Climb the Mountains with Me

Take with me each heavy step
Lift against the suction of gravity
Suck air from the icy gusts.
Reach and capture with eyes
A picture so tall and wide and deep
Bursting open your chest to knead your heart
Blowing your brain to fill your head with flowers.

Befriend with me boulders who shield
Thank the moss for cushioned landing
Tease the whistling mice with empty hands.
Discern and greet with eyes
An earth so artistic
Painting the forest you emerged from
Weaving the meadow you stepped through

Onto a canvas, into a tapestry
Where you and I appear
As little dots that we are.

Soul CD / Oregon in "Retrospect"

A friend told me about soul CDs last night.  You choose twelve songs that define you at the core and put them on a CD.  You can keep one as a memorabilia, trade them with friends, or just gift them.  People rarely make CDs anymore, but I think it would be cool to make one for myself.  I've made special CDs for people before, but more for the recipient, and never with the intention to define myself.  I think as a college graduation gift to myself I will make one.  It will be challenging -- twelve songs aren't a lot!

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The Oregon visit was good.  Good.  The beautiful, dynamic landscape was everything I had imagined. The people were even kinder and happier than I had imagined.  To feel like the most Southern person in a crowd was a new experience...  In that regard, I am definitely more comfortable back in Athens where half the people talk more Southern than I do.  But other than that, I almost felt like I knew I belonged there.  The active tectonic landscape -- the landscape!  Lush mountains and hills all around with giant evergreens, the Pacific coast with the white waves throwing themselves at jutting cliffs, valleys shrouded in fog, crystal-clear blue streams, and snow-capped Cascade volcanoes, all neighboring each other.  All the people there seemed to be outdoors(wo)men, whether their outlet of choice be snowboarding, skiing, surfing, hiking, paddling, or mountain biking.  Plastic bags are banned, you can literally subscribe to local agriculture for fresh seasonal produce, people bike everywhere -- refreshing things like these simply made sense.

Headed to Knoxville, TN and Minneapolis, MN this coming week.  I am forgetting to feel thankful for these opportunities but rather constantly fearing feeling too smug.  Thankfulness...  That's really where it all needs to go.  I can't lose that.

On another note, I'm thinking of making a new blog for grad school.  Should I stay on Blogger or move onto Tumblr or something else?

The Fate of Excitement

I am so looking forward to the Oregon State visit in a week.  On the second day of the visit, turns out we will be doing a field trip to the coast!!!  The Pacific coast!!!  Wow.

I got so excited about OSU, despite having to give a practice talk this Friday and a real one there next Monday, that I started looking up everything about all of Oregon.  After feasting my eyes on descriptions and photos of its rocky coastlines, alpine hikes, mountain biking, public transportation(!), and whatnot, I thought to myself, "Wow, I don't know if I've ever looked forward to anything this much."  But then, I realized that just a couple of months ago I was just as excitedly making plans for my summer in Colorado.  In the middle of new excitement for a prospective graduate school, I had completely forgotten about the excitement for something more immediate and certain in my future.  That made me feel both incredulous about what a good place in life I am in and a bit afraid that I would start taking any of these immense blessings for granted.  If enough of these exciting things happen in my life, will I stop finding them exciting?  How sad will that be?  Is this why elderly people are more chill about everything?

I don't ever want to forget about my first excitements.  In my childhood, it was my first plane ride. I remember not being able to stop grinning ear to ear on the long ride to the airport.  I was thinking about my dad telling me about his business trips abroad, and how you could see the clouds next to you and below you on an airplane.  Some people are deathly afraid of plane rides, and some just don't like them.  But I somehow guessed right that I would love them.  Twelve years and many more flights later, I still find flying exhilarating.  I brace myself for every takeoff, watch the other landing strips whoosh by, and joyfully scream inside as I feel the wheels leave the ground.  And as long as I can see something outside, I cannot sleep on a plane because I will be taking photos of clouds, mountaintops, and rivers constantly.

I hope that is the fate for all my other excitements.  I hope that is not too much for me to ask.

Admissions! / Microscopy Woes

Unlike on Facebook, I won't feel guilty of boasting if I post this stuff here.  Well, I guess it is technically boasting, too, but so few people read this blog -- and they do it voluntarily, I think -- that I think of it as just sharing the exciting things in my life like any other time I write on here.

