I had this crazy thought on the flight over that since I'd pretty much just be at my leisure this trip, perhaps I could do just take a few minutes each day to post about what I'd done.  Haha ha. Right. The trip is almost halfway over and here I am with the first update. That in itself ought to give you a pretty good idea about how much fun I've been having, but if you'd like some actual details, here you go:

We got here Thursday afternoon, ate dinner at 4 o'clock and headed back to the hotel. I passed out by 6 and slept like a rock for thirteen hours- completely oblivious to my father's quite impressive snoring and the fact that his phone rang and he was on the phone for almost an hour. Yep, I was out.

My plan for that first day was to just sort of wander around Aberdeen and get a feel for the place. It was a lovely day and I took my time enjoying all the various parks and statues and things. I stopped at the tourist information place where they loaded me up with a couple dozen brochures, stopped for coffee, then wandered down to the harbor and the Maritime museum. After that I headed north again and found my way to Provost Skene's house. It is one of the oldest residences in the city, dating back to the 1500's.

On my way back, I strolled through the St Nicholas kirk yard (church graveyard) and found probably the coolest tree I have ever seen.

All of it's branches were zig-zagy, but the other trees near by looked like the same kind of tree, but with normal branches.  I think this one is just special.

The next day, Saturday, Dad and I caught a train up to Inverness (about two hours north of Aberdeen). Even just the incredible views on the ride there were enough to make the trip worth while. After walking around the city a bit and grabbing a bite to eat, we took a bus to Urquhart Castle.

The castle is situated on the shores of Loch Ness (nope, no monster sightings) and parts of it date back to the thirteenth century. I guess this was the first castle I had ever seen (except for the one which serves as the courthouse in Inverness, but since the whole thing was built in the mid 1800"s, I don't really think it counts.)

On Sunday we went to church in Aberdeen and had the good fortune of not only being their on potluck day, but also of landing an offer to be driven Crathes Castle instead of trying to catch a bus. Again, the drive was lovely. We took a brief detour to Banchory and stopped at the Falls of Feugh.

Spectacular. Though Crathes castle was built in the 16th century, it had served as a residence until the 1900's, so most of it had been modernized along the way. Much different than the ruins of Urquhurt. It came complete with some pretty impressive gardens and seemed very much like a fairytale castle indeed.

Yesterday I was back to exploring solo. It was a bright sunny day, so I caught a train to Stonehaven, then hiked along the coastal path to Dunnottar Castle. This undoubtedly ranks as one of the coolest places I have ever seen. You hiked up a steep little path from the harbour, then past a World War I memorial and some cows, then on along the edge of a pretty steep embankment with waves crashing against the rocks below, then down some stairs and up some stairs, and there you are- Dunnottar Castle. My unequivocal favorite castle of all the castles thus far. It has the kind of history a castle is supposed to have- hiding place of the Honours of Scotland, chapel burnt down by William Wallace, attempted escapees falling to their death on the rocks below. Wow. The wind there was unbelievable. I was literally clinging to the handrail as I wound up the tower steps wondering how many tourists they loose every year thanks to its precarious location and gailforce winds...I didn't see those statistics in the brochure. Anywoo after an hour or so the weather had shifted noticeably and it looked as though it would start pouring any minute. I took that as my cue to begin my several mile hike back and was pretty sure I was in for a wet train ride home. Though the waves crashed and the sky darkened and the wind blew so strongly that it actually hurt when my hair whipped my face, somehow, the rain held off. I walked back down to the harbour, back along beach, back through the charming town of Stonehaven, and all the way back up to the train station just in time for the 4:30 train. By the time I made it Aberdeen, about a 15 minute ride, the sun had set completely and it was pitch black and raining. I ended the day with tired feet and wind rouged cheeks and a wonderful Indian food dinner with Dad. Needless to say, it was pretty stellar day.

After the rigours of yesterdays adventure, I decided to take it fairly easy today. I headed to the Art museum this morning and spent a few hours perusing their collections. The highlight would have to be the "Lewis Chessman." They are wonderfully expressive chesspieces carved out of walrus tusk and though their actual origin is unknown, they date back to the 12th century, which is pretty cool. After lunch I roamed around town a bit and spent some more time looking at the graves St. Nicholas Kirk. The oldest one I could read said 1615. That's old. That's what, like a hundred and fifty years before America was even a country. Weird. The most intriguing one would have to be of one John Anderson with the inscription "Wizard of the North." Thinking that a very odd thing to find in a church yard, I did a little research.  Did you know John Anderson was a legendary magician? Houdini did.  He even came to Aberdeen to visit his grave, found it in a sad state of disrepair, and paid to have the stone replaced. Cool, huh?  I've spent the last hour or so sipping coffee at a little cafe, and tomorrow, who knows? I'm thinking either north to the Old Aberdeen Trail and Kings College, or south to Duthie park and the winter gardens. We'll see how it goes.

