at a wall. Because yes, staring at a wall really can help your attention span.

Let’s back up. What is an attention span in the first place? An attention span is the amount of time you usually spend focused on a single thing before moving on. Microsoft once did a study on the average time spent on a website before moving on. In 2000, the average time was two and a half minutes. Now, it has dropped down to just forty-five seconds. So how then do we lengthen our attention spans? While there are many legitimate ways we can try to do so, one of the best is to stare at a wall for just five minutes a day. Yes, really. Staring at a wall clears your brain from the dopamine and stimulation that fills every part of our lives. As Ashley from Medium.com says “If you stare at the wall long enough without any input or variety from the rest of your sensory system, your brain will overcompensate and pay hyper attention to things going on within your mind and within your peripheral vision bubble,” This shows that staring at a wall can help you to understand and control what is going on inside your own head. Similarly, the psychologist Dr. K Healthy Ganer says “just stare at a wall for an hour… once you can train your mind to tolerate boredom, you no longer fall into the pull of these things, because then you don’t need to play video games because boredom is okay.” While staring at a wall is a bit over the top, it does show the benefit of putting yourself through something like this. Through this time of peace, away from the technology that has cluttered every part of our lives, we can get a new view of what it is that we are doing.

Staring at a wall once a day has been very helpful in my own life. When I’m exhausted and tired and know I still have work ahead of me, I can remind myself to take a break. A break that doesn’t involve social media, reels, or technology. But why can’t it involve technology? The problem is that everything on the internet wants your attention because that’s how they make their money. However, the one thing that isn’t asking for your attention is a wall. By staring at a wall we learn how to act and concentrate without any help from an outside source, specifically, technology. By removing ourselves from technology, we get used to being inside of our own minds.

Sometimes life gets busy and staring at the wall for five minutes can feel like a waste.

However it is in these busy times that this becomes most important. You truly don’t have time to waste. Because of that, clearing your mind of the dopamine and stimulation is more important than ever, because in five minutes, you can make the next five hours much more effective. If those five minutes make you five percent more productive, then in five hours, you’ll have gotten fifteen minutes more done. Instead of losing time by staring at a wall, you are actually gaining it.

So the next time you come home from school, tired and worn out, I want you to try something. Sit down, and make it a goal that no matter what happens, no matter how tired you feel, you will not stimulate yourself through your phone until dinner. To kick this experiment off, stare at a wall for just five minutes. While you could scroll through your phone for an hour and still feel tired and unready to work, in five minutes, while you may still feel tired, you will also feel ready. While you could waste your time, you will now be gaining it. The clarity and determination will have the power to override any weakening feeling that may go through your mind. Because with each action that you take, you are building your future. You can either build a hard working, determined person, or a lazy person who doesn’t know how to live without stimulation. The choice is yours, now it is your time to act. Even when pain is strong, our will can be stronger. In the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Where the mind goes the body will follow.”

 

Works Cited

Ashley. “Things I Learned From Staring at a Wall.” Medium.com, December 2019. https://medium.com/@ashleyhayward/things-i-learned-from-staring-at-a-wall-c16 5aacd065d. Accessed 8 January 2025.

Mark, Gloria. “Regain Control of Your Focus and Attention with Researcher Gloria Mark.” Microsoft, April 2023.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/podcast/regain-control-of-your-focus-and-atte ntion-with-researcher-gloria-mark. Accessed 8 January 2025.

Williamson, Chris. “Could You Stare At a Wall For an Hour?” youtube, June 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noKzTAm6Jz8. Accessed 8 January 2025.

Kumar, Naveen. “How Many Instagram Reels are There? (2025 Statistics). Demandsage, January 2025. https://www.demandsage.com/instagram-reel-statistics/. Accessed 8 January 2025.

 

James DeGraaf is fourteen years old and loves reading and spending time outdoors with his Trail Life group as he learns and grows with his friends. When he has free time, he enjoys spending time with his seven older siblings, finding new ways to improve his life, and playing sports with his friends.

