Nasewaupee: Pokemon NO

     

"I know more about Pokemon than I do about the plants and animals that surround me" I wish I couldn't take credit for this quote but these are my words and I uttered them some two years ago to one of my co-workers as I was traveling on the east coast as an outdoor educator. On this particular day I was tasked with taking a group of two dozen eight year olds on a nature hike along the shore of the Anacostia river and it was during this walk when the kids incessantly kept asking me the question of "what's this" or "why is that" as only curious eight year olds can, that I realized I respected the natural world and I enjoyed being in it but I didn't know much of anything about it in terms of flora and fauna. In many ways I was still an eight year old. Those years of youth when my brain was a sponge and I should've been learning about these plants and animals and the important roles they play in the ecosystem I instead spent playing Pokemon Blue, Silver, and Sapphire on my Game Boy. I could tell you all about where to find a Slowpoke, what level Haunter learns Dream Eater, how to evolve your Magikarp into a Gyrados, or what set of Pokemon would best serve you to beat the Elite Four and ironically even as a 24 year old man, a decade and a half later, I can still answer most of those questions because it was that ingrained in me as a child. But I couldn't tell those kids what type of tree that was, or how long the ducklings stayed with their mother, or what grasshoppers ate, or how many types of fish lived in the river. I was their teacher and I didn't have the answers, because I grew up learning about fictional creatures in a fictional world instead of the real ones in my backyard.
         To be honest I feel like I wasted much of my childhood, adolescent years, and even some of my young adult years due to video games. I remember spending upwards of eight hours in a single day playing strategy games like Age of Empires or Civilization without ever leaving my house, or heck without ever leaving my basement. We'd go on family trips and travel the country to different National Parks like Yellowstone and the Redwoods but thanks to Pokemon and my Game Boy even some of those experiences took a back seat to video games. I remember in high school the highlight of my week being that I completed a quest in World of Warcraft... hard to believe right? If it wasn't for my brother, sometimes physically unplugging my gaming systems, and forcing me to go on adventures with him, I might still be that same lost soul today. It took real adventure, real risk, real challenge, and real engagement of my senses to pull me away from those fictional worlds and give me an appreciation for the real one. Navigating off trail, cliff jumping, swimming across lakes, cooking over an open fire, biking cross country, guerrilla camping; these are the things that saved me because when you live your life like a hero out of an adventure story, there's no need to vicariously live another life via a screen. I was more or less a client of wilderness therapy (before I ever knew what it was) and in many ways I still am. The wilderness changed my perspective on reality; it gave me a new lens with which to view the world and it's only been the last few years that I feel like I've begun to fully live out this life I've been given, a life where I spend more time outside engaging with the natural world and my fellow man than trying to escape it via television and video games.

       If we believe a virtual world is more exciting than our present existence then it's easy to fall into the trap of video game and tv addiction. I don't blame anyone for this because those are the same reasons I fell into video games. "Green Bay sucks, there's nothing to do, I'm bored," this was my rationale, this was my excuse for my behavior, this was my dull perspective. If you make no effort to seek out excitement or to take risks or if you fail to recognize the beauty and wonder of your fellow man and your surrounding landscape then naturally these electronic forms of entertainment are going to be your likely choice for activities. I get it, we all need to decompress and take a break every now and then but the danger of this allure to screens and fictional living; is that we forget about the real world - we neglect relationships and allow our communities to fall apart as we learn more about the emotions and feelings of our favorite characters and actors than we do about the people who live in the next room or across the street, we fail to develop talents and skills or pursue our passions because it's easier to develop a character in a fantasy world than to turn our fantasies into realities, and we passively stand by in the face of environmental degradation and injustice because we'd rather play the role of a hero in a game, than be a real one in this world. I say all of this from experience.
             We've got a whole lot of serious issues that we are facing as a culture that will need solutions in our lifetimes. Issues such as deforestation, the erosion of our top soils, the acidification of our oceans, the pollution of our air, the contamination of our drinking water, the over-consumption of vital resources, an obesity epidemic, rampant drug abuse, depression, and government corruption, - just to name a few. For many people these issues aren't even on their radar because watching reruns of The Bachelor or playing Call of Duty is more relevant to their lives, or so they think. We need more people in this world who have a connection to their communities and the land with which they live upon, more people who are willing to actively fight for positive change (environmentally and socially), and more people who are conscious and awake in a world where it's becoming ever easier to turn on the TV and turn ourselves off. We need more heroes and less zombies.