There is something strange and magical about being in the sky before the sun has made it up there. This morning around 6:45 I broke through the clouds over Tulsa and into a strange, glowing dream scape. You could actually see the darkness clinging to the ground below. From underneath the clouds looked like puffs of dense, inky smoke, but from above they were gentle waves of glowing fluff. Not a bad way to start the day. Perhaps I should back up. I'm in Chicago right now and will spend the day exploring O'hare until about 5:30 this evening when I'll head for London. By then I will have met up with my dad and we will be well on our way to Aberdeen, Scotland. Dad has to go there, and other far off places, for work from time to time and thus has accumulated a substantial number of frequent flyer miles. Since I am currently in between adventures, I get the distinct privilege of a free week and a half "business" trip to Scotland. I know, WOW.
Ok, so lets back up a bit more. My time at dancing rabbit came to an end about a week ago and it definitely warrants a some discussion. I got to do so many fun and wonderful things, but what I can't get over are all the things I didn't do while there. More precisely, things I didn't do but also didn't miss. For over two months, I didn't use a microwave, didn't wear makeup, didn't eat at a restaurant, didn't use, or see, a dishwasher, didn't dry my clothes in a dryer, didn't drive a car, and didn't see, let alone watch a TV. I flushed a toilet exactly twice, charged my phone approximately twice and used it maybe four times, and probably rode in a car an average of once a week. That should be weird. I realize that. But most of these things I didn't even notice until after leaving. What I did have was an abundance of nature, good people with interesting talents and conversations, abnormally sound sleep despite the fact that I lived in a tent, and very few things to worry about. The last week there really couldn't have been much better. The weekly potluck was a particularly large one since a new group of visitors had just arrived and a few people were still around from Sandhill's sorghum festival. Post-potluck, I got to participate in my first ever contra dance. I don't actually know the difference between contra and square dancing, but basically we had a lovely band and a caller instructing us to do things like "circle to the left" and "do-si-do." It went surprisingly well considering my lack of anything resembling rhythm and abnormal difficulty with the concept of left and right and it was a ton of fun. That weekend was the much anticipated cheese making workshop. Steve, "the Cheese Maker" came in from Wisconsin (where else?) and we had about a dozen people come in (from Chicago, Texas, Wyoming...) for the weekend. It was awesome! By Sunday morning we had made chevre, feta, camembert, mozzarella and blue cheese and had so much fun in the process. Oh, and butter, can't forget the butter. And the best part is that everyone got to take some home. Yay cheese. Saturday night a band from Trueman state came to play in the common house. They played nice old-timey music and they were great. After they left, a bunch of us were still just sitting around when we heard the enchanting sounds of a far off accordion. If you didn't know, I LOVE accordion. It is one of those surefire joy inducers (along with rain, trains, and bubbles) and come to find, out one of the visitors is actually a rather decent accordion player. Who knew. In fact, the whole group was rife with unusual talents which led to the inception of Carnival night. It was my last night there and I couldn't have imagined a better way to end my time at Dancing Rabbit. Around 4:30 people started gathering in the courtyard with various juggling implements, hoola-hoops, poi, diablo (Chinese yoyo), and.....accordion centered music! The weather was perfect and for the next couple of hours everyone just played, watched, learned, showed off. It really was magical. (a really bad video that only vaguely captures the atmosphere)The next morning I took one last stroll through the community, started up the car, and took off. Perhaps Gus (my car) had grown accustomed to his life of lounging around under trees, or perhaps he had grown old when I wasn't looking, but for one reason or another, after a bought of reluctant starting he threw that dreaded check engine light and I could no longer ignore his idiosyncrasies. Long story short, my sister did the math and realized that I would be pulling into Broken Arrow at about 75,023 miles, a whopping 23 miles past my extended warranty coverage. That meant Gus had to go to an unfamiliar dealership of questionable competency in Little Rock, get a new thermostat...and a much needed bath, and I had to pay the stupid deductible for going to an out of town dealership. Bummer. Even though a lot of the time in Arkansas was spent dealing with car stuff, I got to spend it with my sister and it was so good to see her. While there, I got the unexpected call from my father asking if I knew where my passport was, followed by "I'm going to Scotland in a few days, want to come?" After a brief stop in BA, I headed to Oklahoma City for the weekend, then back to BA and found out around 5 pm yesterday that I would be leaving the house at 4:30 this morning. It has been a busy, and disturbingly unsustainable, week. I put over a thousand miles on my car, have eaten several unsatisfying (albeit cheap, quick and convenient) fast food items, and now I'm waiting to fly half way around the world. So long my cute little carbon footprint--I hope to fit you next year. Anyhoo, this has turned out to be a rather incredible year. It started with Americorps, then Dancing Rabbit, now Scotland, and when I return I get to try my hand at full time construction worker. Perhaps reconstruction worker is a more fitting title- one of my favorite couples ever has hired me to help in their ambitious efforts to uncover the potential in their soon to be awesome new home. I can hardly wait to get started. Soon you will once more be hearing tales about tools and tile and drywall...and hopefully none about thumbnails. But first, world travels!

