The Adventure Continues

So I had a lot of fun this summer as many people pointed out. Therefore I decided to ride the high a bit longer and I am applying for a semester off. I am still going on my SEA semester, but just choosing not to go back to Grinnell in the spring. This idea came to me while spending time in Oregon. Everyone I met out there had taken time off of school and considered themselves better people for it. I was 90% of my decision leaving Oregon and became 100% sure as soon as I got on campus. As much as I love Grinnell I hate the sense of urgency and stress that overwhelms the campus. People are constantly balancing what they love to do with what they have to do and what they have to do always wins over. Hanging out with friends is marred by the fact that everyone has something looming over their head. I have been in this environment for far too long, first at Concord and then again at Grinnell. Being here is wonderful knowing that I won’t have to step foot into a stressful classroom for about a year. At the same time I know that I will learn just as much, if not more, in my semester abroad compared to my Grinnell education. They are two entirely different experiences, and I know I need both of them to be a well-rounded person.

 I talked to my advisor and he was all for it. Finally I got the go ahead from my parents. I let it slip slowly to my friends that I would probably be gone for the entire year. So far I have tentative plans and they all involve one thing: mountains and travel. I am totally stoked and would love some suggestions from people on what to do. Right now the idea is South America. 

Traveling

I enjoy being on the move. I haven’t spent more than 5 days in Lake Forest in my recent memory. I haven’t spent a summer in one location until this year, and I don’t  even think this counts. I love hopping in the car and driving a ridiculous amount of hours for something that I know nothing about. For me, it is about the journey and not so much the destination. However, having an amazing destination helps the excitement of the journey. Currently I am on a plane headed back to the Midwest. Honestly, I have dreaded this moment for about a month now and now that I am here it is not so bad. I am accustomed to plane travel having spent more hours than I care to recall flying to and from Boston for high school. I have become quite the adept people watcher. People watching is a great skill to develop because it helps pass endless hours (if that is your goal with your time), while also promoting some interesting inner dialogue. In my people watching, I tend to pick out that one eccentric person or group of people and watch their interactions. From there I make up a story of where they are from and how they have gotten to this moment in time. I try not to place judgment on the strange people during my travels. Who am I to call someone strange. I am currently wearing parachute pants, knowing on a whole baguette and carrying a pillow with Smoky the Bear sheets on it. I am a prime candidate for people watching. Goings on from my own life usually infiltrates the background stories I make up for the people I run into. So far this is what I got:

Maggie: she is currently gabbing on the phone in the back of the bus about how her good friend’s 12-year-old son went missing yesterday and she is going to go help him find it. While she yelled into the phone, “I am freaking out about this missing child,” I don’t believe that statement holds true because the conversation quickly changed to how she hasn’t called back the girl that she slept with last night. At this point in my people watching I have not actually laid eyes upon this person. She has a deep, rumbling voice, so I assumed that she was actually a man. When she started talking about one night stands, I furthered my assumptions (All the grinnellians that are reading this had their heteronormative alarm just go off. I know. I apologize). However, she lumbered up to the front of the bus and my assumptions were shattered. Maggie is a hulking woman with a buzz cut, men’s boxers, a couple piercing and is currently wearing a shirt that reads, “Chick Magnet” and has pebbles from the Flintstones picking up the family car. I am entirely allured by her shirt. I don’t understand it one bit and it seems to be an amalgamation of a bunch of non-sequitors. But hey, it fits what I know about her personality. I quickly realize that she is probably still drunk. She cannot control the volume of her bus, and cannot walk to the front of the bus without stumbling even when it is stopped. She is also having a real hard time with simple concepts, such as how to get to her destination. She ended up getting up and asking the bus driver how to get to her destination three times. So I decided that she probably was hitting the bars hard last night. She went home with someone and then got the call that the boy was missing. She, still drunk, decided to do her part for the cause and stumbled onto the bus. I think that in T-minus 2 hours she is going to regret getting out of bed, or start drinking again. In which case, she is going to be useless in finding this child. Also, if I was a 12 year old boy, I would be terrified of Maggie. Is she really the best person to be looking?