Okay, so I just wrote some stuff about where I've been accepted to, but suddenly the slim possibility of people related to these schools somehow reaching my blog and reading my frank thoughts about each school dawned upon me, and I shouldn't risk that.  Darn!

Well, I'll say I am going to grad school next fall and leave it at that!  Okay, and that I am visiting Minnesota in March.  Very thankful for this.

I think it's also safe to say that, while I haven't been accepted to Oregon State, I have high hopes that I will be.

I am learning that grad school applications didn't end when I sent in all my stuff and money.  Most schools are on tight budgets, and they are very careful about whom they decide to offer admission to.  I have had lengthy phone calls and many email exchanges with prospective advisors at two schools since they reviewed my file, and neither have a definite answer for me yet.  Those interactions were just as important and nerve-wracking as the actual applications.  One has sent me a paper and former students' contacts.  I am excited to read the paper and hear the deal-io about working with him, but it's like... "Man, I thought I was done with this!" "Let me do some homework now!"... kind of, haha.  Ah, rarely is life so simple.

Yes, it is much better to be not done and potentially be in a have-to-make-decisions position than have five rejection letters (or emails -- I feel like nobody mails things anymore) in my hand and be done that way.  I do feel very fortunate, and I would be excited to go to any school I applied to.  Some more than others, of course.

Overall this is a very exciting (word of the day, y'all) time for me, and I really don't know whom to thank other than a supreme being who is in control of all that happens.  Thank you God, for giving me a direction for my path, paving that path, and giving me a light so I can walk on it.  Happily.

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I did not anticipate economic geology to take such a toll on my body.  Economic geology is also known as "ore deposits class."  We look at polished slivers of rocks from all kinds of mines under a ginormous microscope that I can barely lift out of the cabinet.  For a three-hour lab period.  Except I came in an hour early and made it four hours today.  And I came in Sunday night and spent three hours... examining three rock samples!

First, the eyes.  The different light switches in the microscope keep making me blind myself accidentally.  A rock microscope has a circular stage you rotate, which means you are constantly staring down into something either way too bright or too dim -- depending on your polarizer setting -- that is spinning. So, after blinding myself four times with sudden floods of light and watching spinning crystals intently for hours, the words in my textbook looked hazy for a few moments.  Second, I am convinced this terrible crick in my neck is from craning it to look into this really tall microscope... despite that I had been sitting on a 980-page book on my chair.  Also I've been sleep deprived, but that may or may not be because of this class.  I love geology, I promise... just not microscopes...

A view through the scope... This is the kind of rock we get our copper and nickel from.

Arts & Sciences

The Fraklin College of Arts & Sciences at UGA always seemed like an unlikely combination to me.  Why were we lab nerds lumped with the artsy fartsy people with nose piercings?

I've recently realized that art and science are the same in a way.  They both involve something only inherent (I think) to humans -- delving into what is unnecessary for immediate survival needs.  I struggled with the "frivolity" of geologic research last year.  Why was I trying so hard, why was the government giving money out, to figure out how the Caribbean islands got where they are now, when there are sick and starving people in the world?  Yet, I never questioned the purpose and worth of a piece of music or painting.  Science for science's sake, discovery for discovery's sake is no more frivolous than expression for expression's sake.  Whether it is exercising our intellect to figure out why the land we live on stands here today or why that rock looks the way it does, or it is expressing our complex emotions and thoughts through a sculpture, we are celebrating and taking full advantage of our God-given gifts.

I also used to wonder why I thought Wegener's groundbreaking -- no pun intended -- theory of plate tectonics was significant to humanity, but not what happened to some Caribbean islands 70 million years ago.  Well, not every artist paints a Sistine Chapel or the Starry Night.  Not every painter is Picasso or Dali.  But are not our lesser-known local artists talented and important?  Don't their works also contribute to the expressions of humanity and influence other works in some way?  Likewise, whether it's landing a man on the Moon or finding out how a sea biscuit skeleton grows (actually went to such a talk and learned the true meaning of "excruciating detail"), a discovery is a discovery.  They each form a part of our knowledge base and influence other discoveries in some way.

A friend asked if I really wanted to be in school for the rest of my life.  I enjoy research, I really do so far.

What Sh*t Is Made Of

I just found myself earnestly Googling "pterosaur poop composition."  No dice, it turns out not many other people in the world are as curious about that as I am.  It says something if you need to know something that Google can't find.  But then, now there is Google Scholar...

But how do we really know?!  We would have to know what pterosaurs ate and how their digestive system worked.  With so much erased about the past, we can only make conjectures.

Everything is a guess.  What is knowledge anyway?  We really can't know anything.  Does this bed in front of me exist?  I think so, but I could not exist, and this bed might not, either.  Religion, by definition, is definite (e.g. "God exists and that's the truth; you can't disprove it"), and I think that is why people are drawn to it.

Science is futile.  Scientific method, after all, is a man-made concept.  But it's fun.  Exercising our brains to figure out things we don't need to know for basic survival is a human privilege / gift from God, and we should take advantage of it!

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"A Night in Tunisia" is a good tune... I don't know what Tunisia looks or sounds like, so to me it sounds like walking through a crowded but mellow bar with wooden furnishings in the 1930s.  Dressed in black, downing whiskey, lost in the saxophone melody...  haha!  Times like this I feel like I was born in the wrong decade.  Good thing live jazz is still around and accessible.

I often can't believe that a career in geology exists.  How is it possible for something this fun to be lucrative?

So many blessings... Friends, family, learning community, nature, excitement for the future, active channeling of my passion... Heaven forbid I complain about anything in my life!

Hodgepodge Month in a Hodgepodge Retrospect

What wouldn't I do for a peaceful weekend where I can sit and watch a movie...

It's already the end of October.  Where did October go?  To Arizona, to many beers, to much confusion about future and people, to campfires.  To the desert, forests, mountaintops, caves.  To hurried grad school research and cramming for midterms.  What a hodgepodge of a month.

Maybe I should change my attitude from "must apply to as many schools as reasonably possible, must get into somewhere and start grad school next fall" to "eh, I'll apply to 2 or 3 I really like, and if I don't get into any, I'll just look for a job for a gap year."  The only problem is, if I don't secure a job early, either, I can't get permission to stay in the US for a gap year.  I guess in that case, I'll just spend a year in Korea and apply for US grad schools from there.  So either attitude is cumbersome...  Well, I've already started investing a lot of time into looking at grad programs, so I'll just keep chugging along the best I can.  It's just stressful with GSA beginning this weekend; I feel pressured to prepare to meet everyone who might could be a potential advisor.

Feeling this lack of free time, always feeling obligated to do something related to school, and finding myself longing for off hours sometimes make me wonder if I really want to be in school (either as student or faculty) forever.  But, we always long for what we don't have, right?  (Why is that?  That's kind of cruel.)  And I wonder if I will get the same satisfaction with a 9-5 job.  Guess it would depend on what it is...  Okay, enough far-future thinking, back to the present.

It got really cold all of a sudden over the weekend.  To think that, in the beginning of the month, I was enjoying(?) 97-degree afternoons in Tucson.  Now it's in the 30s at night in Athens.

I've been going out a bit too much this semester.  Not sure when exactly it started or if I should be concerned...  I would like a peaceful weekend to figure this stuff out, also.

Well, here's to a late night of productivity (please!!) so I can celebrate a college Halloween properly for the first and last time tomorrow.

Birchmore Revelation

Just because I wanted exercise, I walked the Birchmore Trail for the first time two weekends ago.  It might be my favorite trail I have walked in Athens.  When you go across the road (I think it's Gran Allen Dr) and back into the woods, that's where the good stuff begins.  At one point you come to the top of a small ravine and you find yourself in sort of a big hall surrounded by big trees all over.  Sunlight streaming, birds chirping, trees rustling and swaying in the distance.  There I took in the forest and thought, "Man, I only have so much time to see and feel this beauty.  Life's too short to spend indoors."  Which is precisely how I finally decided for sure to go on a 2-night camping trip next weekend.  Fall is beautiful.  And short-lived.  Just like life.

I think I would have liked to be a Native American back in the day.  Like Pocahontas or Sacajawea.  Except I actually have never watched Pocahontas.  But I do know a good bit about Sacajawea because in fifth grade, I dressed up as Sacajawea and told people about myself for a big project.  Also, I really enjoyed reading Undaunted Courage in high school, and that book (being about the Lewis and Clark expedition) had a lot of Sacajawea stuff in it.  Or really, I would have liked to a Native American before we (outsiders) knew them.  Camp out all the time, revere nature, etc.