Yet again it seems I have waited so long to post that I cannot possibly do justice to all the fun and awesome things that have happened. I think I will just start with the most recent events and work my way backward to fill in the month long gap.
This last Saturday was the sorghum festival at Sandhill Farms, one of the neighboring communities. They started as a legit hippie commune way back in the seventies and support themselves by growing, harvesting, processing, and selling sorghum as well as honey and horseradish and a few other odds and ends. The festival included a hayride tour of the fields and a demonstration of the pressing and boiling down of the juices. It was pretty impressive. There were also garden tours and apple cider and candle making demos and lots of lounging around enjoying a beautiful day with beautiful voices singing old-timey songs.
The day before that was the annual Land Clean day here at dancing rabbit. Everyone spends the morning cleaning up different communal areas and then after lunch everyone focuses on cleaning up their own warren (it's Dancing Rabbit, so the people are occasionally called rabbits, and since rabbits live in warrens, that is what they call their individual plots of land. Strange, I know, but you get used to it.) I had a pretty fantastic day. I got to spend most of the morning splitting wood for the winter supply for the common house. You may recall me raving about my first experience with this a few months back, and sure enough, I still love it. Getting pretty good at it too. Since my muscles seem to get tired long before I get bored, I've even been working on my ambidextrous maul swinging skills and they are progressing quite nicely. My afternoon was spent with the wonderful combination of yard work and power tools. The Mercantile wants to have a demonstration garden next year so I started preparing a good size plot for it by laying down cardboard and then adding a think layer of mulch on top. By the time they are ready to plant, the grass underneath will have died and nice new layer of compost will be on top. The other big project involved building stairs. Last week one of the ladies had mentioned that the stairs for the humanure compost bins were so far gone that they weren't really usable, and that though she'd love to help, she just didn't have the know how to fix them herself. Fortunately I do and I also love few things more than teaching women about tools. We got to use everything from cats paw to circular saw to nail gun and ended up with some much sturdier steps.
Let's see, I gave blood last Tuesday! Again, probably strange but I really do love giving blood. I think this was the first time I had given since I stopped eating much meat, and I was pleasantly surprised by how great I felt afterwards. Not dizzy at all and not really even noticeably tired. Yay!
The Wednesday before last I joined a bunch of other people for an excursion into Kirksville (about an hour away) to watch some Chinese Acrobats perform at Truman State University. It was quite a treat. They did some seriously impressive, not to mention nerveracking, stunts and it was oddly fun to be in an auditorium full of average people who shower daily and wear makeup and crazy things like that. I even had the oppertunity to use a flush toilet for the second time in two months. Yeah, it was big night.
AH, here's a good one. I finally got to fulfill a long time dream of mine- phonetic scrabble! Here's the thing, I love scrabble, but I am really rather pathetic at spelling. This frustrating combination led to the envisioning of a magical game where as long as you could site examples and convince the majority of players that the letters you played could be pronounced as the word you want them to be, it counts. At long last, I found a group that was willing to give it a shot, and sure enough, it was everything I had ever dreemed it kood bea ("ee" as in seemed,"k" as in kale and "oo" as is hood, and "ea" as in flea.)
The underbrush, namely the poison ivy, have lately died back enough to make the forested areas reasonably traversable. One day, while exploring the forgotten area behind my tent, I stumbled upon some abandoned looking shiitake logs. After much asking around, I finally found the original owner and turns out they were in fact old and forgotten and since she hadn't even realized they were still producing, she was more than happy for me to do the harvesting. Several of them were already way past their prime, but I had a blast harvesting my first ever shiitake mushrooms and dinner that night was especially tasty.
For a couple of weeks, the Mercantile pretty much shut down and took a vacation. Since the store was rarely open and we weren't having guests, there really wasn't much I needed to do. So that I didn't just have to cook for myself every meal, I ended up floating between project sites exchanging labor for food. It was great! I think I worked on about every project and did everything from gardening to plastering to laying foundation footers and hanging drywall.
To back up a bit more, the reason the Mercantile was taking time off was because they needed it. Unfortunately, the reason they needed and deserved a respite was because the week before Dancing Rabbit had had to bury one of their well loved members. It was the first death the community had experienced, so on top of all the grief of losing a friend to a long fight with cancer, they had the additional stress of figuring out all the logistics and regulations for transporting bodies and for natural burial in Missouri. It was strange being so close to all the preparations for someone I had never met, but at the same time it was really quite beautiful to watch as the community members helped pull each other through it. It was by far the most participatory funeral I have ever witnessed (over a dozen people spoke in the actual service) and it was clearly cathartic for the friends and family to have a chance to do the things that the funeral industry has slowly taken away—selecting a site, digging the grave, sewing the shroud, arranging the service however they saw fit. Here's a link to the obituary that ran in the local paper in case you want to read more about her: . So yes, after the emotional exhaustion of mourning and the physical exhaustion from taking care of a full inn of family members, it was time to close up shop and recoup for a while.
It was also about that time that the feilds turned into a sea of yellow and white flowers and the monarchs decended in mass. You could just stroll into the prarie, and count eight or so buterflies on any given bush. It was breathtaking.
Well, I think that takes us pretty much back to where I left off last time. It is hard to believe that my time here is already drawing to a close. This week will be quite busy as we prepare for and host a cheese making workshop, but about a week from today I will be heading home.