          Pokemon GO came out a little over a month ago and I see another generation falling into the same pattern as I did. Learning more about Pokemon rather than those wildflowers or that bird they just walked by. Wasting time and energy on something that will ultimately yield nothing for the betterment of themselves, their communities, or the environment. Sure with this new game you're walking, and maybe you can interact with your fellow players, but are you really engaged? Is that why I almost ran you over when you crossed the street without looking up from your phone? I often hear men my age tell me that the reason they still play video games like Pokemon is because it's their escape from a world they find negative or stressful. Well then I challenge you to be a real man and change your world instead of turning your back on it. Yeah the news likes to remind us of how much the world sucks and I won't deny that we are facing tons of problems, because we are, but this is a beautiful world we have and it is worth fighting for, and that fight won't be won if you don't help. We need more men and less zombies. The kids are watching; what kind of role model are you? 

           I'm passing judgment and I realize I'm getting very preachy but the voice you hear is the voice of my twenty four year old self reaching back to that little eight year old in Green Bay who turned his Game Boy on for the first time to play Pokemon Blue. I want to tell him to go outside, to run around with the neighborhood kids, to talk to his Grandpa, to put down the controller and pick up the guitar, to listen to his sister, to follow his brother and bike to far off lands, to watch the birds and eat Dandelions, and most importantly to smash in the TV and toss that Game Boy in the trash. Trust me you'll thank me in                                          sixteen years...
          Am I perfect in living out my own ideals, no. It took me seeing a horde of kids aimlessly wandering the streets staring at their phones trying to catch Pokemon for me to realize I still didn't know much about the species in my backyard. The same day I came to this realization and once again uttered those words of the opening quote from above I took my field guide and headed to the State Park to start a real adventure in discovering the life that's all around me. I struggled, but I successfully identified a few species - wild bee balm, white baneberry, the Blue Fronted Dancer damselfly. Learning to read the natural landscape and identify species with a field guide is like trying to learn a new language with a pocket dictionary. So I got help. I utilized my local library and searched the internet. I found books on mushrooms, and wild edibles, as well as literature on wild medicinals, all written for foragers in the Great Lakes regions. Online I found a host of youtubers who posted in depth videos about common wild edibles that you can easily collect from your own backyard or from a stroll down a country road. I read the books and watched the videos, I was filled with knowledge and ready to put it to the test.
   

   My first time looking for mushrooms and I found a patch of edible black trumpets along with turkey tail, not to mention a multitude of beautiful, but poisonous, gilled mushrooms along the forest floor. It's strange how once you become conscious of something's existence you find it everywhere. So many mushrooms! And that's just the beginning. As I turned my gaze to the plant life in my yard I was amazed to find a host of edible plants - those white flowered plants blooming along every roadside in Door County right now- that's Queen Anne's Lace, also known as wild carrot - dig that up, there's a tap root that looks and tastes like a carrot (it's a little late in the season now, but now you know for next year, how cool is that!?). Oh and those bull thistles that are everywhere, you can eat those roots too, along with the mid ribs of the leaves but wait until fall to dig those up. Oh and don't get me started on Dandelions. These things are a super food! Why pay top dollar for organic spinach from a grocery store when you can be eating wild Dandelion greens from your backyard that are more nutritious and free? Why have we been trying to eradicate these things!? Vitamin K, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, and Antioxidants (just in the greens) not to mention that you can make coffee from roasting the roots and eat the flowers too! And Staghorn Sumac, that crazy looking tree that looks like it belongs in the African Savannah, you can harvest those red fruit clusters and make some

amazing sumac-ade (tastes like fresh lemonade but without the need for sugar). Then there's Plantain, no not the banana looking thing, I mean the herb that's growing in your backyard right now, no seriously, look at this image and go check your lawn, it's there and it's awesome. Anti-microbial, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory - get some leaves and make yourself a tea or a poultice to enjoy the health benefits of this plant. I could go on... I'm just scratching the surface of what I've discovered in the last two weeks and I'm already seeing the world differently - Sumac are suddenly springing up everywhere along with all the other species I've identified (funny how a landscape that was once so familiar can look so different once you have a name and a search image for the flora that inhabit that place). 

