Camp is Over... now what..?

I was terrible about keeping this updated while I was at camp, words will come later, but I have pictures now (isn't it weird to see a post filled with more pictures of people than plants?!)

view from an Upper Stonehouse window on a foggy morning

thats how many girls we had to take care of!

view from our deck

my exhibit for the art show

my "poet-tree" and the tree stump chair circle where I taught most days

evening off at the hotel with Britny, Allison and Tim

Dio De Las Muertas in the FAB!

2nd Session Girls

I am not supposed to have favorites, but......

double rainbow over the lake!

View from the top of Coney Mountain

Justin camoflauged 

Tupper Lake Beach

Jim doing his fire throwing!

Max, Britny and Amanda on Pirates vs. Vikings day!

The roommates before Mintons (a prom-like thing for the kids)

Chris and Webby

August and Joey performing

Tim and Lighty at Buttermilk Falls

Tim and the Directors performing 'Brown Sugar'

two of my favorites!

Staff party dancing

Britny and Robyn

The Irish, English and I

waiting around for new kids to arrive!

There will be more words later... stay tuned!

1 week and 2 days with 26 9-12 year olds.

The kids have arrived. All 350 of them are running around my formerly sacred gardening grounds as I write this. It took me a while to adjust to the change of jobs, change of coworkers and the hundreds of children, but I think I finally have it down.

I absolutely adore my job. I am more tired than ever before at the end of each day, but every minute of exhaustion has been completely worth it. I have been assigned as a counselor in the most beautiful of all the bunks, a hundred year old stone building fittingly titled "Stonehouse." There are 26 hilarious, bratty, sweet, demanding, lovable, obnoxious, darling 9-12 year olds. There are four other counselors alongside me and everyday we struggle to get our girls to do the most simple of tasks. Many of these children come from ridiculously rich households and do not know how to do much of anything for themselves (a few days ago I had to teach a 12 year old how to sweep). I get very frustrated with them, but I cannot ever stay mad because they are so damn adorable.

Sleeping has become a huge luxury. The girls have us check for spiders in their beds several times a night, and often wake us up to ask what they are going to do tomorrow. Their attention spans are all ridiculously small and I believe some of them must have hearing problems, because they rarely listen when we speak.

My job as a creative writing counselor is vastly different. Most days are spent writing collaborative stories or haiku outside in chairs made of tree stumps. I have helped with raps, songwriting, and screenplays (I have to make it up as I go, most of the time I have no idea what I am doing). The only time that I haven't been able to make it up is when I have worked with this incredible 14 year old poetic prodigy. She makes me feel just awful about my own ability every time she comes to write.

It has only been about 2 and a half weeks since I have known my fellow counselors but I already feel very close to a few of them (again, its this strange communal lifestyle that pushes people together so quickly). I was given a nickname by a few of them at pre-camp: Emerson, and it has stuck. The name was given because during the first couple of days of camp I was very adamant about spending time alone, and I was consistently writing and talking about how beautiful all of the nature was here. I didn't mind it when they first teased me with it and I actually quite like it now.

Tomorrow is my first day off and I already have made a number of exciting plans. More later!

Here are some pictures from pre-camp, more to come soon!

Tupper Lake

waiting for our sea-plane ride

Adam and the pilot in the sea plane

Long Lake from above

sky and Laura

Long Lake, New York

I get to look at that everyday! 

I have been at Long Lake for 2 weeks and one day. 

Despite the frustrations, aches, and sleepiness that come with my daily duties as part of the landscaping and gardening team, I feel incredibly lucky and happy to be in this truly magical place. 

I was repeatedly warned that I was going to be completely alone for the month before camp started, but this has not at all been the case. The numbers of people have been steadily increasing, and they are mostly lovely. Though the majority are vastly different than I, I have still managed to become quite close to a few members of our semi-commune. 

The work is often incredibly physically exhausting and the black flies here have speckled my entire body with their awful little bites, BUT I absolutely love spending 8 hours a day outside. At least a few times a day I get to play with frogs, garden snakes and chase hoards of Monarch butterflies. I get to watch wolf spiders creepily climb trees and deer and turkey run through the woods that border my little shack. I am learning so many new and amazing things on a daily basis; I have discovered yet another occupation that I would like to explore more.

Here are some pictures that I took on my little disposable camera.

Robyn and our tool cart

a group of monarchs on our recently seeded field

the beginnings of the Adventure Camp, a big landscaping project

Zach and our future vegetable garden

the Long Lake parade

The Long Lake Kazoo Band

Richie about to fall into Long Lake

Justin and Tupper Lake

some really awesome fungi 

a little post with pictures of home.

My mom took this as I was pulling the minivan back into the driveway for the first time in a year

beautiful, beautiful, Virginia

Graham and I went to the Arboretum in Blandy, he searched for mushrooms, I made daisy chains

look at all the morells we found!!!

then he stuck one in his ear

I made this little sculpture

girlfriends! at Joe's

In front of our old apartment

One night we taught Katherine how to dance. Six girls put on leotards and danced around the living room. This is the only mildly acceptable picture that remains.

oh yeah, and Hannah graduated!

anniversary!