I suppose it is high time for me to get around to gloating about all the fun things I've been up to lately. To recap all the significant and names and terms, I am currently an intern/work exchange participant (commonly abbrevated to "wexer") at the Milkweed Mercantile Bed & Breakfast (refereed to as the Mercantile, inn, b&b, work) that is a part of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (DR) that is located near the tiny town of Rutledge, Missouri. I realize I use a lot of these interchangeably, sorry if it's confusing.
Anyhoo, here are some of the highlights thus far. One of the first weeks here we had a canning workshop. We had about 8 guests in the inn that weekend and it was so much fun. Speaking of guests, pretty much everyone who has passed through has been rather wonderful. They use the term "self-selecting" around here and that seems to be a great way to describe those who find their way here Most seem to have some preexisting connection to either the people or practices here and it makes for some wonderful conversations. This weekend, somewhat accidentally, turned into grandparents weekend. We had three sets of grandparents represented and it so fun to watch all three generations interacting, especially in such an unusually environment. All of them had been here before and they were all a lot of fun.

The work part has been great. One of my main goals in coming was to see what it was like to operate a bed and breakfast. So while cleaning and doing endless amounts of dishing aren't necessarily fun, they all contribute to the overall picture which is proving to be a rather nice one. I have gotten to do a fair amount of baking, which never feels like work at all, and I've been delighted to learn that vegan baking can actually be quite delicious. Other than that the tasks have ranged from sewing patches onto aprons to building lumber racks with an enormous framing nail gun. The variety has been awesome.

On my days off, I've been trying to help out with as many of the construction projects as possible. The first site I worked on was a straw bale house and they were applying the first coat of plaster to the outside. The mix consisted of straw, clay, sand, and water and you just grab handfuls of the stuff and work it into/onto the exposed bales of straw.
Next, I got to work at a different site on finish plaster inside. Perhaps the mixing process warrants some explanation. The ingredients for this were clay, sand, manure, wheat paste, and cattail fluff. You dump the first three ingredients out and a large tarp and start stomping around in it until it is homogenized. Then you add the other things and keep stomping. When that is done and you've loaded into buckets (it takes a couple of hours per batch and makes, hmmm, 5ish buckets full?), the fun part begins. I think there are usually three coats of plaster, getting a progressively smoother consistency for each layer. To get the final coat on the wall you use a combination of hands and trowels and try to get it on as smooth and level as possible. After it has set for a while, you can burnish out any unwanted imperfections. Turns out, I love finish plaster! The homeowner kept saying crazy things about how it was the best plaster work she'd ever seen, but how much of that was true and how much was just her stroking my ego in the hope that I'd return for more free labor I couldn't really say. Regardless, if you need any earthen plaster work done, you should probably let me know ;)
After that I helped work on an earth bag wall. Basically, you fill up bags with gravel or a gravel and clay mix and tamp them down till they are nice and solid. You end up with a nice brick like wall (the "bricks" being about 1 1/2 feet wide, 2 1/2 feet long, and around 100 pounds each).
Today I helped with yet another entirely new process. This house was still in the early stages and getting the foundation set up. They have excavated out about the top 2 feet of soil, and the exposed earth will serve as the foundation. Around the edge is a deeper trench that will have about three feet of gravel for drainage and expansion compensation. To create the floor of the house, I think he said there will be layers of straw for insulation and then earthen plaster for a beautiful, smooth, durable floor. They are currently working on setting some urbanite bases for posts that will support the roof. This particular house will have a living roof so the posts need to be able to support a pretty substantial amount of weight.
I know a lot of this probably just sounds like hard work to most of you, but for me the learning and gaining new skills is incredibly fun. If shoveling gravel on your days off doesn't sell you on the wonderful lifestyle here, perhaps the abundance of music is more up your ally. When I stopped playing french horn after ninth grade, I seemed to successfully extinguish any capability I had for making enjoyable music. As one who absolutely adores all forms of well made music, it kills me that I have nothing to contribute. Fortunately, it seems like everyone else here does, so every night I get to sit back and enjoy whatever impromptu musical gatherings are taking place. Wednesdays are song circle days when whoever wants to just sits around and sings. They say talent isn't a prerequisite, and they haven't kicked me out yet, so that's nice. I have also been getting to go to yoga about twice a week. I've made do practicing alone for last couple years, but it is so much nicer to have a group to do it with.
Lets see, what else...? Well, one day I made the hour or so journey with a bunch of other people to an apple orchard in Canton. The system is, you picked apples for the orchard, and you get to keep about one out of five bushels that you pick. We were all geared up for a nice, long day of apple picking, but when we got there we learned there had been some sort of miscommunication and we weren't going to be able to pick that day. We ended up spending the rest of the morning and early afternoon just hanging out and picnicking in a park. The lack of apples was a bit disappointing, but it turned into an absolutely delightful day anyway. The highlight would have to be this huge pile of hole ridden shells along the banks of the Mississippi. We determined they are the left overs from a button plant from who knows how long ago. They were buried under about 3 feet of earth, but with all the recent rain, big chunks of the bank had washed out and exposed huge piles of them. I love unexpected things like that...and we wouldn't have had the pleasure had apples worked out.
I seem to keep finding myself in places with odd definitions of "entertainment." In Americorps over twenty of us sitting around watching and cheering while some girls buzzed all their hair off. Weird, I know. Here the arrival of a knuckle boom truck loaded with fire wood was a spectacle warranting lawn chairs and giant bowls of popcorn. In all fairness, it really was quite fascinating to watch the huge, articulated claw maneuver the massive logs around.
I've also been learning all sorts of random fun things. Like how to make cordage out of natural fibers. And the process for making fire with a bow drill.
(no, that is not how the average person starts a fire here, but yes that is a school bus in the background that has been converted into a house)