Yellow Garden Spider
  (Beautiful but definitely creepy)
Found... in my garden

      There are now over 700 Pokemon that you can catch. Exciting isn't it, that's 550 more than when I was a kid. Well, there are over 2,500 plants and vertebrates alone in Wisconsin, not to mention thousands of more invertebrates, that you can identify. Some are poisonous, some can fight cancer and cure other maladies, some you can domesticate, some you can eat, some you can use for shelter, some are magnificently beautiful, some are scary, some are extremely rare, others can be found anywhere. Once you start opening your eyes to the diversity of life that surrounds you, there's no reason to try and escape this present reality. There's so much to learn and do that there's not even time for video games or television. Boredom is simply not recognizing the opportunity for discovery and adventure that awaits you if you merely took the initiative to pursue it. I regret having wasted so much of my valuable time on such pointless and frivolous entertainment. I wish I had learned these lessons sooner in life... but it's never too late to become who you might've been. 

          I'm heading out to the woods tomorrow to help lead a camp for a dozen or so kids. I hope I can share some of the knowledge I've learned, I hope I can give them at least one connection with nature that will change their perspective, I hope I can inspire them to want to learn more, and I hope this time around I can better answer their questions because I'm starting to change the tide and know more about the real plants and animals in my life than the fictional ones.  

Nasewaupee: In Search of My Ideal Job

"I want a job I never need a vacation from." I have no fantasies or delusions about never working. A life spent without work where I was lazing around, sleeping in, playing video games, watching tv, and doing nothing with my time would give me absolutely no enjoyment, in fact it would be the death of me; depression would no doubt be a result of such circumstances. No, I need work in my life because I know I am at my best when I am busy and when I am serving a purpose. When I say a "job I don't need a vacation from" I'm saying that I merely desire a job that doesn't leave me stressed, empty, and cold at the end of each day - where thoughts of Friday are on my mind the minute Monday begins or where two weeks of vacation will be the only highlight of my entire year. Our work is our lives; in many ways it defines us. It's no wonder that one of the first questions upon an introduction is "what do you do" and our response has the ability to make or break relationships. Many of us spend more time at work than we do at home, we spend more time with co-workers than we do with our own families, some of us have spent or will spend years or even decades working for the same company. Needless to say the nature of our work holds enormous power over the direction of our lives. What we choose to do and who we choose to do it for says a lot about who we are and what we value. For some people a job is a job, it pays the bills and that's that; however for me, I intend to be intentional as possible in the work I choose to do.
I was asked in a recent interview to describe my ideal job. Some people know exactly what it is

they want to do, they have that dream job that they've had their eyes set upon since they were six years old and they are slowly working their way toward it, I applaud those people and in my own way I am jealous at the simplicity of their lives and their desires. My dream job when I was a kid was to be a knight (If only we had a Medieval Times in NE Wisconsin). So the rest of us are on a complicated journey toward an unknown destination with a map that is missing pieces. Each successive job takes us down a new path and each experience sheds a little more light on where it is we're headed and helps answer the question of "is this the direction I want to go." There's still a lot of blank spots on my map and my final destination remains unclear but I do know a few things about my ideal job.
First, I need purpose in my role. I need work that demands the best from me, that challenges me and is dynamic enough to keep me from becoming bored or complacent. I need a job that keeps me engaged where I feel as though I am continually learning and developing as an individual.
Second, I need that challenging role to be within a purposeful company or workplace. I need to know that my actions and my hard work are making a tangible difference for the betterment of the world and not merely bringing in more money for an owner or investors. I need to be proud of my work in both the results of my labor and in who I am working for.
  Third I need this challenging altruistic job to be in a physical environment that I find beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. A cubicle or even a corner office with a view is not going to cut it. I need to be outdoors or at least have frequent access to nature during the course of my job.
Fourth, I need community within my work. I don't want co-workers, I want comrades. If these are the people that I am going to spend 40+ hours a week with then we need to be at a place where we can talk about deeper things than sports and the weather. I need to be with like minded individuals who share the same dreams I do. I need to inspire and be inspired.
Fifth, I need my work to provide me a basic standard of living and a reasonable work/life balance. I'm not looking for a lot in terms of a salary, I intend to always live simply and never go beyond my means but there's also nothing romantic or glorious about living in abject poverty and wondering if you can afford groceries or to see a doctor. Also the ability to visit one's family, work somewhat regular hours, and be given time off or have the ability to take time off for important life events is an ever more significant factor when I take a job.
I've been dabbling in different realms over the years trying to find work that gives me the right balance between these needs. Whether it has been work as a camp counselor, an autism counselor, a detention center volunteer, an outdoor educator, a therapy guide, a trail guide, or a teacher I am proud of the work I've done and these jobs have all helped me find my way and get me closer to my destination. The constant over the years of all the jobs I've held is working with youth as an educator/mentor in alternative environments outside of the classroom. This isn't something that I outright planned from a resume building standpoint but rather is simply the type of work to which I've been drawn to because it best fills those needs that I stated above. I've had meaningful work, with good people, in beautiful places...

