When I looked out over Portland at Council Crest, the craggy, snowcapped Mt. Hood beckoned. That mountain felt to me like my ticket to an adventure—and I was right but in a most unexpected way. I booked a 24-hour car rental with my friend so we could drive to the Mt. Hood Adventure Park at SkiBowl in Government Camp, Oregon. Just an hour and a half outside of Portland, the park offers a series of activities: zip-lining, hiking tours, bungee jumping, horseback riding, and more. I figured it'd be a good place to find some fun. Once we arrived, we decided to do a water-related activity. I had my sights on stand-up paddle boarding but it was the day after July 4th. "Sorry, SUPs have been booked for weeks," the apologetic SkiBowl employee told us. She handed us their book of activities to flip through to find something else. White water rafting caught our attention.

It scares me. It scares me like nothing before in my life. Which makes it all the more important to set out and do it.

Recall Bilbo after the dwarves invited him on a journey to kill a dragon and then left him alone in his hobbit hole to ponder it all. He sighed to himself and surveyed his home thinking how nice it was they had finally departed. All was quiet and back to normal. Except now something was stirring inside of him. Bilbo had felt this stirring before—a spark that had been burning from within since he was a boy was suddenly set ablaze by the dwarves' proposal. It was growing, growing like a wildfire that sent him fleeing out his door, willingly leaving his mother's doilies and his valued 'kerchief behind.

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