Well folks, I am here at the farm at UC Santa Cruz, listening to chirping frogs outside the library. It's been an eventful past couple of months meandering and adventuring since I left Park School. I'm tired from all this moving around so I'm not going to write too much tonight.
After my trip to the Mojave and Eastern Sierra, I returned briefly to the Bay Area, but finding the urbanity of it strange and unfamiliar after so much empty space, I quickly departed, heading north to Full Belly farm, where my friend Rawley Johnson is working as an intern. My two days there were eventful, full of all kinds of experiences from digging holes and planting fruit trees until my hands and muscles ached to milking cows and goats to cooking a farm lunch. I savored the taste of fresh goat milk and the beautiful greens of springtime in the Capay. I also appreciated being able to work alongside some of the crew, speaking in Spanish and sharing a difficult job that is a reality of farm work (digging holes in hard soil).
From the Capay, it was a long, boring drive to Olympia, where I stopped to visit relatives for a few hours, trading tales of animals (they raise chickens and have a menagierie of cats, pet rats, a dog and even a hedgehog) and admiring my cousins beautiful ceramics (her work after half a year is better than mine after four). Then, a late night drive to Seattle with a broken headlight, and more family time. The highlight of being in Seattle was checking out the boat my cousin Emmett and three friends of his are working on. Check out their blog:
http://libertatiavoyagingproject.wordpress.com/
Even though boats are a bit foreign to me, especially after weeks in the high desert, their enthusiasm and excitement as well as their skill and organization are impressive.
Last weekend found me in Moscow, ID a small college town set in the beautiful rolling hills of the Palouse region along the Washington-Idaho border. My sister and brother in law had moved there last August. Despite the sometimes harsh weather: strong winds and snow--the area really grew on me. Moscow is a great small town with cafes, restaurants and a wonderful food co-op, and despite the wintry weather, we still made it out to enjoy the beauty of the region. Little green shoots of wheat were beginning to cover the hills in green, and the yellow flowers of arrowleaf balsam and buscuitroot were emerging underneath the ponderosa pines on the south-facing slopes of a steptoe butte. After four days, it was hard to leave family and a region whose charms were slowly revealing themselves to me.
Now I am here in Santa Cruz, and after all this traveling, it will take a while for it to sink in that this is where I will be for the next six months. It's all very exciting: a new place, new people, new things to learn, new fun to be had. I don't want to loose sight of the Bay and the world beyond and hope that folks will come visit me here. It's a beautiful place.
After my trip to the Mojave and Eastern Sierra, I returned briefly to the Bay Area, but finding the urbanity of it strange and unfamiliar after so much empty space, I quickly departed, heading north to Full Belly farm, where my friend Rawley Johnson is working as an intern. My two days there were eventful, full of all kinds of experiences from digging holes and planting fruit trees until my hands and muscles ached to milking cows and goats to cooking a farm lunch. I savored the taste of fresh goat milk and the beautiful greens of springtime in the Capay. I also appreciated being able to work alongside some of the crew, speaking in Spanish and sharing a difficult job that is a reality of farm work (digging holes in hard soil).
From the Capay, it was a long, boring drive to Olympia, where I stopped to visit relatives for a few hours, trading tales of animals (they raise chickens and have a menagierie of cats, pet rats, a dog and even a hedgehog) and admiring my cousins beautiful ceramics (her work after half a year is better than mine after four). Then, a late night drive to Seattle with a broken headlight, and more family time. The highlight of being in Seattle was checking out the boat my cousin Emmett and three friends of his are working on. Check out their blog:
http://libertatiavoyagingproject.wordpress.com/
Even though boats are a bit foreign to me, especially after weeks in the high desert, their enthusiasm and excitement as well as their skill and organization are impressive.
Last weekend found me in Moscow, ID a small college town set in the beautiful rolling hills of the Palouse region along the Washington-Idaho border. My sister and brother in law had moved there last August. Despite the sometimes harsh weather: strong winds and snow--the area really grew on me. Moscow is a great small town with cafes, restaurants and a wonderful food co-op, and despite the wintry weather, we still made it out to enjoy the beauty of the region. Little green shoots of wheat were beginning to cover the hills in green, and the yellow flowers of arrowleaf balsam and buscuitroot were emerging underneath the ponderosa pines on the south-facing slopes of a steptoe butte. After four days, it was hard to leave family and a region whose charms were slowly revealing themselves to me.
Now I am here in Santa Cruz, and after all this traveling, it will take a while for it to sink in that this is where I will be for the next six months. It's all very exciting: a new place, new people, new things to learn, new fun to be had. I don't want to loose sight of the Bay and the world beyond and hope that folks will come visit me here. It's a beautiful place.
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