My ideal job would therefore be a synthesis of the experiences I've had thus far. The challenge and purpose of a wilderness therapy field guide, mentoring young men through addiction, depression, abuse, and a host of other issues that we all face in our lives and seeing them transform over the course of the program into responsible, strong, thoughtful men; combined with the beautiful environment I experience as a trail guide and outdoor educator working in the northwoods of WI and MN on the lakes of the Boundary Waters or the waterways of the St. Croix, Namekagon, and Mississippi; then mixed with the community of summer camp and canoemobile where I lived, played, and worked alongside a team of caring and fun loving comrades over the course of several weeks; and finally blended with the work/life balance and standard of living of working as a counselor for young men with autism at a group home that was close enough to bike to, allowed me to pick my own hours, let me go home at the end of the day, provided me a living wage, and had the potential for long term career opportunities. I don't know if such a job exists - a year round quasi wilderness therapy day camp located at my convenience in NE Wisconsin - but as of this writing I'm actively searching for something resembling it.

My plan for the summer and early fall was to work as a kayak guide in the tourism industry of Door County, yet another position that would mesh well into the evolution of positions I have had over the years and give me a new perspective on the outdoor industry. I knew going into the season that working purely with tourists as opposed to urban youth or even camp kids was not going to leave me with the same warm feeling or sense of purpose as past jobs but it was a compromise for the work/life balance that would allow me to go home and still give me an adventure and afford me the opportunity to become a more skilled paddler. Like most jobs I take on, I put in my full effort into becoming the best that I could be at my position. I wrote my own scripts for every tour location and had them set up in a way to deliver the most amount of information in the most relevant and entertaining way possible. I went to the library weekly, reading books, watching documentaries, and educating myself on all things Door County from geography, to explorers, to shipwrecks, to fish, to restaurant recommendations, to the modern day economy. I reconciled the fact that I would mostly be paddling with wealthy tourists instead of kids by acknowledging that people of all ages, classes and backgrounds need environmental education, and the added bonus that my position was now tip-able and I could be paid additional money based on my service didn't hurt either. In addition to the American Canoe Association trip leader training I also had access to sea kayaks on my time off to explore and sharpen my skills. I came into the season rusty at best in terms of kayaking but after our staff training and a few independent paddling sessions I felt fully confident in my abilities to kayak for the summer. I even taught myself how to consistently roll! I was ready for the season but my left shoulder wasn't.
Only three weeks into the season and I started developing a constant dull pain on the front side of my left shoulder that worsened as I paddled. Being a typical twenty something year old guy, I told myself that my arm was just sore and that I could paddle through whatever this was. A week after the pain started and I was barely able to lift a frying pan or brush my hair without having shots of pain radiate down the length of my left arm. The doctor told me I had bicipital tendonitis, an inflammation of the biceps tendon that occurs from a lifetime of normal activities (which at the age of 24 is simply not possible) or from repetitive overhead motions in sports such as swimming, tennis, or baseball. Cases of this in kayakers are rare and usually only occur after years of paddling, not weeks. In the days and weeks leading up to the injury and the week of the injury the only routine physical thing I did was lift boats and paddle. It's the only explanation for my shoulder injury and yet it still makes no sense how I could go from being perfectly healthy to being quasi helpless in terms of the use of my left arm in a matter of days. The doctor didn't have answers for me either. When I asked if I could paddle again this season he told me he didn't know. He gave me an anti inflammatory steroid, told me to take ibuprofen routinely until the pain went away, and to stretch my shoulders more if possible. Luckily as quick as the pain came it dissipated. A few days after seeing the doctor I was riding my bike again, doing yoga, and gardening as if I never had this injury in the first place. Yet I was still shocked and a bit afraid at the notion that this had happened to me and could happen to me again seemingly without warning since I still don't have a logical explanation as to how this occurred.
Collectively my supervisor, boss, and I decided that I should take a break from paddling until I have a better understanding of how my shoulder is operating. As of now I'm done for the season but if I can get cleared from a doctor and paddle without pain there's a chance I can come back. I plan on doing a "rehab" paddle with my parents' kayak soon to see if paddling aggravates my arm again. I'm bummed out that I got sidelined before the season really got going and that I had to start job searching two months sooner than I had anticipated but everything happens for a reason right? So I'm still searching for something resembling that ideal job and in the meantime I found work as a waiter at a fancy new restaurant in town. My first day of work is tomorrow and I'm excited since I've never really worked in the restaurant industry before aside from Five Guys' and my stint at Ziggy's Kitchen in Mexico neither of which resemble work in high class dining. It's new, I'm sure it'll be initially challenging (I've got over 40 wines to get familiar with), it's not that purposeful (eh), it's in a aesthetically pleasing restaurant (when compared to most offices but most certainly not as beautiful as Lake Michigan), I may have the opportunity to work with some good people (we'll see, I don't truly know my new co-workers yet), and it'll allow me the option to bike to work, have more flexibility with my schedule, and earn some "serious cash" (as told to me by experienced waitstaff). Like I said, this ain't the final destination but maybe this will shed some more light on that map and give me some connections that'll bring me closer to landing that job I never need a vacation from.