Frank: Frank is overly friendly. I am standing next to him in line for security screening. He says that he noticed the interesting design on the back of my shirt when I was checking in and would like to see it again if I would be so kind to take off my sweatshirt. I did. He then explains to me that he is from South Dakota and knows nothing about these parts of the country. I smile and shake my head. I didn’t know what to do with that information. Frank then turns to the people in front of us, a daughter and father couple, and starts talking to the four year old about her doll. It is interesting how unassuming this man is. He just performed two seemingly creepy acts, yet during both he seemed genuine and not creepy at all. So I conclude, he has lived in a small town in South Dakota his whole life. He knows all his neighbors and loves it there. Yet he is a successful businessman. In fact, I believe he is a doctor because he is loaded with prescription drug paraphernalia.  He has come out this way for some sort of conference but doesn’t like the haughty city doctors. He is perfectly happy to go back to his family and community and continue living the good life.

I wish I weren’t traveling in this method. Of course I am more of a fan of the slow moving method of walking and carrying all of my stuff on my back. I was even sad to see my 50lbs back be stripped from my back and sent down the conveyor belt. I feel like this plane ride is my final immersion into the front country. I am no longer required to be the mountain woman I was this summer.  I am watching the mountainous land that I explored this summer slowly turn into the prairie and farmlands of the Midwest that I systematically avoiding for a while. Alas, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. As I said, the destination adds excitement to the trip. So while I would normally not be a fan of heading in an easterly course,  and even less of a fan of stopping in the Midwest, I am visiting some amazing people that cannot be found anywhere else. For the next five days I am going to experience the best of Grinnell: all the fun and none of the homework.

Side note: about 15 minutes after I wrote this and shut off my computer our plane got struck by lightening. We were about to make an emergency landing in Madison, but it was too windy. Instead we landed in Minneapolis like we had previously planned. It was one of the bumpiest experiences of my life. The cabin broke out in cheers when we landed. I am glad to be on land once again. 

Entirely overwhelmed

I am with Gita now in Tacoma and I am entirely overwhelmed by the proximity of grocery stores and the accessibility of modern entertainment. Last night we watched Deal or No Deal. This was the first time that I had watched TV all summer. That show is ridiculous. Watching it felt like getting slapped across the face with unnecessary enthusiasm. We also went the MET which is a smaller version of Whole Foods. I didn’t know what to do. There were fresh vegetables, dips, spreads, cheese galore, and more ginger brew than I could possibly drink. They also had a homeware section that I definitely checked out. The internet is really fast here and naturally in the air. I don’t have to turn on a black box. I can open up my computer and Wikipedia Buckwheat Caterpillar (someone running for senate in Washington) if I want to. I don’t know how I feel about all of this. 

Eagle Cap recap

I decided to stick around the Pacific Northwest a bit longer. My internship ended on Labor Day, but yet, here I am still slowly making my way back to the Midwest. In actuality, the Midwest is just another stop in my cross-country trip to Woods Hole. My first stop in my journey was the Eagle Cap Wilderness in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest with a friend from work. We were planning on taking a trip up to Rainier National Park, but upon realizing that it was snowing, we headed away from the rainy Cascades to the middle of nowhere. The drive out was pretty epic. Og course, we had to stick to the back roads, drive through tiny towns and next to beautiful rivers rather than take I-84 across. It was worth it. We descended from our perch in Detroit down to arid Redman, and across the wind scoured and golden plains of eastern Oregon. I truly feel like I have a good sense of Oregon now. Thanks to my friends with cars, this summer I have traveled down the Oregon Coast, through the Cascades and across the east. The Wallowa-Whitman Mountains are nothing like the rest of eastern Oregon. They rise out of the plains as rocky beasts and are taller than the Oregon Cascades. Here is a day-by-day summary: 

The night before we camped at the trailhead because we got into late. In true fashion, we kind of pointed randomly at the map and decided where to go in and what trails to take. In fact, we didn’t even have a destination for the day. The only stipulation was that it had to have an epic view. We would keep hiking until we deemed something “epic.” Anyway, we hiked in 7.5 miles with views of Eagle Cap mountain the whole way in. 