Oh yeah, the other communities. There are two other communities within a couple square miles. One of them, Sandhill is an income sharing commune that has been around since the seventies or something. The other, Red Earth Farms, is more like a gathering of individual homesteads. Dancing Rabbit seems to be in the middle on the autonomous versus commune spectrum. There is a lot of cooperation and camaraderie between the three and once a week they all get together for a potluck, one week at Sandhill, the next at DR. It is so much fun and the food is always wonderful.
Today another two of the wexers headed home. It is drawing near to the end of the season and though new people are still trickling in, most are on the tail end of their time here. The constant flux is an odd element that I didn't really know to expect. It is hard to believe that my time is already about halfway over. I've done a lot, learned a lot, and met a lot of wonderful people, but it still feels like I just arrived in a foreign land and I've haven't come even close to learning half of what it has to offer. I suppose that means I should stop typing and get back to experiencing.

(Okay, so I typed this whole thing up a week and a half ago and then somehow failed to post it. So here you go, hopefully I can get an update on all the super great things that have happened since then posted soon!)

I have now been at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage for a full two weeks. Since you likely have some burning questions and/or misconceptions about living off the grid in a commune, I think I’ll try to dispel some of those before moving into what the experience has actually been like.

Yes, I live in a tent. It is really quite nice though- I can stand up in it, with a few tarp additions and modifications it hardly even leaks, and I have been sleeping better than I have in months...maybe even years.


Yes, everything is powered by either solar or wind power. I hear it can get rough in the dead of winter, but so far it has stayed fairly sunny and windy, so while everyone is contentious about not using more power than necessary, it hasn’t felt like any sort of inconvenience or deprivation.

Yes, a lot of the food is different here, but way less than I expected it to be. Somewhere in all the various things I had read I had formulated the idea that they grew most of what they ate. While this is true to varying degrees around the village, the overall focus is on sustainability, not self-sufficiency. Some of the food co-ops do try to grow pretty much everything, but the Mercantile focuses more on just making sure to buy local if possible and organically, ethically, and fairly obtained items. And in case you were concerned, I have been eating very, very well.

Yes, I shower with rainwater and use composting toilets. But look, not scary at all are they?

(okay, in an effort for full disclosure, most of the facilities aren't nearly this fancy...I'm just super lucky and get to use the ones in the b&b.)

Ok, so what is it really like here? At night I fall asleep to an insect orchestra and the perfect harmonies of the wind in the trees. In the morning I wake to the ever changing kaleidoscope of leaf and bug shapes strewn out above me. No two days are the same, though many do share common themes- washing dishes, reading, going for walks,eating delicious food, more dishes. Some days I cook, some I do yard work, I hang up laundry, make beds, pretty much whatever needs to be done. The pace of life here seems much slower. It isn’t that people aren’t busy, they just lack that frantic, overworked edge about them. There are so many different projects going on around the community. Huge gardens, a fledgling vineyard, various types of homes in various stages of construction. It is so fun to just to watch as people go about their business, doing what needs to be done on whatever schedule they choose. There are also all sorts of extra things going on- ultimate frisbee three times a week, potlucks with the two neighboring communities, yoga, song circles, all kinds of fun things. The town of Rutledge (population 103) is about three miles away. The main attraction is Zimmerman's, a Mennonite run general store. They sell a little bit of everything and a disproportionally large amount of fabric. I’m still settling in and figuring out how things really work here. What I had hoped to find was a place where life and work were integrated. Where people had a connection to the place they lived and the food they ate. Where “work” was just an extension of interests, beliefs and needs instead of a completely separate segment of life. For the most part, that seems to be the case here. Not entirely of course, and yes to some degree I’m sure I’m still just seeing what I had hoped to see, but it's at least much closer to that than mainstream society. Families eat meals together, neighbors all know each other, and people work together to accomplish things. Is it perfect? No, but the efforts are being made and it has been very encouraging and exciting to see the culture they have cultivated here. Seems like with a little determination and cooperation, you can shape your world into whatever you want it to be, and I like that thought very much.