Practicing my wine presentation

Journal Entry June 6th, 2016

Lake Michi-Huron is the largest lake in the world by surface area, and along with Superior, Eerie, and Ontario they contain nearly 85% of the freshwater in the United States, and have enough volume to cover the continental US in under 10 feet of water; capable of waves greater than 30 feet and sinking hundreds of ships throughout history the term "lakes" really shouldn't be used to describe them - these are inland seas. Vast, beautiful, powerful entities that define our region (and holding 20% of the world's fresh surface water) they define our world. I'm blessed and proud to have Lake Michi-Huron as my office for the summer as I enter a season of kayak guiding for the Door County Adventure Center. Water is life and I get to spend every day on it and in it! There's no resource more valuable. I want to use my influence as a guide this summer to strike this point home. These are our waters, and in a world where drought is a growing threat, and the future conflicts will be over water rather than oil, we need to protect them, not just for us, but for all life.

Nasewaupee: A Place to Call Home

                
        "You only hate the road when you're missing home." These are lyrics from Passenger that are as catchy as they are true; at least for me. I ended my last blog briefly touching on some of the crazy experiences I've had these past few years. I've lived out of a car, out of a bike trailer, and out of a backpack and spent more nights in the houses of strangers or beneath the stars than I have in places that I called my own. I don't hate the road. In fact I know I will need to visit her again for I believe traveling and experiencing new people and places is essential to the human condition. But there comes a time when you want to just slow down and actually have a place to return to at night, a place where you can host friends and family, a place to experiment and learn, a place to invest yourself in, a place to call home. 
           Getting "home" was a tale all in itself. A nearly 24 hour journey from Chiapa de Corzo to Green Bay Wisconsin by plane, train, foot, and by car. The airports hadn't changed much in my 5 months away. The lines were still long, there was still no smiling, and the TSA was still horribly incompetent. I was flagged going through security in Mexico City for having a 2 inch allen wrench in my guitar case (used to tighten the neck of the guitar) that I was told could be used as a weapon. Using an allen wrench in a fight or as a murder weapon would be a disadvantage and more of a challenge then simply having the use of your hands. Anyway, I gave them the wrench, passed through security, and entered the terminal where a construction crew had left all their tools unattended for a renovation project. So I had just given up an allen wrench because it was a deadly weapon and here was an array of hammers, nails, and screw drivers sitting on the floor with no one watching that I could easily pocket and bring on board if I so chose. Then I went to a restaurant nearby my gate for dinner and was handed a knife with my meal. A Knife! The restaurant was so busy that I could have easily slipped it into my backpack or taken a knife from another persons plate when they had finished their meal. The good ole TSA keeping us safe and confiscating random items that take a stretch of the imagination to be seen as deadly while simultaneously offering passengers real weapons after the security screening. Ironically, I was the lone passenger ordered to go through a secondary screening at my gate; perhaps they were reading my thoughts at how easy it would be to smuggle these new items onto the plane. Other than my disdain with airport security the trip went off without a hitch. Upon re entering the States it was so interesting to navigate a transportation system where I understood everything - following signs, getting directions, buying tickets, and ordering a cheeseburger is so much easier when you speak the language. It's safe to say I have zero fear of traversing anywhere in the States now after traveling a bit around Mexico. 

