it's a wonderful life

Friday, January 23, 2009
it's a wonderful life
Current mood: hopeful

It’s amazing to work in a place where picking trash up off the ground is expected, not alarming. Where I work, live, and play with the same people every day. Where my food is made and I wake up each day with different ways to reach the same kids, or different kids to reach the same ways. Environmental education has taught me a lot. I so value the experience of a 5 mile bike ride on a dirt road into a town where everyone truly knows your name, where all you can find is a dive shop, a restaurant, a visitors center, and a small (not local) grocery store. Riding home in the dark with headlamps on, stars above, and bioluminescence in the water below makes you look at things a little differently. It’s impossible not to.

My time in between the island life- in NYC over the summer and in ....Dallas.... right now- has shown me how much I truly have learned. It has shown me how to integrate my environmental knowledge into a (more) normal lifestyle. Or perhaps just a more ubiquitous lifestyle. Every choice I make has power in it’s potential to make the world a better place or contribute to the environmental mess we’ve created and perpetuated. Every choice is thought out. I like not having the ease of accessibility; it makes it impossible to take things for granted. And even though I’m going into my third season now with the Catalina Environmental Leadership Program, it’s still impossible for me to take the experience of that beautiful place for granted too. Communication is hard and as I ponder going back there soon I’m trying to have all the unlimited internet and cell phone service time I can, before these things too, are limited and therefore valued even more.

Things are not convenient there. I broke my sunglasses halfway through the spring and had nowhere to buy new ones. Luckily, we have a pretty good stash of lost and found at camp, and they were easily replaced. The students come and go each week and sometimes it is a real struggle. There can be a lot of resistance from kids who are not used to being in the middle of nowhere, of doing a solo- hike at night, of hiking up any hills, of using hand- eye coordination to push a kayak forward and having the forethought and the teamwork to do that with a buddy. Perhaps they are not used to doing a night snorkel, to spending time in a garden or a microscope lab, to being out of their comfort zone, or to see that their actions have consequences further reaching then themselves. It’s the tough weeks that challenge me that make me REMEMBER. Remember what it’s like to be out of my comfort zone, to change my style of teaching, and to remember what it’s like to be away from home for the first time, as many of the kids might be.

Being out of our comfort zone is a remarkable way we really get to know ourselves.
I am not done learning.
I’ve had many adventures in the past year:

Camping in isolated spots on Catalina:


Showing my island world to my sister Meredith and her husband Scott:


The ....Chicago.... ..Marathon.. October 12:

Seeing Obama at my Alma Mater in Fort Collins, Colorado October 26th:


Water fun and scuba diving Catalina Island:


Hiking the untouched hills on Catalina:


Seeing friends and riding bikes in Fort Collins.., ..Colorado....:


Seeing two of my brothers get married:




Spending a summer with my sister Morgan near NYC:


Biking across the ..Brooklyn.. bridge:


Learning to work, live, and play with the same 20 people:


Returning home, again: