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.

Wildflower pictures

Just wanted to share a few more...the last three are from the campsite, not the preserve.

I really love those yellow flowers. Should probably figure out what they are.

The past week has been an interesting one… and I’ve been too busy to update, so this is going to be a particularly long post.

Workwise… I spent a lot of time designing the curriculum for the Nature Study program happening in July, made those bathroom signs from the earlier post, and got a little bit of hiking in. We decided on a “dirt” theme for the younger kids that I’m super excited about… there will even be thematically appropriate snacks each day (who doesn't love edible dirt?). And Chad is going to do a sing-a-long session with them (apparently he plays the guitar and mandolin- awesome, eh? Wish I was more musical). For the older elementary school kids we’re thinking of either something with insects (Entomology Extravaganza!) or something I’m calling “Perspectives” that has them looking at the preserve through the eyes of different animals… we’d build a dam one day, do a bunch of bird stuff one day, think like an insect another. For all sitting in front of a computer makes me crazy, it’s wonderful to have so much room to be creative, and Chad’s great for bouncing ideas off of. Still haven’t had any major brain waves about what to do with the middle school program. I wish I knew more about how to teach and entertain that age group. Oh well, that’s what research is for, right? I’m hoping to work in some really good team-building stuff and creative projects, at least.

The weather has been rainy, but warmer, and the mosquitoes are starting to make their appearance, but not so much as I’d feared (though truth be told, I think it’s hard to impress someone who’s lived in Alaska with anything other than a truly terrific mosquito population). The other interns have gone firefly catching on the evenings we’ve been home… that, dinner, and watching episodes of the TV show Bones have consumed most of our nights in.

I’m getting better at photographing wildflowers (though I really wish I could afford a camera with a better manual focus!) but have not managed any pictures of the chipmunk that lives outside my window, the Phoebe bird that’s nesting on our porch, or the baby cottontail bunny that lives next to the lab. Sad story! I left my art supplies at the office this weekend, or I’d be working on some oil pastels of the trails… my snapshots just don’t do anything to capture the beauty of the woods here. I might not do much better with my pastels, but at least it would be good practice for me.

We had a few exciting after hours field trips this week- pictures from Wednesday’s campground swimming trip are in the previous post. We also had a picnic, with subs from Sophia's deli, and afterwards went to a Stewarts gas station to refill tubes and eat ice cream. I had blueberry pomegranate frozen yogurt- pretty darn tasty! Apparently Stewarts has the best local icecream, and serves as something of a local gathering spot.

Thursday we (four interns, two local boys, six tubes, five lifejackets) went back to the campground, but instead of frolicking in the swimming hole pushed off into the current and set off on what became something of an epic adventure… or at least a cautionary tale. At first it was AWESOME… beautiful evening, fun little rapids (just exciting enough to make me whoop with joy), laughing conversation, lovely scenery drifting by. We stopped once at this nifty rocky ledge that we all agreed would make an awesome campsite. Unfortunately it had taken us longer to get on the creek than we’d anticipated, so it was 6:50 or so before we set out on what was usually a two hour downstream trip… our local intern believed it would go faster because the current was running higher from all the rain we’d had.

Well, the water being higher did make most of the rapids a safer, and the drifting along bits a lot faster. The second to last rapid we went down also unfortunately had a newly downed tree, and the current was stronger than normal, or at least too strong for me… anyway, I have some bruises, but I managed to stay in my tube and didn’t really get much more than a scare. Pretty terrifying to lose control like that, I must say, but that wasn't the epic part... We’d started to hear thunder rumbling far off in the distance, and (being the risk-management professionals that at least three of us were) begun to get a bit worried. If we’d had cell phones we’d have called for assistance and gotten off the river then… but we’d all forgotten our wet bags (uh oh), so we decided to push on, and if the thunder got any closer we’d take our chances hitchhiking or sommat, since a road ran pretty close to the creek. I was also starting to get really cold (me, cold? shocking!), even with my neoprene shorts.