Forgive my writing, I'm really tired.  Just spent a very good time indoors at the Georgia Theatre watching the Punch Brothers perform.

Enough Productivity for the Day

What a day.  Got four hours of sleep, took a big midterm, came home around 4:00, then in a strange sleep-deprived burst of focus and motivation, I finished and submitted an internship application I have been "working on" for three months.  On top of that, after a satisfying evening nap, I began to continue my graduate-program searching journey.  But of course that would be too good -- I soon stumbled into the magnetic field of Facebook and found myself going through field school pictures, reminiscing those mountain hikes.  And thinking about how EXCITING (!!!!!!!!!!!) it is that I will be leaving for Arizona on Sunday!!!  To be honest, I don't know what the heck is in Tucson.  Cactus, I imagine -- my excitement just momentarily shriveled -- and sand, and dust?  Plus, I will be indoors almost all of the time.  But the thought of just going back out West does it for me.  If it's out there, it's gotta be cool.  Thinking about merely breathing in some dry air is literally making my palms sweat with excitement.

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Last night, as I was looking over the definition of "precipitation" in my Surficial Processes notes, I was reminded of a little picture book I really loved as a kid.  My hazy memory says it was titled 무지개는 왜 생길까요? or Why Do Rainbows Form?  And it had a tiger explaining various elements of precipitation, including snowflakes, raindrops, and rainbows.  It was from that book I learned that when water vapor condenses and gets heavy, it falls to the ground as rain.  And here I was in college, learning the same concept.  But building on that to learn so much more about precipitation... how to measure it, how it travels through the ground, how it affects weathering of the Earth, how that is related to tectonics.  Now, I have grown up and come so far in education as to help produce new knowledge about nature as a scientist.  When I reached that thought, the sudden recall of the memory of that book became so precious.  I wanted to find it on Amazon (from the illustrations, I could tell even as a child that it was a foreign book) or Google Images and post a picture of it on here.  But I couldn't find it.  I wanted to ask someone who may know the exact title.  I wanted to talk to someone and confirm that this book wasn't a figment of my imagination.  I wanted to call and thank the person who got me that book.  I wanted to call the person who got me all these great science picture books and encyclopedias and encouraged me to learn as much as I can, because I grew up in a family that could afford it, unlike hers.  I wanted to let her in on all the exciting research I am learning about and talk to her about how hard it is to believe that I am already finishing up college.  I want to reminisce with her about the day that she dressed me and patted my head, saying, "You're now already a third grader."

This is where it becomes extremely difficult to not believe in an afterlife.  How to deal with this?  (I need to go to an AMF meeting.)

This... this is what happens whenever I decide I am not obligated to work for the rest of the night that I am home and awake alone.  There.  Possibly one of my most stream-of-consciousness ramble of a post to date.

Calling from a Place

I hear a calling.  And it's not from a particular role in the world.  It's a calling from a place.  I have to go back out West as soon as I can.  Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, California, Arizona, wherever.  I have been struck with the American West in June and obsessed with it ever since.  All I know is that whatever I do, whatever passion I pursue, I want to do it out there where the mountains are high, the air is dry, and the view endless.

Perhaps I am not allowing myself to get to know the South enough.  The depths of the forests, the current of the rivers, the mist-shrouded old mountaintops.  I will, I will soon enough.  But in the meantime, I can't stop daydreaming about what's out there on the other side.

I wonder if this is the kind of calling that my mother felt after visiting the U.S.  Soon after our 10-day summer vacation through California, Arizona, and Nevada, my parents started planning to get our family back here.  In her mid-30s, it was her first time in a foreign country, and even before our trip ended, she said, "Let's come live here."  And we did come back, just a year afterwards.  My parents didn't know what they would do for a living after leaving everything behind...  Reckless surely, but I think I might understand now why they came.  They heard a calling from this country.

I think I hear one, too...

With this realization I might very well cry on my next Grand Canyon trip.  Back at where it all started...

Shenanigans

Got a brand new (and probably the most entertaining) batch of field school pictures from Chris.  Click to view in their full glory.

