Goals

I was looking back at past entries on my blog and found something very encouraging. On August 14th, 2010  I wrote about coming back from Africa. It was actually my first post on this blog. It was written less than a week after returning. I didn't come right out and say it but they were goals. Here is what I wrote:

There is a larger plan though beyond getting my hair back to it's voluminous shiny self and filling my body with as many tasty treats as I can. The scheme ultimately is to get into grad school for a masters degree in some sort of an environmental education oriented program.

So here are the things that are on my list:

Study for GREs

Find job

Take GREs

Apply to Grad school

I have already accomplished this. It took two years but I'm glad that I took the time to look back and found this. New goals for the next two years are: 

Learn more about Environmental Education
Get a graduate degree
Find a job

Waking Up Camp

Looking back I realized that I have never given a good description of camp. So to catch everyone up here it is:
Camp is a cabin on a lake in Vermont. My great-grandfather on my fathers side of the family bought it for him and his children to run around in the summer time. My grandfather, aunts, uncles, cousins and now children of my cousins have grown up running around in the woods, playing in the lake, exploring the creeks and generally having a great time. In the late fall it was used for many years as a deer camp as well. We let the ice fisherman gain access to the lake and in return they make sure the place is taken care of. Camp hasn't changed much since the time it was bought. There is running water, but not hot water and you can't drink it, there are comfortable couches and chairs surrounding the wood stove, there is a galley style kitchen with some appliances from the 1960s, upstairs there is an open floor plan filled with lots of beds, the best part is the porch that faces the lake. Camp isn't insulated, when the wind blows outside you can feel it on your face inside. At one point we had over 20 people stay the night. Camp is much more than walls, floors, couches, dishes and a stove. Camp is a place of family bonding, fun, but most of all love.


Camp-itus is an illness that occurs to people who know and love camp and miss being there. It's like an itch that won't away and especially after a long winter everyone in my family has camp-itus. The only way to cure this illness is to go to camp. It is tradition for my family to go to camp in mid April around the time for my and my dads birthdays. My dads birthday is the 15th and mine is the 21st. Typically we are the last ones to leave camp and the first ones to open it. Abbie and I were the first to arrive on Friday and I able to make a fire in the stove without kindling. I felt accomplished. Starting a fire in the cold stove is hard, doing it without kindling is even harder.

We had a great night and I made some amazing pizza (a specialty of mine) for Abbie and I. We had a good night catching up and sitting by the stove. The next morning we work up and got to cleaning. Mice enjoy living at camp in the winter and so the cabinets are full of mouse poop. Abbie and I armed ourselves with bleach, sponges (they were bought just for this purpose and then thrown away), and paper towels and began from one end and worked our way to the other. Before anyone arrived camp had been cleaned. The weekend went well, my Aunt Patty, Aunt Peggy, Uncle Randy, Uncle Greg, my cousin Nathan his girlfriend Mikayla came and celebrated. It was bitter cold outside and the ice wasn't going to go out for another week. Many people woke up cold and when we went out to the lake to get a bucket of water I found I had to choose a new spot because the spot I was using before had frozen over!

Even though it was cold and the stove doesn't really heat up the camp 3 hours everyone had a very good time. Coming back from a winter and opening camp is more like coming home rather than going on vacation. The place is filled with happy memories from generations. I've been told by many of my friends that they like it, but can't explain why. I think its because places have memory. They hold the emotions of those who have come before. This is why people love camp, because it loves them back.

San Francisco

I've been hanging out in the bay area all week now and I figured I should post some pictures of my adventures. My main reason for coming out here was to visit my friend Sarah. I met Sarah in college and she's one of my best friends, a friend I will I will have for life. There are few people in this world who you can pick right up where you left off. Sarah is one of those people to me.

Sarah and I at Pier 39

Taking the ferry into San Francisco, bay bridge

Graduate School

So I've been keeping a big secret from you all...

Story goes...

Back when I was living in Benin and about to return home I was looking for jobs in the outdoor education field. I found quite a few but wasn't able to take any of them because they weren't hiring mid season. This is pretty typical for seasonal jobs. They usually do a big hire pre-season and they don't generally bring other people on half way through the season. I did however come across an outdoor education center located in Wisconsin.

I looked and looked for an employment section. This place didn't have an employment section. I wondered how they hired people to work for them if there wasn't an employment section. Generally speaking all hiring is done online because potential employees are scattered throughout the country.

I was going to find out the mystery of this place. Mostly because I was in Cotonou and after 3 days all the fun things to do in Cotonou had already been done. I found that the people who worked at this facility were actually graduate students. They were going to school for a masters in Residential Experiential Education. I then checked out the program, for fun. After reading about the program I got really excited.

Until this point I hadn't thought going back to graduate school unlike many of the volunteers in my group who had taken the GREs in Ghana and applied online using Benin's unstable at best internet. In fact when I finished my undergrad I said that I wasn't going to go back to school. That was it, a bachelors was all I was ever going to need. Two years out of school and being around people who are applying to graduate school changes your perspective on going back. I quickly found myself on the application page.

