Intern Meals

One of the things I already miss now that most of the research interns have left is communal meal times. We mostly bought our own food, but we'd buy some food communally and then have awesome family style feasts. It's been a long time since I've done that with a group of people, and it was a lot of fun. The last week that all of us were here we did a communal meal every night. It was a bit epic. The picture above is from that week (the Chinese is something Kaela wrote... I believe about how she likes apples. The quote on the side is from the end of a long conversation about queer identity and politics and why I felt it was important to out myself to people). The pictures below are from Liz's last night, when she and Allie and I made pizza. I never got pictures of one of the full blown communal meal nights, because I was too busy enjoying myself.

Cat

I realized I'd never gotten around to posting about The Cat! Apparently it introduced itself to the preserve one day by sneaking in and jumping into Chad's lap while he was working. We don't know who it belongs to, and the only way to keep it out is (especially on rainy days) is to close all the doors. Don't get me wrong, it's the sweetest cat I've ever met and I would be happy to just let it sit with me all day, but some people are allergic so I spent a good chunk of my professional life on weekends carrying the cat back outside again. Sometimes it's sneaky and I don't realize it's inside until it's suddenly sharing my chair. It does not like having its picture taken. Perhaps its friendly nature masks a criminal background of some sort? I'm afraid we'll probably never know.

Update!

I realize it’s been awhile since I last updated. Nature Study is now halfway over, the Day Lilies have bloomed and are beginning to fade, and this morning the Phoebe bird’s nestlings hatched in their nest on top of our porch light. I’ve been working on our couch today and watching the parents swoop in and out to feed the little fuzzballs. I think it’s the first time I’ve really had a chance to observe what every child absorbs as one of their first nature lessons. The nestlings don’t even really look like birds yet, more like a strange craft project made from pom poms and little sharp paper beaks… or perhaps like tiny Jim Henson puppets. I rather expect them to start playing tiny little electric guitars at any moment, and am a bit appalled by this desire for commercial anthropomorphism. I have yet to succeed in photographing them, though they do not yet have their mother’s timidity. If I had a proper zoom I’m pretty sure I could get a good shot, since the nest is literally right outside our living room’s picture window. Oh the frustrations of a small budget!

Otherwise, most of what has happened of interest lately revolves around the researchers… the Science Symposium was last Saturday, for example, and a research intern (who shared my name if not it’s spelling) came and then left as three of the other interns also departed. After this weekend it will be only me and one other intern, though our resident scientist is moving back into Bullfrog Camp (and reclaiming her corner room- sad day for me!). A researcher from Colorado came for a few weeks and stayed in Birdhouse (the small red residence that stands as our neighbor). Her dogs were sweet and she was everything I admire in Coloradoans (also on her last day she bought us all pizza from a locally owned place). A couple from New Zealand are staying in Birdhouse now, just visiting the place where they were married and lived briefly. Oh, and at 10pm on Wednesday a group of German researchers showed up unexpectedly in our living room, and have now taken over Lincoln Cottage. I think that’s been most of the excitement.

Some days I still spend in the office, but I’m more often in the lab these days, prepping for Nature Study, teaching it, or cleaning up afterwards (amazing how long that takes). On those days I do computer work either gazing out over Lincoln pond or watching the antics of our blind garter snake (who seems to particularly love the music of the Mamas and the Papas, for whatever reason). Mosquitoes have invaded our living quarters, which makes our evening movie-watching rather more aerobic than usual, and out in the woods they’re fairly unbearable. Fortunately I’m not responsible for doing plot searches as the other interns are, and experienced this discomfort only minimally… and, well, I DID survive a summer in Alaska. The weather has finally gotten warm, and I actually wore a tank top outside for a couple of hours this week! Outside of the weather, most of my personal excitements revolve around reading (finally got my hands on Neil Gaimon’s Graveyard Book), wildlife sightings, and eating new types of cheese.