Yet another Mt. Shavano picture, with Chris, who took all pictures on this post.

At ~11,000 ft, the highest low country boil ever?!  (It's about 450 ft high in Georgia.)

Our classroom one morning, Valles Caldera National Preserve, NM

The class

Volcanic ash and tuff

The hills are alive -- Summitville, CO

Mr. Poopy, our ammo-can toilet.  It had a lovely view of the surrounding aspens.

Partner Ethan and I, failing to find gold.

Stream frozen/snowed over on Mt. Lincoln, CO

"I make it rain" -- virga (precipitation that doesn't reach the ground) seen from Mt. Licoln

After last day of field work, "Whoo it's 103 degrees and our professor surprised us with beer!"

Way back to the abbey

Giddy

Slept like that for a while.  Check out my dirt tan.

We actually worked every night

The day after the last day of work.  Going from left to right in the common room -- see John sleep. 

What a nasty couch I was on.

Brandon and Nick.

Places to Take My Loved Ones To

1. Valles Caldera, NM -- For those who want to find themselves in a Disney fairy tale, complete with a shimmering meadow, mist in the distance, and overly friendly butterflies
2. Mt. Shavano, CO -- For the seriously adventurous
3. Onion Creek, UT -- For those who want to go to outer space for cheap
4. South Park, CO -- For those who want to be calmed and moved at once
5. Cochiti Mesa, NM -- For those who trust me to take them where I've never been myself
6. Apalachicola, FL

To be continued

Valles Caldera.  During a morning lecture -- notice the elk herd.

I say it's still kind of summer

Got this from LeAnne:

1. The best thing to do on a hot day is stay inside, if it's really hot!  If it's moderately hot, make a smoothie and head to the pool.
2. The best place to be on a hot day is the river or a mountaintop.
3. The best thing to eat on a hot day is 콩국수 (soy noodles).
4. Hot days are inevitable.  Global warming, everyone.
5. My go to outfit on a warm summer day is shorts, tank top, sandals, and sunglasses.
6. The scent that reminds me of summer is sunscreen.
7. My favorite thing about summer is warmth that allows for green leaves and being outside late at night.

Just realized I never had any this summer.  I shall try to make some sometime soon.  MMMMMM

Summer in Review

What a summer it was...  As I sit here looking at my desktop wallpaper of the Great Sand Dunes while listening to my Field School playlist (consisting of a Nickel Creek album and some radio songs we heard at least 50 times each on vans), I can't help but think that this summer deserves a proper farewell.

This summer was a whirlwind.  A few days after finishing up finals, I pulled an all-nighter at school submitting an Honors optional project two days before field school.  Then away we went, on a seemingly endless 3-day journey to the West, only to realize that it was only the beginning of the beginning.

Then six weeks of sun, sweat, mountains, rocks, dust, cactus, and all kinds of beautiful things and experiences that make my eyes glaze over and my chest swell to think of...  Sunrises, sunsets, glaciers, summits, elk herds, butterflies, shooting stars, horizons...

Then unbelievably, I was back in Georgia -- with body, mind, and soul changed, with habits, perspective, tastes, hopes, dreams newly acquired.  With inevitably permanent scars on my limbs, with an armful of photographs and videos that I now cannot believe I took.  The weekend before field school, I was home showing my family the Google Image-d photographs of places I would visit.  I thought to myself, "These probably look more impressive than what I'm really going to see, but I'll give them the impressive versions, why not."  But of course, it was so much more impressive in person.  I remember trying over and over to capture a place with my camera and being disappointed that it wasn't turning out as good as the real thing.  Now, all I can do is look back at these photographs and marvel at the fact that they were what I was seeing, except what I was seeing was even better.

And to think that the beauty that I saw was only a part of the experience...

Trying to get up at 4 in the morning for the first fourteener climb, I asked myself, "Why the heck am I doing this?"  On the way down from the mountain, I could not stop talking to Chris, one of our instructors and mountain guru, about how it was the coolest/best experience of my life and and how inexplicable its goodness was.  How do you explain to someone who has never ridden a roller coaster why dropping and flipping in a metal box is fun?  Likewise, you can't explain to someone why climbing up four thousand feet with the thin air robbing you of oxygen and the freezing wind howling and whistling in your ear is so darn fulfilling.  Even if you can sort of get that across, you still won't be able to convey just how fulfilling.  It's just something you have to try to know...