Maneuvering the tiny awl through the rock was a test of real patience, the layers of earth that had to gently be removed were hard and crunchy after being baked in the sun for millions of years. As the youngest team member at the Judith River Dinosaur Institute’s Snowy Mountain Dig, I learned more than I have in years of reading about dinosaurs. The act of digging is not for the weak. It requires industrial strength knee pads, brushes, knives, dental picks and awls. To sustain the long hours of crouching over the dirt, one must get creative, shifting the weight of the body to find that perfect low fatigue position. At times, I even experimented with the “lying on the belly move” arms extended in front of me, as if ground-flying toward my reward.

While there are no guarantees of discovering anything on a dig, I found it easy to keep my hope and curiosity alive. Dig sites are charged with possibility. We all felt it. And after four days of digging in the 110 degree weather, I heard that hollow sound and knew I hit something. Patiently, I brushed away the dirt and saw that beautiful brown/purple bone. While some team members had already found bones or bone fragments on the first few days, I had not. This was my moment, and my first fossil was not just any fossil. It was a Stegosaurus back plate. I looked down at the bone with pride and wonder, knowing I had uncovered an animal that hadn’t seen daylight in 150 million years.

My fascination with dinosaurs started when I was a little boy. Mornings watching Barney the dinosaur made me curious about other facets of ancient life. As I grew older, I moved beyond children’s shows, and my favorite documentary was Walking with Monsters, where I became enthralled with evolution. I was drawn to how organisms change, how they behave, and how they operate within their ecosystem. It is amazing to think about how different organisms today evolved from ones from the past.

My interest led me to search online for a dig in which I could participate, and when I found it, I jumped at the chance to experience the life of a paleontologist. This dig taught me that TV does not reflect what really happens on these digs and the different types of paleontologists. Some professionals specialize in geology, others lean more into the evolutionary biology aspect, but all of them play pivotal roles in the excavation of animals and the growth of scientific knowledge. I learned there are three types of paleontologists, the “hands-on” individuals who go out into the field, the lab paleontologists who then reconstruct and study the bones that come from the excavation, and the PhD paleontologists who take the evidence found in the fossils to create theories and publish their ideas. The most interesting thing that I learned on this dig was that as a paleontologist, you don’t have to have a formal education to make a discovery! The man leading the dig, Nate Murphy, is a well-known paleontologist who didn’t go to college! Instead, he honed his skills in the field and supported it by reading widely on the topic.

While my friends spent their summers on the beach, I am so grateful for the experience to dig in the dirt in Montana on a quest for discovery. Paleontology is difficult, tedious work but each person has the opportunity to make a discovery and contribute to the team effort.

 

 

Henry “Banks” Bourtin has had a life long fascination with paleontology. He had the opportunity this summer to go on his first dinosaur dig, where he unearthed a stegosaurus backplate. He is a 10th grader from Texas, and will earn Eagle Scout rank in May, 2025.

Let me be honest with you—I had absolutely no clue what I was getting myself into when I decided to climb Kilimanjaro. None. Zero. Zilch. But isn’t that how most great stories start? With an idea that seems just a little bit (or a lot) ridiculous at first?

I’ve always been the kind of person who craves a challenge. Growing up in Switzerland, surrounded by the Alps, I was that kid who begged to take the harder hiking routes, who secretly loved the burn in her legs after a steep ascent, and who never minded getting a little dirt under her nails. So when my school announced they were offering a highly selective half-term break trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, I didn’t just want in—I needed in. No hesitation, no second-guessing, just pure, reckless enthusiasm.

Of course, my excitement didn’t mean anything unless I earned my spot. Only twelve students would be chosen. The school wasn’t about to let anyone waltz up Africa’s highest mountain unprepared, and to prove we were serious, we had to train—hard. For three months, every Tuesday and Thursday, our group of twelve hiked through rain, snow, and whatever miserable weather Switzerland threw at us. We trekked at high altitudes, climbed with heavy backpacks, and pushed through exhaustion because if we couldn’t handle this, we sure as hell weren’t going to make it on Kilimanjaro. There were days when I felt invincible and days when I wanted to collapse in a heap and never put on hiking boots again. But quitting? That wasn’t an option.

I had no idea just how much all that training was going to matter. Because let me tell you—nothing could have fully prepared me for the reality of climbing this mountain.