I off handedly mentioned that it would be cool to hike it and watch the sunset. Dan took it and ran with it. We made camp at a lake that wasn’t to shabby, pulled a lour out of a man’s back who wandered into our camp, and then started on our way up Eagle Cap with all out layers and our dinner. 

9,000-some vertical feet later we were eating quinoa and watching one of the most glorious sunsets in my recent history. 

We hiked down by headlamp and slept extremely well. We woke up exhausted from the hike before but decided to attempt a 13-mile circuit, hitting up all the beautiful lakes that we had seen the night prior from the summit.  We climbed yet another pass, and realized to get to anything in the eagle caps you need to climb a pass. It was right about here that we started realizing the benefits of being wilderness rangers. Damn can we book it. We made it to Glacier Lake which was BEAUTIFUL and chowed down for a solid hour. 

This put us off schedule for the rest of the hike. The next ten miles were mostly down hill and equally beautiful. We made it to camp and spent my last night in Oregon under the stars stoking a fire. We saved a 10 miler down hill for the last day and did it in about 4.5 hours.  All in all, it was an amazing way to end my time in the PNW. I cannot wait to come back out here.

Concluding thoughts

I didn’t come to Oregon to have that “aha!” moment. I came to Oregon as something to do for the summer. I knew that I would love most of the job because it involved living in the backcountry, and at times it would be hard and that being alone for 4 days a week would have to be something that I would get used to. I quickly found that I would learn a lot about all aspects of myself from these stints of solitude. And so, after 12 weeks of backcountry tours and an entire Molskine of thoughts, I thought that I should try and conclude something. It is only fair:

1.     

Everyone can benefit from solitude. I had never really been entirely on my own. When I am entirely alone, I have no one to check and balance myself. This is both a good and bad thing. If I see something that you want to climb I go ahead and do it with no hesitation, no turning to your partner and figuring out what they wanted to do. “Are they just saying yes because they are being nice?” At the same time this can be dangerous. There is no one there to say, “Really Frances?” It is all in my own head. In the beginning of the summer I would climb talus slopes that I probably shouldn’t because no one was there to check me, but by the end I learned a lot about my own limitations. I also found that my mind turned to different thoughts in solitude. I was a lot more introspective rather and had to work out ideas on my own instead of having the mental backboard of another person. Again, this is good and bad. In the end, my conclusions are all my own, but at the same time, did I fully comprehend the thought without other people’s perspective. I loved all the time I had alone with the mountains, rivers, and lakes. As much as I love my friends and I appreciate how many times they have been there for me, I think it is a good thing that I no longer need them to say, “Really Frances, don’t do that.” As cheesy as it sounds, I grew up a couple years this summer. It is my 21^st birthday in less than a month, and for the first time I will actually feel my age. I am still a kid at heart, but I know my limitations and feel empowered and confident in every choice I make now.  I will always schedule alone time for myself in the future. I suggest people do the same to see what comes out of their head.

2.     

I aI already knew this, but spending time in nature is really important. I was really lucky to grow up with a summerhouse in Michigan that was surrounded by pristine forests. It was a safe haven for exploring the natural world. I grew up with a respect the wildlife mentality. Now I have more of a “learn from the wildlife” mentality. This summer I spent hours slowly stalking deer to see how close I could get to them and to see how unobtrusive I could seem to these skittish creatures. I climbed up scree along side of mountain goats and bears, and watched fish rise on Hunt’s Lake rather than watch TV.  It mellows me out faster and longer than any stiff G&T ever will. I loved living as simply as my surroundings. It is terrifying at first. I remember debating whether I would like going on my first NOLS trip. Once I got over the initial shock, it was beyond amazing. I suggest to anyone to slowly immerse yourself in nature and allow the complexities of the man made world fade away.