Anyway, back in Georgia, I spent the first few weeks adjusting back to the humidly mundane and the latter few weeks moving out and into my new place.  Even after a month and a half, all I can think of is the West, how I can get myself back there as soon as possible, and how I can take my family and friends there.

Which is too bad because tomorrow, classes start, and the last year of college (da-dun) will dawn upon me.  With GRE, research, applications, and work, it may be the busiest semester of my life (but Heaven forbid it be as miserable as that semester I took Math Methods in Physics).  Hopefully, that everything I will be doing is what I am interested in (except for the GRE) will help.

Father, I pray that I will stay with and listen for you...

Why I Will Go Paddling Again But Will Never Climb Everest

Went paddling down the Broad River yesterday on a total whim.  It was perfect because my right foot has been in a bad shape, and I've been wanting exercise that won't strain it.  We went at a breakneck speed of ~1 mph, T-boning each other, stopping at a swimming hole every hour, running the same rapid 20 times, sipping beer, and looking at fish on the way.  At a time where all I could think of in the humid, thickly vegetated South was the endless view, colorful rocks, snowy peaks, and crisp air of the West, this little day was what I needed to remember how I came to love Georgia.  The peaceful river, the weathered rocks, tall draping green trees...

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Finished watching the first season of Everest: Beyond Limit last night, and I have decided that if there's one thing I will never do, it's attempting to climb Everest (or K2 or any other eight-thousanders).  I've become quite interested in hiking/mountaineering/climbing/whateveryoucallit ever since climbing some fourteeners in Colorado, and also ever since those climbs, it always boggled my mind how in the world people could climb Everest, which is twice the elevation of the ones I barely made up.  The Discovery Channel show showed me how they do it, and it is just insane.  So here it goes, why I would never climb Everest, no matter how much money, time, or hiking experience I had:

1. It doesn't seem fun.  Frostbite, delirium, running out of oxygen while stuck in a "traffic jam" of a dozen other climbers from some other team, passing decades-old corpses along the way, getting sick yourself, watching other people get sick and/or die.... It is a ridiculous obsession at that point.  I like hiking because I can get a great exercise, take in breathtaking views, enjoy the company of friends on the way, see mountain animals and wildflowers, and feel peace away from everything after getting through thrilling challenges.  From what I could see from the show, these people were too close to plunging to their death for various reasons to take in and savor anything.  Granted, Discovery Channel was trying to keep the footages extra suspenseful and intense for the viewers, but I really could not picture these delirious people continually collapsing from hypoxia and hypothermia savoring anything.  It just looked miserable.  After all of that, if you are lucky, after a month-and-a-half climb you get to the top and spend half an hour catching your breath and frantically taking pictures before you have to head down as quickly as you can before running out of oxygen.  Then, if you are lucky, you come back down to nurse and/or chop off your frostbitten appendages and/or spend a month and a half in the hospital for various reasons. 
2. It is selfish.  It's hard to believe these people have wives and/or children.  They are putting themselves in something they know can easily kill them, and by deciding to participate, it's practically saying, "Dear my loved ones, I would hate to leave you behind in this world, but conquering this mountain is more important to me than being there for you.  Hopefully I will come back safely, but I am willing to gamble your futures for this personal goal of mine."  I can't imagine my dad or future husband leaving me for two months so they can put themselves in grave danger for a chance at personal glory!  Even the guy on prosthetic legs who summited and returned alive, who I guess inspired disabled people by being the first legless man to climb Everest (he had lost his lower legs to frostbite while climbing something else), said in his interview that if he knew how bad it would be, he would not have done it.  He ended up having to cut off one more inch off from each leg among other consequences he suffered.

What I would like to do someday, though, is hike to the Everest Base Camp (~17,000 ft).  That would be challenging and beautiful enough!  By the way, Everest: Beyond Limit is a good show, even though I just gave a bit away.  I'm gonna watch the second season, too, haha...

Getting Situated

How foolish I was to think that a catching up of sleep over a weekend would be all I need to wind down from field school and be ready to jump into productivity.