When I got back to Vermont I started studying for the GREs. I took them in February and started looking again at the application. I had missed the deadline. I shrugged, oh well. Yes if I had been more on my game maybe it could have happened, but I would just apply again next year. Then I found out that the college only accepted students every other year. I was going to have to wait two years. I then looked at other job opportunities. Maybe grad school wasn't going to work out. I looked at some other graduate programs and found that the original program is really what I wanted. I put it out of my mind, it wasn't worth thinking about for another two years. At least I had taken the GREs.

I drifted around from state to state. I had a blast and lived the quote 'Not all who wander are lost' (J.R. Tolkien). Vermont to California to Wyoming to New Hampshire to Vermont to Alaska back to New Hampshire and ending up back in Vermont. I met so many great friends and did some amazing things! I gained significant experience in my field and learned so much. I wouldn't change it for the world.

About a year and half later my mom suggested I take a look at the program again. She had looked it up again after finding a link, I'm sure buried deep within some email. She reminded me of how interested I was in the program and encouraged me to apply now that I had the time to give the application it needed. After having the mind set of packing up and leaving and doing something for three months at a time my mind was hard wired to decline any offers for longer than 6 months. This was for two years, including a summer semester. I figured I could apply and let that sink in later. I worked hard on the application, changing my essays, re-answering questions, grammar and spell check... I could have been doing this process forever! But time was running out.

I applied and filled out my application and my friend had to go with me to the post office to keep me honest about mailing it. I kissed it goodbye and a weight was lifted off my shoulders. It was too late now. The wheels were turning, and it was up to the universe to decide.

Moral of the story: After two years of hoping and thinking about it I got in! I'm leaving this summer for the north woods of Wisconsin to attend graduate school!!

California

This winter has been particularly dreary, from a weather perspective. Cloudy days were getting the better of us in the North East. At least it snowed much more than it did last year, but still it was rough. After having missed 'real' summer last year, believe it or not but living on a glacier wasn't conducive to wearing shorts and tank tops, and going swimming. Last summer I was more likely to get trench foot than I was to wear a bathing suit. This winter there was also a lack of sun and I think that along with last summer I had a huge lack of vitamin D. Everyone this winter was having the same problem, lack of patience and just feeling generally like crap. Ad so when my good friend from college invited me to spend some time with her I jumped at the chance.

Sarah lives outside of San Francisco, sunny, wonderful, California. So I'm out here for a little while before going back to mud season in Vermont. I've only been here for about 24 hours but I already remember why I love California so much. San Francisco is a totally different place from near Palm Springs, but I still love it out here. So while I'm here I'm hoping to catch as much sun as possible! Stock pile that vitamin D before I got home.  

Hiking in North Carolina

*Interactive Post* Place names are links, check them out!

 

Growing up in Vermont my brother and I were romping around in the Green Mountians since we were able to romp around anywhere. This was encouraged by our parents are grandparents who would bring us on nature adventures hiking, to camp, to canada, exploring the backyard. As a result both of us have a deep love of nature. My brother having found the woman who he wants to spend his life with (coinceidently Lynn is also my best friend) has been hiking every chance they get. So when I go visit them we go hiking. Last time I was in the Ashville, NC area it was my birthday and it was POURING, but we went hiking anyhow. This weekend it was beautiful and so the hiking was much more enjoyable. We went for a 5 mile hike up Crowders Mountain. It was so clear that we were able to see downtown Charlotte from the top. 

 

 On Saturday it was Lynns bachelorette party ziplining at Navitat lots of fun was had! 10 different ziplines and they're adding more next year! Not your traditional bachelorette party, but definately a good time.

 

On that same day of the bachelorette party Jason went hiking and he ended up off the Blue Ridge Parkway on a piece of the Art Loeb Trail. He came back saying that he had found a great place to take us. After reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson I've always been curious about grassy balds around this area. They are only found in a small area of the the Appalachians, and they are a unique biome. When Jason told me that he was going to take Lynn and I back there I was excited. The only way I could have described it was hiking out west. Because you could see for miles and the country was open, the tallest thing was about a 4 foot tall thicket, but mostly it was grassy. We were up about 6000 feet at the summit.

 

I've been wanting to go hiking all this winter to relieve some cumlative stress. Being in the woods has always given me a sense of the awesome world that we live in. Places that seem unexplored, and untainted wash away stress from our socially tangled worlds. 

Every 3 Months

Every 3 months I get the urge to go somewhere different. I want to pack up my car and head off. Since leaving the Peace Corps I've lived in Vermont, New Hampshire, Wyoming, California, Alaska and visited Maine, North Carolina, North Dakota, North Carolina, Minnesota among others which I have driven through.

Now that it's April it's time to move on. I've been here since December and Frankly winter has been awesome as far as snow and ski conditions have been, but as far as life events I'm ready for it to be over. That's one of the appeals to life as a drifter; you get to leave some of your troubles behind.

Didn't like your job?
People weren't the best?
Weather didn't suit you?
Someone hurt you?
You don't have to go back!
- Keep in mind that moving away doesn't solve everything.

On the flip side if you did have an amazing time somewhere you can choose to go back. I've had some people tell me that they would feel very stressed living this type of life. At this point I would be stressed out if I had to live a lifestyle which kept me in one place for more than a year. I'm not ready to settle anywhere. A friend of mine says 'I love beginnings but I hate endings'. I agree, it's always easier to start something than it is to end it. But then again, if you never end something you never have the chance to start something new.