It started to get darker... and darker... and the water became more of an ominous deep green… and the thunder got closer- right as we were heading into a rocky gulch. We got out anyway, scrambled up the steep embankment (I was farthest ahead, had to abandon my tube close to the water because I couldn’t pull it up the little cliff with me), and found each other in the rumbling dark. There was a house, thank goodness, and after about ten minutes the resident finally heard her dogs barking and let us in. She was very kind- a retired medical professional from long island who’d turned the property into a nature preserve- gave us towels and water and Lindt chocolates and let us use the phone. We got back to Bullfrog Camp a little before midnight, tired and sore but fine. I was exhausted the next day and kept discovering new bruises from my brush with the tree, but it's all good now.

Friday evening all five of us interns headed to the Old Music Festival for the evening concert. A half hour of twisting country roads led us to the slightly muddy fair grounds and a parking lot full of… well, the sort of people who go to events called Old Music Festival. There was lots of tie dye and beards and flowing skirts (sometimes on the same person)…. And vendors selling tasty international and local foods or handmade crafts. I bought a bandanna from a couple who turned out to be some of the Preserve’s resident artists, and a cd that looked interesting… it was a good thing I didn’t have more money with me, because I’d have spent it, for sure! I tried something called an Eccles cake that was apparently banned by the puritans, another pastry called a lamb’s tail or longjohn, and some sort of fried curly potato concoction that’s apparently a local specialty. Oh! And there was fresh squeezed lemonade. I am told I must try potato pancakes, and missed out on some amazing smoothies. We had salt potatoes last week and I think they are by far my favorite of the local foods I’ve tried so far.

Music wise the concert was eclectic- some Dutch, French, Storytelling, a really good band with a mouth-harp and banjos and guitars, a couple singer-songwriters, and one band who’s national origins I’m unsure of that played sitting cross legged and wore a turban (okay, only one guy was wearing a turban, everyone else in the group looked fairly Caucasian). It was a good time, we had some great conversations, and there was a contra dance afterwards. I think all of the college student interns are going to try to find some contra dance at their respective academic institutions. woo-hoo contra dance!

Today (Saturday) I’ve mostly been sleeping, eating, and re-reading the latest novel from one of my favorite authors. Laundry is brewing in the basement of the lab as I write this. I need to go introduce myself to the artist who’s going to be living in Lincoln Cottage for the next few weeks.

Hoping I can talk someone with a car into heading up to visit a local batik artist and Woodstock some weekend soon. I really want to buy a pair of aviator sunglasses for my sister from Woodstock, just because I think that would be awesome. Also just really want to be able to say "Oh yeah, I was at Woodstock".

Some Wednesday Pictures

Wednesday after work we headed out to Catskill Creek... the others went swimming, but it was a bit cold for me so I played with my camera. I have a lot more pictures than this, but didn't want to overwhelm the blog. Maybe they'll go up on facebook at some point...

Bathroom Signage

Okay, so these may not be exciting to anyone else, but I'm pretty pleased with them. There had been no markers on the bathroom, so I designed these and put them up Thursday. The round/square one is based on our Trail Markers.



































And this is what our trail markers look like, in case you were wondering.

Potluck!

This is Chad and Chloe (my boss with his baby)



















She is about a year old and utterly adorable.



























I offered to hold Chloe so Chad and Lisa could eat (that's Chad's wife- in the background with the amazing red hair). Chloe was really excited about my hair tie.






















That's Allie, one of the research interns...
























And these are some wildflowers I spotted on the walk down to the potluck...






























And the trail to the lake...










And a picture of the Lincoln Pond Dam- at full gusto with all
the rain we've been having...

















and more wildflowers.




woo-hoo!

Yay Huyck Preserve!

Neat things about the Huyck Preserve I have discovered so far…

1. We’re written into the book Far Side of the Mountain! In fact, the town is the setting for a Major Plot Twist, they camp out under our waterfall, and the Peregrine falcon Frightful is set free on the Preserve. Neat, eh? The author is a local, so there’s actually tons of shout outs in the book.