Looking Back

Americorps ended one week ago today. For one week now I have backed up without a ground guide. I have had more than $4.50 per day for food. I have had the liberty of choosing who I spend my time with. I have made my own schedule and worn a different outfit every day. I’d say it’s been a pretty good week. My 10 month commitment with Americorps ended on the fifth, and since then I have spent a few days in OKC seeing all the wonderful friends I left behind and made a quick run down to Texas for a long overdue family visit. The last few days have been back at my parents house packing and unpacking, remembering and forgetting. I leave for my next adventure on Monday and in some ways it just seems like a sixth and final Americorps project, and in some ways it feels like a whole new life. I was looking through a journal a few days ago and came across something I’d written on October 9, 2009, the day I left for Americorps, and I think I’d like to share it:

"In the scope of my meager life, today is rather huge. I am on a plane headed for Dallas. From there I will fly to Cedar Rapids, Iowa where I will be greeted by Americorps staff. I will then board a bus and make the hour drive into Vinton- my home base/starting off point for the next ten months. So when I say that today is huge, I mean that I’m moving. I mean that for the first 24 years of my life I have lived in the same state, never more than a couple hours away from my family, never without some sort of preexisting support system. Leaving for college, graduating, moving to a new house, switching jobs- all of these seemingly large steps had common threads holding them together, providing comfort, making them safe. Within about 3 seconds of taking off from Tulsa the ground had already vanished. It is a drizzly day and the hazy clouds have sucked us into a blurry fog of nothingness. That’s how this whole move feels. Like I’m blind, like all ties are severed and all institutions crumbled and the next phase of life will require the long arduous process of rebuilding everything from scratch. I know I’m ready for it, be can one ever really be prepared? It’s so disorienting. What parts of who I am are innate and which are simply products of my environment? What things do I like out of habit or convenience? What kind of people will I attract in a crowd of complete strangers? I honestly have no idea…but I am about to find out. I am excited about the future laid out before me, but the excitement is strongly tainted with fear and an odd mournful grief. I’m moving, but it feels oddly like I had to kill to my former life in order to grab hold of this one. I had a pretty good life. A decent job, a great house with unbelievably cheap rent, a church that I loved and was well plugged in to, a wonderful group of friends. Nothing was bad…just stale. Stagnant. Static. I know there is more out there. There has to be. I guess I’m just tired of sitting around waiting for life to happen to me, it is way past time for me to get out there and make something happen. I should have made this move two years ago. That would have been the healthy, natural thing to do, but true to form I procrastinated, I wasted time and momentum, I let my life atrophy while mulling around feeling trapped by options. Not that good things haven’t happened. In some regards it was quite productive. I learned to relax, I learned to read, I learned a lot about my basic nature including some truly unattractive aspects that will probably be life long projects. I have gained a lot of knowledge- now it’s time I do something about it. There are so many things about this experience that I am fearful of. Some are practical concerns- is it wise financially? Will I hold up physically? Will I be able to find a job afterward? Some are rather petty but still cause significant anxiety- what if the uniform isn’t comfortable? What if I can’t sleep without my five pillows and memory foam mattress? What if I have to work with kids? All of these are fairly easy to deal with. I can come up with game plans or convince myself I’ll be stronger for them. The ones that wake me up at night aren’t so easy to ignore. I’m so used to my independence, what if I literally can not cope with the lack of alone time? How will my faith hold up in the absence of my church community? What if, once separated from the influence of my familiar people and places, I discover that I am not at all who I thought I was? What if I don’t like the person that I find? I don’t have answers for these ones. I don’t believe there really are any. My future seems so incredibly malleable at present, which isn’t necessarily bad, just uncomfortable. So yes, today is huge. Today I said goodbye to the people, the places, the habits that have been the very framework of my existence. Today, for once, I have overruled my complacency and my uncertainty. I have done something drastic, proactive, ambitious. We will soon land and I will take a deep breath, put on a smile, and begin a new era of my life. I will toss all these concerns to the back dusty corner of my mind and focus my energy on making the very most of the present. I will block out the sorrowful longing for things past and the debilitating anxiety for the future and drink in the countless possibilities of the present. So yes, today I am moving, but more importantly, today I am finally moving forward."

