At Y.E.T.I., we get to watch young people grow up outside. This year, that growing-up showed itself in the biggest way I have ever seen it, and in the smallest, quietest moments that are just as easy to miss as they are impossible to forget.

The big one was Mount Baker. For four days, a team of Y.E.T.I. students, staff, and volunteers made their way up a 10,781-foot glaciated peak, far from the local parks and first hikes where so many of these students began their Y.E.T.I. journeys. It took lots of preparation, training, and teamwork. What stays with me isn't only the summit photo. It's about a student who had turned around on Mount Adams the year before and nearly convinced herself that mountaineering wasn't for her. Standing above the clouds on Baker, and realizing that the limits she had set for herself were not ones she had to accept. And it's a moment near the top when one student was running low on water, and another simply said, "I got you, man." That is the whole thing, right there: grit and looking out for the person next to you.

Mount Baker showed us what growing up with Y.E.T.I. can look like at its most dramatic. But just as meaningful are the quieter moments, like a spring afternoon at Seahurst Park. This year, we brought a group of middle schoolers to the beach to turn over rocks and get excited about every crab and sea star. Partway through the day, a high school junior walked up, not on a school trip, not on a scheduled Y.E.T.I. adventure, but because it was a beautiful day. His very first Y.E.T.I. trip had been to that same park. Two years later, he had come back on his own, with a friend, to a place he now knew and chose for himself. That is the quiet moment we are really working toward: a young person returning to a favorite park, bringing someone with them, and moving through public land like it belongs to them, because it does.

None of it, not the summit, not the tide pools, happened by accident this year. When the grant landscape shifted, and long-standing state funding fell away, this community refused to let a change in a budget decide which young people get to access their public lands. Volunteers, donors, educators, and partners rallied so that Y.E.T.I. had the resources to keep every trip free and every door open. We chose more time in nature, not less. We refused to let economics and politics dictate which young people went to the beach or stood on a mountain. I don't have adequate words for what that means, so I will say it plainly: thank you.

The work matters because the outdoors changes people, and because too many young people are still told, in a hundred quiet ways, that these places are not for them. Every Y.E.T.I. trip is an argument against that. First hikes and first summits, favorite parks returned to and friends helped along the way, and the slow, steady growing-up that happens when a young person discovers they can do hard things and that they belong out there. Thank you for reading about our year, and for making sure the next one stays open to everyone.

With gratitude,