Lacey Middlestead is a Montana native and freelance writer currently living in Helena, Mont. She loves meeting new people and helping share their stories. When she’s not busy writing articles for newspapers like the Independent Record and Helena Vigilante, she can usually be found indulging in her second greatest passion–playing in the Montana wilderness. She loves skiing and snowmobiling in the winter and four wheeling, hiking, boating, and riding dirt bikes in the summer.
My dad reminds me, on almost a weekly basis, that I need to stop growing up. I like to think that holidays like Halloween and Easter reassure him that even at 27 years of age, I still boast quite a bit of childlike innocence.
When I first started attending school at Carroll College in 2005, I figured my childhood days of high-paced Easter egg hunts were over. I mean college is supposed to be a time of diligent studying and planning for one’s future right….not scrambling after plastic eggs like your life depended on the candy inside them? When my first Easter at Carroll rolled around though I received an email announcing Carroll’s annual Easter egg hunt. My jaw dropped and my heart fluttered with anticipation. The tradition could respectably carry on!
I remember hovering by my dorm room window in St. Charles watching students outside polka-dotting the iconic hillside----colorful egg by colorful egg for the hunt later that day. I felt the excitement build inside me.
When it came time for the egg hunt to start, dozens and dozens of students lined up along the base of the hill and waited for the whistle to blow signaling the start. Tightly clutching their baskets/plastic bags/pillow cases, everyone leaned forward like runners primed at the start of a race. The whistle blew and we were off. I must admit I have never seen a group of people move quite as quickly as I did that day. It was like the commencement of the Hunger Games but instead of racing to get the best weapon, the students made a mad dash for the best eggs….the ones with the lucky tickets inside guaranteeing them a prize. The students stampeded up the hill in a flurry. I quickly found out that I didn’t really need anything to put eggs in because I only managed to snag about three or four of them. As soon as I spotted an egg, someone else swooped in and scooped it up before I could get to it.
The egg hunt was over in a matter of 60 seconds, possibly a generous 90 seconds. It was the fastest, most furious egg hunt of my life. But I loved every minute of it.
Although I miss Carroll’s annual egg hunt, I am lucky enough to have parents that continue the tradition for me at their house each year. This year there was not one but six of us “adults” over the age of 18 that participated in the egg hunt. Well, there was also my friend’s three-year-old daughter, Camille, who’s more respectable egg hunting age made the rest of us look rather ridiculous. But we are all young at heart so the hunt commenced.
My dad had the esteemed privilege of hiding the eggs this year. And hide them he did! Unlike Carroll’s hunts, we had to look under rocks and inside bushes to find them. He was instructed to leave some easier ones out though for Camille. My boyfriend, who is notoriously competitive during egg hunts, almost couldn’t stand walking by all of those easily accessible eggs that he knew he had to leave for Camille.
Even though the wind was howled that afternoon and most of our stomachs were loaded down with ham, potatoes and cheesecake from Easter dinner, we diligently hunted until we found all of the eggs. My boyfriend’s younger sister, Holly, found the golden egg with $20 in it. She was especially excited about that since last year big brother rubbed it in her face when he found the golden egg. Camille and I didn’t care much for the money though. We were satisfied to just pop open the eggs and start pillaging all of the candy inside.
At 27 years old, most of my friends are married with kids now. They’re content watching their little ones scurry after Easter eggs while they cheer them on. But me-----well, I’m just happy to keep playing out my youth as long as possible and avoiding the “growing up” piece of life my dad has always warned me about.
The state's office of tourism has published grand but manageable booklets in pdf file form. If you're planning to see Montana this summer, it's a good place to start!
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