So there you have it, a glimpse into the fretful mind of a somewhat younger me. In some ways that seems like such a different time. I have grown so accustomed to packing up and leaving yet I can still recall the unsettling finality of that foggy morning. I have never liked endings and I think it is just that- the finality. Relationships are frozen in whatever state you left them, lessons are left to be learned by whoever has the wisdom to pay more attention than you did, opportunities are abandoned beneath whatever rocks you failed to upturn. I have lived long enough to know that things will work out, regardless, but as endings come flying in my face I can never help but feel like there are so many areas I have failed to see thru to their full potential. And I hate that. I think that move from Oklahoma may be one of the few instances where I really felt I had exhausted every possible lead. I had gleaned everything I could from the situation, steered myself into a corner, and my fear was the only thing that kept me there so long. Looking back, its interesting to see how those fears panned out…and since I left the option of a shortish post about a thousand words ago, I might as well inform you of how they turned out: Financially: thanks to unexpected windfalls and careful management along the way, a surprisingly solid decision
Physically: there were aches and pains strewn throughout, but overall I feel healthier than when I left
Job: well, the next two months is planned out, but I’m oddly okay with the uncertainty betond that. I think the fact that I had about 5 five job offers along the way reminded me that as long as I keep my integrity and a strong work ethic, something will always work out.
Uniform: mens clothes are actually quite comfortable…except for the boots
Sleeping: yeah, apparently I can sleep anywhere
Kids: this was totally a warranted fear, but I definitely came out stronger from facing it (and boy did I face it). Turns out kids are okay and now I get to proceed like a normal adult instead of running away.
Now for the hard ones. It is difficult to gauge these objectively, but I think I did a fair job identifying what the challenges would be before hand. Redefining and renegotiating my independence and introversion was definitely tough. It was strange to feel such a difference in myself when I had time to be alone and had actual responsibilities to tend to versus when I felt like just one of the many grey shirted peons. Like completely different traits were brought to the forefront. It was hard to see how differently I had to balance things than other (less introverted) people, but it taught me a lot about my preferences and my actual needs. The whole faith thing proved more of an issue than I think I expected. I guess I never actually realized the reality of that whole Bible Belt thing. It was definitely a whole new environment, and not a particularly hospitable one. I was able to attend a church on pretty much every project but I was surprised to see what a different role it came to play. I basically went to which ever was within walking distance. I thought the theological differences would be problematic, but love proved to be the superseding factor. For those two hours a week I wasn’t surrounded by profanity. I didn’t feel judged or like the odd man out. I felt safe, welcome, encouraged. The message I heard from that environment of peace proved far more powerful than any of the sermons preached and for that I am thankful. Now for the final trepidation, the one about losing myself, I’m still not sure I know how to answer, because clearly there is no one to be but me, yet how can I objectively gauge change as opposed to natural progression? There were certainly times where I felt aspects of me were leaving, times when I felt so beaten down that the lighthearted joy felt not only inappropriate but wholly unwelcome. That was hard. I left feeling darker and less positive than when I went, but in just these few days of peace I can already feel the lightness returning. I think perhaps I am stronger than I thought. I’m not sure how to describe it, but perhaps a certainty or confidence that had never been forced to surface before. Sure some unpleasant traits surfaced during the whole experience, but overall I was surprised and pleased by the aspects that seem so deeply ingrained that even if environment is what put them there to start with, they are here to stay. Integrity for instance…I value that one a lot.


(Sooooo, I typed all that on Thursday night and planned to finish it up and post it first thing in the morning. It is now close to midnight on Sunday and I just remembered that in the whirlwind of packing and organizing I never got around to it. Sorry for the lack of conclusion, perhaps it will get added at a later date. I leave in the morning and will likely be computerless for the next few days (thanks a lot fedex) while I wait for my new laptop to be rerouted to my new address, but I promise to post about my new magnificent surroundings as soon as possible!}