2. Next neatest fact (in my opinion). The preserve was started in 1931 by a woman named Jessie Eliza Van Antwerp Huyck (who was apparently both very shy and extremely influential) to “be a bird and wildlife sanctuary” serving “to increase the general knowledge and love of nature, especially that of trees and wild life”. She named the preserve after her husband, and got the people of Rennselaeville actively involved from the beginning (they still are, as my observations of the number of townsfolk in and out of the office can attest). Oh, and she required that the preserve dedicate a big part of its mission to education. You go, Jessie, you go. Particularly since your dad wouldn’t let you seek formal education past the high school level (and now all of the preserve’s science staff are female. Hah!).

3. There’s a rural legend that the last ever real live Passenger Pigeon was sighted on the preserve.

4. We run a program called COM.EN.ART. that brings in artists to the preserve for a few weeks to just… create… draw, paint, sketch, whatever. So we’ve got a whole reservoir of art made at the preserve, and all the illustrations on our materials are hand drawn by professionals specifically for the preserve. It’s nifty.

5.The preserve has a huge diversity of habitats- partly because of our location between the deciduous biome and coniferous biome, partially because of the geography (being in the rollicking foothills with a ton of water from various sources)…and partly because when they reforested the land upon making it a preserve they created some unfortunate forestry experiments. So there are funky patches of white spruce and hemlock (which is at least native) and larch and such. One of my goals during my time here is to actually visit all of the different habitats.

Morning Commute

On days when I don't catch a ride down to the office with our executive director (Chad), this is what my commute looks like. Well, part of it anyway. We've got a multitude of habitats here.

Intern Life Update

Friday night all five residents of Bullfrog Camp went over to our local intern’s house. It was AMAZING… I’ve never seen anything like it. The first thing I noticed was the huge array of solar panels, then the landscape (gorgeous mountain vistas), then the sheer size of the place. I’d never been in a (new) house that big that I actually found attractive. And it was totally eco-friendly… the wood was recycled, the rooms were kept warm with radiant heat, a large portion of the water used in the house was rainwater collected on the roof… it was just so cool! And dinner was really tasty (as well as mostly vegan). I’m going to have to try making salt potatoes myself sometime soon.

Met some cool people on Saturday- a guy who’s going to RISD to be an Environmentalist Artist, some elderly Bryn Mawr alums, and other generally awesome folk. Also went on the Herp walk with the research coordinator… unfortunately forgot my camera, or I would have gotten some amazing shots. At one point I was holding a Bufo americanis in my hand and the little toad was just staring at me… in utter terror, I fully realize, but it was so darn cute. I continue to be captivated by the salamanders, of course, and got my first sight of one of the larger yellow spotted salamanders today. Still haven’t spotted any reptiles, though I’m sure I’ll get a glimpse of our enormous snapping turtle (Old Scarneck) soon, and hopefully one of the snakes (other than the blind garter snake we keep in the education room).

The wildflowers are also really beautiful… I’m going to try to get some pictures, though I’ve not had much luck doing that with my camera (which is beginning to show signs of age already. Oh dear). Also daydreaming of getting a new camera… Canon has a really awesome waterproof outdoorsy camera out now that looks wonderful. I’d like to have something I didn’t have to worry about so much, given my propensity for putting cameras into intense situations they aren’t designed for. And with a waterproof camera I could take pictures while boating without so much worry. If I get refunded any of this month’s rent from my DC landlord that’s where the money will go, I think. Well, and maybe into some more photo storage space… my computer’s memory is full. Uh oh.

Camp Bullfrog

Okay, beloved Parentals, this post is for you.





A couple of pictures of where I live (at least for the next few weeks)... everything was just renovated, and it's wonderful. My room is the one on the far left... living room, dining room, kitchen and bath house are shared. I'll take some more pictures when the light is better, and from the other side of the pond... you can't tell from these just how amazing the view is.