I have not been working as hard on my job search as I should be. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been here over a month already, and I’m still not sure what I want to do when I leave. As excited as I am at the prospect of getting more involved with All Souls and being around my friends again, I don’t know what I would do to support myself in DC that wouldn’t be mind bogglingly depressing. Just missed the deadlines to apply for some UU jobs that would have started too early anyway, and have to find something that includes insurance and covers the high cost of living there. I don’t want an entry-level office job! Or any office job, really. Wish I had skills beyond my liberal arts education- carpentry or baking or what have you.

But that’s letting too many of my personal worries into this blog. I’ll put in this random picture to distract you. It's a wasp gall one of my campers found.

Thunder Moon

(Written 7/7/09 at 5:40pm)

Found out from a friend recently that a lesser-known name for the July full moon is “Thunder Moon”. There’s something so perfect about that. If I ever get married it would be neat to get married this time of year, with everything so alive and the weather so dramatic.

I’ve loved summer thunderstorms for as long as I can remember. When I was younger I used to stand on the front porch (wearing the green fleece cloak my mum made me for Halloween) to watch them. Even in the suburbs you could feel the power booming around you, smell the… well, for lack of a better word, purity… in the air. Lightning fascinates me more than any man-made firework, even as it scares me. There’s something about these storms, too, that symbolizes all that summer is for me… the way they blow in and then out again, like a summer romance; how they make you feel alive the way you never do in autumn rainstorms or a sleepy winter snowfall.

Sitting on the porch of Bullfrog to write this, with the rain rat-a-tat-tatting on our tin roof and the deep shade of thunderheads turning the greens of the evergreens into a forest of jeweltones. Our poor Phoebe bird is a little freaked out- wish she was still comfortable going to her nest with me out here.

Oooooh, wildlife update. The baby bunnies that live by the lab and the chipmunks that live everywhere are growing bolder, though I don’t have the zoom or shutter speed to get good photos. I did finally get a picture of the blind garter snake in our ed room. There was a mid-sized snapping turtle on the front porch of Lincoln Cottage today that just sat there for two hours while our resident artist drew his picture. She thinks he was confused, my opinion is that he was feeling terribly vain. Hope I get to see more of her work before she leaves on Thursday- she is (among other things) one of the artists for the Cornell lab of Ornithology, so she’s been drawing a lot of our birds.

It’s taco night tonight! I should go inside so Phoebe bird will return to her nest and dinner will get started.


This is aforementioned picture of our rescued garter snake.


I've always loved these snakes, something about them is just so adorable.

And while it can't see me (obviously), it does react to my typing... and there's no guilt about keeping it captive, because it wouldn't survive in the wild .

My SCA hat

Part of my official SCA issued wardrobe is a baseball cap with the logo prominently placed in front. In color it’s an olive- khaki, with a nicely curved brim and a metal adjuster on the back. A run of the mill baseball hat, really.

From the moment I opened that priority mail box I’ve been absolutely in love with it.

Now, I love hats in general, but baseball caps have never been my thing (I’m much more a hand-knit winter hat or floppy brimmed gardening hat person), so I’ve done a lot of pondering on the phenomenon of this hat’s appeal. This is not a logical attraction, at least not at its surface.

The hat does not make me beautiful- no complementing my eyes or any of that nonsense (not that it’s unattractive… just, well, I’m not a baseball cap kind of girl, as previously mentioned, and I’m not the sort of person whose sex appeal is heightened by the casual sportiness of such a hat). It isn’t from anywhere special to me, or made for me by someone I care about. It won’t even protect me from sunburn or mosquitoes as well as some of the other hats I own. In fact it isn’t at all the sort of thing I would have picked out as a garment that would be precious to me... and yet it is.

Maybe part of the appeal is that this is the first time I’ve had an official hat of any sort. There’s nothing silly about this cap (however it may look in this picture)- it’s not frivolous or embarrassingly utilitarian, feminine or manly, coquettish or standoffish. There’s something almost… professionally asexual about it. This is the hat of someone who works outdoors, who is here to be friendly but never flirty, to do a job well and spend her spare time enjoying the natural world in a quiet unassuming manner. It makes me feel a bit like a park ranger, in the best possible kind of way.