3.     From solitude, I learned a lot about the importance of community. Sometimes it would be jarring going back to Detroit. However, I was housed with some amazing, like-minded people. If you are around high-strung people, stress seeps in at every fault. If you are around like-minded people, life continues to be as simple as you make it. This time period also helped me define what a friend is to me, and this is what I came up with. A friend is someone I can share silence with and a person that is unobtrusive to my mindset and vice versa. A friend is a person that you know they wouldn’t mind waking up in the parking lot of the “redneck outlet store,” because they fell asleep in the car and you saw a sign for it on the highway and just had to go. They are someone who you rarely have to turn to them and ask, “do you want to ___” because you already know the answer. They share your sense of adventure and respect your individuality. But above all, a friend is someone you admire for the little reasons and someone that never ceases to amaze you. They are hard to come by and easy to lose.  They are the ultimate currency in a bankrupt world.

At the same time, I am making these conclusions (and loving them) during a really cushy point in my life. It is really easy to have a stress free life when you have a loving and supportive family and amazing friends. 

Class II non-mon

By nature, the government is highly structured. Everybody has a supervisor. Every position has a specific salary and everyone knows what salary level other people are at. There are no secrets (or at least that is how they try to make it). The best part about this is listening to everybody get really into it, like when people say, “Did you hear that ______ is only a GS-5?” The awards are even better. They are separated into two categories, monetary and non-monetary. A monetary award is self-explanatory.  A non monetary award consists of picking something you like out of a closet. However, there are three different classes (I, II, III)-- the higher the class, the bigger and better the booty in the treasure chest. Our supervisor was kind enough to hit us up with a Non-mon class II. He took us to the treasure chest in the back of the office. When he opened it, he pointed to our shelves. I noticed some smokey the bear twin sheets and grabbed them and said, “MINE!” He looked at me and gave me a huge smirk. The perfect end to a great summer. 

Future Homemaker Syndrome

Yes, I am upgrading my new found interest to a syndrome. The other day I was in a coffee shop and saw handmade aprons. Long story short, I am a proud owner of a blue apron with orcas on it. The other day I entered into a conversation about the different types of Tupperware, Corningware, and how to season a cast iron.  I even started taking care of Dan when he got sick, making him tea medicinal teas, giving him meds and putting him to bed. The other day I actually got upset that I could not be a pseudo-homemaker once I leave Oregon. Then I remembered that during my study abroad time I would be living in a actual house with an actual kitchen. I started to think of meal ideas (Butternut squash lasagna with an arugula salad and wild rice dish), fun pot lucks that we could have (one very Saturday and maybe even a thanksgiving themed one), and what appliances the kitchen will be stocked with (I am praying for a food processor). It looks like my next 12 week adventure will feed the addiction

Winding Down

The 12 weeks are coming to an end. It seems weird to pick up and move after I have become so comfortable here. But alas, I pack up and head to Washington for a Mount Rainier adventure come Tuesday. I came here with just 85L of stuff and think that I have accrued quite a bit of stuff, especially food. I don’t want to be wasteful so I have taken it upon myself to try and finish or give away everything that I am not taking home. This means I am applying lotion twice a day as well as forcing other people to moisturize. Animal crackers have become a staple of my diet and I am all jazzed in vanilla chai tea. 