It's been two and a half weeks, and I feel like every few days I discover something new I need to take care of, whether it be some stupid "housekeeping" thing or having to ease myself back into the mundane or to nurse my emotional state.  Today's discovery was that life back home did not stop for a month and a half while I was gone.  My life back home was paused, but everyone else's wasn't.  I noticed my un-awareness the first night I was back in Georgia -- I met a couple of new people and asked, "So, what are you guys doing this summer?" then realized what I should have asked was, "What have you guys been doing this summer?"  But even then I didn't know the full significance of that ignorance.  

Being back home after field school is surprisingly difficult.  Six weeks was long enough for me to have to seriously adjust myself back into the familiar environment, but short enough for me to feel like the whole world outside of field school was on pause, yet long enough for things to change back home.

So here I've been today, nursing my wounds, trying to stop procrastinating, and reading poetry to cheer myself up all at the same time.  A good find from this afternoon that, of course, reminds me of field school:

Falling Stars
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes -- do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

Cycles Again

It is comforting to yet again learn of the cyclical nature of life.

Things come and go.  Then they come.  Then they go.  Then something else comes.  And goes.

Just when I think that everyone has finally posted all the field school pictures, more get uploaded on Facebook.  This is the second time in my life that I'm feeling, "Man, that was the time of my life.  I am so sad it is over and will always miss it."  Back in high school as ASYO was ending, I knew I had the time of my violin-playing life that year, and I have been very nostalgic for it ever since.  That the field school experience is reverberating in me now and overshadowing the ASYO nostalgia comforts me.  It means that no matter how badly I miss being out there, with every single day an outdoor adventure, an experience awesome enough to overshadow field school will come in the future.

Aw shucks, now I'm stuck with two nostalgic thoughts.  I would love to be playing some Shosty 5 tomorrow morning.  The thrill of playing that symphony all the way through is comparable to climbing a tough fourteener, albeit less dangerously badass.

Bottom line, I have to move on from field school, but it's okay because some other awesome experience will come in time.

And because today is always the best time to be thinking about....

How Embarrassingly Mind-Blowing,

I'm not special.

Logically, I already knew that, but what a liberating thing that is to really take to heart!

It frees me from the sense of obligation to live up to others' expectations or to become as special/important as possible to the world.

... Which is why McCullough also talked about the importance of pursuing passions for the sake of passions, rather than seeking accolades or striking off items from an arbitrary checklist. Accolades and lists may tell us about accomplishments, but life is meant to be experienced, not just accomplished....

Just two nights ago I was pulling out my hair, trying to figure out how to apply to and get into the perfect graduate school.  The main problem being that I wasn't sure what I wanted to research.  I will be researching Caribbean plate tectonics for my senior thesis this year, but is that what I want to do for my Master's?  Even if I preferred something else, wouldn't it make more sense to apply in that direction since I will be experienced and more qualified?  Didn't [Dr.] Doug [Crowe] tell me that paleoclimate is too saturated with researchers right now?  What about this mining internship that I may have a shot at for next summer?

Nothing else matters.  It doesn't matter if I don't enroll in the most prestigious graduate program I can get into, if I don't become super prominent and successful, if I don't garner as many awards and grants as possible -- I just have to do what I want to do, because it will be foolish to spend my life doing what other people want me to do, when I'm never going to be that special or the best or any other worldly status anyway (and nor should I care to).  With that said, I want to do something that involves geology's direct impact on humans, e.g., earthquake prediction, climate change, alternative energy resources... and, of course, write about my take on faith.

The plate tectonics thesis will stimulate me intellectually and make me a better researcher, but it is not exactly what I want to continue to pursue afterwards.  I don't think so for now, at least.  And that's okay.  Ah, yes!

Good Ol' Frands

Ah... the long-saught-after antidote to field school withdrawal:  finally getting to see my beloved friends back in Georgia.

In a whirlwind of spontaneity, I got to see Phoeny and Kyle for the first time since May, and Tenisha again, all today.  As much as I love Colorado, I would rather be where I am understood, listened to, and loved by others and where I can understand and enjoy the company of those people.  In other words, I'd rather be surrounded by friends and family rather than by breathtaking natural scenery.  That's actually a pretty close call to me, but what's the use of beautiful mountains if your loved ones are too far away to share them with?