~The Climb Begins~

Fast forward to our first day on the trail. I was practically bouncing with excitement, my backpack strapped tight, my boots laced up, feeling ready for anything. This wasn’t just any trip—this was Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa, and I was about to climb it.

We had flown first to Amsterdam and then on to Tanzania on a six-hour flight, buzzing with anticipation the entire way. Our group was twelve people strong—my school class—on an adventure together during the half-term break. I had come with my good friend Erica, and though we were already close, this trip would bond us in ways I never could have imagined. We weren’t alone, though. Local guides, who seemed unfazed by the altitude, led us along the trail, constantly reminding us to go pole pole—Swahili for “slowly, slowly.” And they meant it. Every step was deliberate, every movement measured. At first, I found it funny. How hard could it really be?

Little did I know, Kilimanjaro had some thoughts about that.

As we climbed higher, the landscape shifted. The rainforest disappeared, replaced by rolling moorlands that stretched into infinity. The sun was relentless during the day, and at night? Oh, it was cold. Like, wrap-yourself-in-every-layer-you-own-and-hope-for-the-best kind of cold. My body ached, my lungs struggled to pull in enough oxygen, and my enthusiasm? Well, let’s just say it took a serious hit.

I’d love to tell you that I powered through every moment with unwavering determination, but the truth? There were times I wanted to quit. Times I questioned why I ever thought this was a good idea. But then I’d look around—the vastness of the mountain, the unwavering determination of my fellow climbers, the sheer magic of being so high up—and something inside me would reignite. I reminded myself why I was here. Not just for me, but for every young girl who’s ever been told she wasn’t strong enough, tough enough, or capable enough. I wanted to prove—to myself and to others—that we belong here, in these wild, untamed places.

~The Final Push~

Summit night was, in a word, brutal. We started our ascent under the cover of darkness—not sure out of a daredevil‘s whim, but out of pure necessity. The plan was to reach the top by sunset, ensuring that we had enough time to descend safely in daylight. Had we begun our climb in the morning, by the time we reached the peak the day would have given way to night, making the descent treacherous. We started climbing at midnight, in complete darkness, the cold biting through every layer I had on. The altitude was unforgiving —every breath felt shallow, every step impossibly heavy. My fingers were almost numb, my legs burned and the thought of turning back whispered in the back of my mind. But I refused to listen.

Then, just as I thought I couldn’t take another step, the horizon started to glow. Deep blues turned to fiery oranges, and the first light of dawn spilled across the sky. I can’t even begin to describe what that felt like—like hope, like possibility, like every ounce of exhaustion suddenly didn’t matter anymore.

And then, finally, Uhuru Peak. 5,895 meters. The roof of Africa. I made it.

Standing there, looking out at the endless sea of clouds below me, I felt something shift inside. This wasn’t just about reaching the top of a mountain. It was about proving to myself that I could do hard things. That even when my body screamed at me to stop, even when doubt tried to creep in, I could push through.

And if I could do this? What else could I do? What else could we do, if we stopped letting fear and doubt hold us back?

~Why This Story Matters~

I didn’t climb Kilimanjaro just for the Instagram photos (though let’s be real, they were pretty epic). I climbed it because I wanted to prove that adventure isn’t just for the strongest, the toughest, or the most experienced. It’s for anyone who’s willing to show up, put in the effort, and take that first step—even when it’s terrifying.

I want other girls to know that they belong in this space. That they deserve to take up space. Whether it’s climbing a mountain, starting a new sport, or chasing a wild, impossible dream—do it. Don’t wait until you feel “ready.” Don’t let the doubts of others define what you can or can’t do. Just take the first step.

Because here’s the truth: The hardest part of any adventure isn’t the climb itself. It’s deciding to go in the first place.

So if you’re reading this, and you’ve got a dream that feels too big, too crazy, too out of reach—I dare you to chase it anyway. You might just surprise yourself.

And who knows? Maybe I’ll see you on the next mountain.

 

Emilia is a sixteen-year-old adventurer, writer, and mountain enthusiast from Switzerland. At just fifteen, she summited Mount Kilimanjaro, proving that big challenges aren’t reserved for the experienced or the fearless—they’re for anyone bold enough to try. When she’s not climbing mountains, she’s chasing new adventures, pushing her limits, and inspiring others to do the same.