Frontcountry or backcountry, nothing between

Dan the supervisor told me that I lack a lot of common sense in the front country. However, he has seen me in the backcountry, and if I do say so myself, I am a backcountry genius. I consider myself comfortable in the most unpleasant situations- raining without a fire, blizzarding without food, hiking in the dark without a headlamp and the list goes on. Actually I am pretty good at avoiding these situations all together. Additionally I know my way around a compass and can read a topo map fairly quickly and cook a dank meal with a Whisperlite. Conversely I used to think that I was pretty self-sufficient in the front country until I realized that everyone’s definition of the front country is a little different. I grew up outside of Chicago is an affluent neighborhood. This is my front country. However, to Dan, the front country includes checking and changing the oil in his car, understanding how and what a transmission is, knowing how to use power tools and whatnot. I know how to get around Chicago, to protect my purse in a crowd, where the nearest Whole Foods or food coop is and so forth.  It dawned on me that I am capable of living the extremes. I am entirely comfortable being smelly in the backcountry, or seemingly pampered in the front country. I am unable to do the middlecountry. The other day Sarah (she is from Venice Beach and enjoy bike riding over driving) and I were sent out to inspect our rig. We had a checklist of things to do and a good portion of them required looking at the innards of the car. It took us about 10 minutes to figure out how to open the hood, and when we finally did we took one look at the engine and said, “yep, that’s an engine, now what?” A man walking past us took pity on us and asked us if we needed help. I immediately blurted out, “where is the oil and how to we check it?” He shook his head and laughed at us. He taught us how to check the oil and the transmission fluid. It looks like I am well on my way to becoming a middlecountry expert.

Walking Among the Deceased

Every week, no matter where I am, I am surrounded by scorched land. As evident by my last post, wildfires are a common occurrence here. There are companies here that are just for fighting wildfires. It seems that everyone out there has had been certified to fight wildfires and it makes sense because the pay is great (time and half for overtime, which always happens, as well as hazard pay). It is a totally foreign concept to me because if the only large fire that I have ever seen is a house on fire, which is kind of a tense moment. Meanwhile, during wildfires, you have to walk to the scene, and there isn’t much that you can really do immediately because it is usually in the middle of nowhere.  If the prairie started on fire, no one would care because they usually get a prescribed burn anyway.

Every week I walk in the burn or see the scar on the mountains. Walking among the burn is eerie at times. The trees are stark white and their charred bark that they shed lay around them. There aren’t any animals around, just butterflies and ferns. Sometimes, when I walk past the ferns, the lilac butterflies fly up into my face and I briefly feel like I am in a Miley Cyrus music video. Eventually, the burnt forest becomes really peaceful place. If I try hard enough, I can imagine the shading pine needles and beautiful bark. I can imagine the grandeur of these beasts years prior.  This is hard because the burnt trees are far from what they used to be. Once when I was walking, I watched one fall. I felt really special when I see the last breaths of a beauty. I felt like me witnessing the tree fall gave purpose to the tree’s life, but this is wrong.

Why do we feel like we need to be remembered to consider their life a success. If there is something that I learned from my first year humanities class, it is that the Greeks thought that there was no point in life if you aren’t going to be remembered. I still see that today. People yearn to be famous, to be in movies and have their face plastered across cities. You can see people standing behind newscasters going nuts just to be on TV for those two seconds. Honestly, I rather not be scrutinized by the public, or feel the need to wave a sign around just for my face to be broadcasted for a couple seconds. I don’t get that thrill. I would feel just as happy to be that tree and to fall amongst my friends, without anyone else knowing.

I have recently lost a lot of people close to me. All of them were amazing people. Most recently my friend Robert died in a pole-vaulting accident. It was sudden, harsh and occurred at the end of the year—a very inopportune time to deal with grief. I left school this year not with anticipation for the summer, but in contemplation. How do I remember such a great person? How can I make his life mean something? I could tell every person I meet a story portraying Robert at his best, but that would be exhausting and people wouldn’t get the full experience. In the end I decided that I don’t try and make someone else’s life mean something to passer-bys. Instead, I will take what I admired in Robert, or the others I have known, and apply it to myself. I must live deliberately and pass on memories of others by inspiring people through myself. I must walk among the burn and imagine the past but realize that there is nothing that brings back the green pine needles other than time. Forest fires are a natural process, a force that can by mitigated but not annihilated.