The Sweet Taste of Victory

Don't you just love checking things off lists? Especially big things on lifetime lists, and especially when you realize that you actually rather enjoy them and want to add them right back on the list to do again? Yeah, me too. What I’m trying to say, is that Sunday’s triathlon was AMAZING! Over the last month and a half I have swam 4,375 yards, biked 73 miles, and ran 18 miles. That sounds like a rather exorbitant amount of “exercise” to me, but I have always wanted to do a triathlon, and I figured it was the sort of thing you sort of need to prepare for. The race was in Monticello, about an hour and half from Vinton, so me, Bob and Erin drove down the night before and stayed with some of the wonderful people we had met on our project in Hopkinton. The mornings before big events are always rather nerve racking, but this seemed particularly so. We dropped our bikes at the first transition area the night before, but we still had to leave around 6:15 to get all our transition things set up and catch a bus to the starting point. I laid out my towel, filled my water bottles, rolled up my socks to make them easier to slip onto wet feet, and had my helmet ready to go. Over the course of my training I had set a few goals for myself. Namely: Finish- that one was immutable. One way or another I was crossing that finish line. Once I was confident that this could happen, I decided I needed some sort of easy, attainable time goal and 2 hours seemed like plenty. Over the last couple weeks, however, when I started adding up my training times, not accounting for transitions and fatigue, it looked like it would be cutting it pretty close. At that point I decided I needed an easier secondary goal so I decided I just wanted to be in the top half of the finishers. I must be more accustomed to ranking myself academically as opposed to athletically, because when I got there and looked around at the physiques my fellow racers reality slapped me in the face that suddenly seemed absurdly ambitious. That led to my final goal: pass four people. I am happy to say that I achieved three of the four goals with flying colors. I finished, I finished in 1:54:07, and I passed 18 people in the process. I placed 141 out of 177, putting me squarely in the bottom fourth, but I have a theory on that—since this was the first ever Camp Courageous Triathlon, it seems plausible that the people who would have heard about it and/or been interested were mostly people who were already into tri’s . But that is just a theory. (Oh, and a note on the passing goal, I’m pretty certain I passed a few people in the swim portion, but I was much too busy attempting to breath to mess with counting, and I feel a little bad about counting the 12 year old I passed on the bike, but I defiantly passed him, and there were two guys that I only passed due my excellent drink while you run skills and they promptly repassed me as soon as they returned to their pace, but hey, I did technically pass them.) So here’s how the whole thing felt. The swim was scary. They let you seed yourself (so I headed straight for the back of the line) and they waited 5 seconds between each individual. That was really nice and cut down a lot on the dreaded “kicked in the face” scenario. Between the nerves and the adrenaline and the asthma and the not being able to see two inches into the water, I pretty much couldn’t breathe. I have been really proud of myself for the progress I’ve made in my side breathing, but the open water really threw me and I could only make it a few breathes before needing to stay up longer to get my bearings straight. I ended up side stroking for about half of the 500 yards (yeah, I know, real cool) but my 11:43 swim time is actually about a minute and a half faster than I think my practice swims were. I spent over three minutes in the first transition. I figured trying to get my breathing under control and my feet actually dry was worth an extra minute or so. About a quarter mile in, I tried to down shift and suddenly I couldn’t pedal. That was more than a bit disconcerting, but after clumsily swerving around for a few yards and nearly taking out a volunteer, the chain popped back into place and didn’t give me any more trouble for the rest of the race (16 miles in all). My bike time was 1:06:06, about 8 minutes faster than my last practice time, and it felt great. It was fairly flat (hmm, a flat road in Iowa, weird) and curved thru lovely fields and tiny towns. It was a beautiful day and you could see for miles and there was no place else I’d rather be. But then came the run. The bike to run transition has a pretty bad reputation as your leg muscles try to adjust to their new task. Sure enough, my feet felt like large, wobbly chunks of lead and my knees and hips like rusty hinges for the first half mile or so. Oh, but let me back up for a second. When I hopped of the bike in second transition, after a few seriously wobbly steps and some not so discrete laughing from the volunteers, my legs just couldn’t stop moving so I just tossed my bike on a rack and kept running thru the transition area. That led to a T time of 36 seconds which was, drumroll please….the overall third fastest transition time!!!! Yep, pretty much a pro. Ok, back to running. The course was an out an back run down the same road you had just biked in on. It was completely straight, with no shade, and you just ran to a sign then turned around. I’ve always been a fan of loop routes myself, but I don’t think I’d actually realized the psychological effects of the anticlimactic out and back. Almost as bad as a treadmill. Regardless, I ran the 5k in 32:29, only slightly slower than my normal running pace, and I was able to run the whole way. I assumed I would be absolutely dead by the end. I assumed I would fighting back pain and just willing myself to finish. Not so. I was still smiling and sure, I was totally exhausted, but in a healthy way not the “wow, everything in my body thinks I shouldn’t have just done that” way. That’s the response I’m used to, so this was a nice and welcome surprise. Bob and Erin also did great and we are all pretty proud of ourselves for actually going thru with it. I saved one of the best parts for last. In case you felt bad about not being there to cheer for us, don’t worry, that part was covered. Somehow we pulled some strings to get permission to take the van that far so at 6 in the morning, four of our teammates and one teammate’s roommate piled in the van with some highly encouraging posters and showed up to cheer us on. It was so great to have them standing at the finish line cheering us on and witnessing such an awesome personal achievement. It really meant a lot. It also meant that we all got to go back to Hopkinton for a lovely lunch with some of the people we had worked with. We ate pizza in the gym that had formerly been our home and caught up on all the small town happenings including the recent damn break and subsequent flood. It was so good to see them. We drove home and I spent the rest of the day working on a mural. Each team gets a chunk of wall for them to represent themselves and we chose to immortalize our beloved dashboard buddies.It's not quite done yet, but for just a couple days of work it's coming along quite nicely. It was actually rather fun to be painting again. It’s been so long, and after working on it pretty much all afternoon yesterday and all day today I’m having some serious flashbacks to my college days. I kind of miss it. At the beginning of the year we did a physical training baseline test involving push-ups, sit-ups, and a mile run. Today we repeated it for comparison and, despite yesterday’s exertion, I still dropped almost half a minute from my run time. It was a nice close to great and challenging few days. Tomorrow we have our last one day service project (I get to do trail work), the next day is graduation rehearsal and awards banquet, and by noon on Thursday it will all be over. Surreal. Alright, well, thanks for making it to the end of a really long post with lots of numbers that you probably didn’t care about.