It has been a year since I left home. It is very difficult for me to believe where I have been, what I have done, and who I am now.

My blog name is completely obsolete now. Obviously San Francisco wasn't the ending or the answer- at this point I am not sure there ever will be any endings or answers.

I can so clearly remember the day I decided to keep moving. I was sitting in a coffee shop on Mission Street drinking a frozen Chai tea writing in my journal about how miserable I was. During a particularly uncomfortable Chai milkshake induced brain freeze, I realized that I COULD leave. Now it seems so strange that this didn't occur to me immediately, but at that moment it seemed like such a brilliant realization. I was so scared to leave Jack and to be alone, completely clueless as to where I should go, and utterly terrified by the thought of a completely uncertain future.

For as long as I can remember I have planned everything out very carefully. I had calculated my whole life by the time I was about 10 years old. Its almost embarrassing to admit now, but I had every milestone planned by its corresponding age (complete education by 25, marry at 28, first child at 30, etc.) I knew what I wanted my future home to look like from shutters to paint colors, my career planned precisely, and a neat list of all the places I would travel during my alotted vacation days.

Now, I practically live out of a perpetually rolling minivan, have somewhat of an idea of what will happen tomorrow and maybe a few days after that, and only myself to answer to. I still have a hard time completely removing myself from the mindset that I have to have everything figured out all the time, but as a whole- my, my, how things have changed.

I leave for New York in a week, and I am going to try and write on this thing more often. I removed my facebook page when I realized how much time I was spending on it and how ridiculous the whole thing was (do I really care what a girl I sat across from in middle school and spoke to three times is eating for breakfast?! And no, just because there are new girls commenting on his pictures doesn't mean he is going to marry and have babies with any of them). It probably won't be gone forever, but for the time being this will be my only place for pictures and explanations of where I happen to be at any given point in time.

Oh yeah, 73,000 miles driven in one year. Wow, right?!

doin' the charleston

This past week my mother attended a conference in the darlin' city of Charleston, SC and I decided to tag along.

We stayed at The Francis Marion and every morning I woke up underneath my gold flowered comforter feeling like a little southern belle. While the mom was conferencing, I attempted to cure my latest troubles by exploring the city. I walked down cobblestone streets past 300 yr old homes and crowds of orange skinned fake blondes in their pink dresses. Though seemingly unrelated in other contexts, those two things (history, and rich stupidity) unfortunately meld together to create the city of Charleston. I suppose that is not all Charleston has to offer. There is also delicious food, beautiful, clean beaches, and handsome bell hops.

On the second night that we were there I got in touch with one of my oldest friends, Evan. We had not spoken in nearly five years, but after large portions of the most wonderful sushi and a few martinis with flowers in them, we were right back to where we had left off- drinking heavily and talking about ghosts. I got to meet his girlfriend who is a female version of Evan and also quite great. It was a good night that ended with a lovely cab ride home in which the Palestinian driver gushed about how much he loved America and how "EVERYDAY IS PARTY!!"

Palmettos on the water!

Waterfront Park

Mom and I on the beach

Gazebos are really great, aren't they?

Ah, I feel like I must say more about the buildings: the architecture of Charleston was just stunning. Every building uniquely structured and colored, and many of them had these incredible little gardens tucked past cast iron gates. I should have taken more pictures, but I didn't, so oh well.

If it wasn't so goddamn humid and rich I would love to live here.

things that have happened, are happening, and about to happen...

I have been back "home" for 2 and a half weeks now. It has been wonderful to spend time with my family and friends, to see tall green trees, and to bask in the familiarity of it all. However, once again, it only took me two weeks to remember why I had previously run away from this place.

I decided on coming back because I thought that I needed to be done with my tumbleweed existence. I desperately wanted to move "home" where things would be easier, where I wouldn't be so alone. Unfortunately,  just because you really, really, really want things to be easy and perfect doesn't mean that they ever will be.

Because I do still really enjoy running away from my problems, I called my boss at the camp I will be working at this summer and made arrangements to come up a month early and do some work to prepare for the arrival of campers. For a month I will be one of three people living there, in the middle of the Adirondacks, spending each day building gardens, repairing cabins, painting, and lots of other forms of manual labor. I know, I know, I have complained so much about being alone. I have come to realize that I have a very definite love/ hate relationship with loneliness. Hmm, or maybe I hate loneliness but I love punishing myself. Either way- I am off to do it again.

But first, tomorrow I leave for Radford, VA to see my little sister, whom I am immensely proud of, graduate college! I will spend a few days with the great Kalin in Blacksburg, VA, and then my mother and I leave for Charleston, SC. After Charleston I spend a week in Norfolk helping my mother prepare my childhood home for renters, then its back to Richmond to say my goodbyes to friends, and then i am off, once again.