I always smile at my reflection when I see myself in this hat, with the simple pleasure of it. In this hat I feel like a legitimate environmental educator, not a camp counselor or a wannabe teacher or what have you, but the sort of person who is perfectly comfortable with a predatory bird perched on her arm. It makes me feel like the sort of person who appears in brochure pictures with a toad in her hands, foot planted comfortably on a moss covered stump, children’s eyes agog around her. It makes me feel a little more like all the naturalists I’ve ever admired.

It’s amazing how powerful a hat can be.

Fourth of July

I worked late Friday and then both Saturday and today. I didn't have to- all the other interns had stuff they wanted to do and I didn't have anything planned so said I'd cover the visitor's center. Basically I was being unnecessarily and obnoxiously noble- judge away. Anywho, when I got out of the visitor's center yesterday I went home, drank some chocolate soy milk, grabbed my camera and kayaking equipment, and headed down to the lake.

It took me a long time to get to the cottage with the kayaking racks (you caught the part where I grabbed my camera,yes?)... evening light turns what is always lovely into captivating beauty, and there are few things more beautiful than a lake at sunset. I got there eventually, though, and slipped Chad's kayak into the lake (it's a Perception, like mine, but much better balanced. I have an awesome boss!) and paddled into the wind... and. It's been a long time since I paddled into a sunset like that...so glorious! When I'd gone far enough I just stopped paddling and let the wind push me back to shore as I watched the light fade and the birds dart and swoop over the water. It was very difficult to convince myself I had to climb out of the boat and head off to the fireworks.

The Institute is our neighbor (where the Huycks lived, while this is where their mill was), and every year they host a fireworks show for the community. It was the usual rural fireworks gig- everyone on blankets and beach chairs and kayaking pfds (well, maybe that was just me) on one side, men with torches and exciting explosives on the other. There were lots of children running around beforehand with patriotic glow sticks, throwing and whirling and making their own version of a light show... we were given glow sticks as well, though I'm the only one of the three of us (me, one of the other research interns, and our current resident artist) who threw hers in the air. The show itself was pretty good, and we managed to get out of the traffic jam afterwards without too much of a hassle.

So there you have it. Not as exciting as the thunderstorm story (did I mention how horrendously cold I was during that misadventure?) but there you are.

Mornings

I came to the woods…. Well, you know the Thoreau quote. It’s true, I felt I wasn’t living fully in the city. I love how much there is to do there, that there’s always something happening. I loved being near so many people dear to me. I loved the lifestyle- being able to get most everywhere I wanted without a car. Living in DC was great, for the most part. Yet I lost something there, or several somethings I suppose, but it started with my sense of Self. I couldn’t be in touch with who I am in those barred buildings and acres of asphalt. I could be happy, even fiercely joyous, but a part of me was always gone, always… off, somehow.

I found my Self here almost immediately. Somehow in the drum of the rain on a tin roof, in the calls of birds and buzz of mosquitoes and twang of little frogs I hear the rhythms that compose me. I wake up to the feel of unblemished sunlight on my face, smiling gratitude at the morning sun. Curse me for a morning person, but I love rising early to just be, watching the mist on the lake or a rabbit outside my room, doing my strengthening exercises (the excuse I give the research interns for rising so early) with the feel of a new day unfolding around me. No bus to catch, no security alarm to set, no sirens in the distance or shrieked profanities traveling past our windows. My mornings here are rich and deep and incredibly precious, as my every day begins with that healing solitude.

I am not, perhaps, any less broken than the person who walked onto the preserve three weeks ago. I am still wracked with fear for what will happen in September when my internship ends, still saddened by elements of my personal life, still as imperfect as ever I was. But it’s a great deal easier to release my insecurities and worries and regrets sitting on a moss covered boulder in an evergreen wood next to a burbling stream. It's a lot easier to breathe.

I did not come here looking for comfort or happiness or even (as I pretended) to further my career. I came to these woods to find again some sense of grace and purpose, to reclaim my courage and my confidence.

So here I am. Insect repellant shall be my perfume, warblers and waterfalls my soundtrack, the sky my television. This is my morning, my deep breath, perhaps even my pilgrimage.