          So I mentioned in my La Joya post how I wanted to be more like Arturo, having a place to call my own where I could eventually teach volunteers skills in sustainability or at least offer friends or weary travelers a roof and my hospitality. Well I've been given an amazing opportunity; property. 40 acres just outside of Sturgeon Bay complete with a barn, pole barn, garage/workshop, farmhouse, wetlands, and tillable land. I'm renting, but at an affordable price since I "know" the owners and I've already made a few commitments and investments that mean I'm probably going to be here for a few years. The high cost of land is the number one barrier keeping folks from moving to the country and pursuing the lifestyle they dream of. With student debt and the state of the job market many folks my age can barely afford to rent a 500 square foot apartment let alone rent or purchase 40 acres of land, for most it's a dream that can't be realized until they're well into their 40's or hell even until they're retired. I'm 24 and I'm getting the opportunity to pursue this lifestyle. I am blessed.

           It's not an operational farm (there's a local farmer who has been growing corn on the tillable acreage for the last few years but it hasn't been a true functioning farm for more than two decades, if not longer). This means there are no animals (other then the sandhill cranes, cotton tails, and barrel of dead raccoons that the farmer poisoned) and the barn is in dire need of repair (broken windows, doors off the hinges, and boards missing from the walls). So no this is not the picturesque door county farm, at least not yet. To put it simply, there is work to be done. I've got a list of projects; a list that I know will take years or even decades to achieve. These are lofty dreams and things may change, I may be out of here in a few years but right now I'm happy to know I'm going to be staying in the same place for more than a few weeks or months and that I have somewhere to invest my time and energy into. 

Barrel o'coons

All recycled material compost bin

         Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, and soon you will be doing the impossible. These words are what I tell myself to keep me grounded. So in the month of May I've taken care of some of those necessary items. Getting some broken pipes fixed to have access to water, filling the propane tank and getting access to heat and hot water, cleaning a house that was empty for the last six years, finding an internet provider in an internet dead zone, purchasing furniture and housewares from thrift shops across NE Wisconsin, and making this place comfortable and livable. Taking care of those necessary items has allowed me to already pursue some of my "possible" goals. I gathered some scrap wood from a neighbor, found some old farm posts, and picked out a spot in the lawn so I'm ready to build my outdoor compost bin. It was frustrating to be in Mexico and realize that most people had no concept of composting, it's even more frustrating to be in the States and realize that people here still have no concept of composting! Part of living in the country is being resourceful and repurposing everything you have to the point where the idea of "waste" doesn't even exist. I've been on enough farms to realize that every farmer is more or less a hoarder because you never know when you might need that bucket of rusty nails or those 40 empty peanut butter jars. So composting directly falls in line with this way of thinking. Taking items that would otherwise fill a landfill and pollute the earth and turning them into nutrients that will feed the soil and feed you, for free. Some people pay inordinate sums of money via fertilizers and additives on their home gardens to achieve results that they could replicate if they simply took the time to compost. If you're not doing it, there's really not much stopping you. While having a bin, turning your compost, and layering and balancing your nitrogen and carbon items creates the ideal conditions for compost you really don't need to do anything more than throw everything into a pile somewhere on your lawn and nature will basically take care of the rest. See google for more options.
       

 Another "possible" goal is getting rid of my lawn. I don't understand western society's obsession with Kentucky Bluegrass (no not the music, the species of grass that is grown universally across most of Europe and North America). I hate this plant, and I don't say that lightly. The amount of time and money that is spent on supporting this species is utterly ridiculous when it should never exist in the first place; it is quite frankly alien, invasive, and utterly useless. Grass requires heavy watering (at a time when drought is a very real threat), heavy fertilizing (that contaminates our ground water as well as our rivers and lakes), needs routine cutting (which means spending time and typically gasoline to maintain it's look), offers no food or habitat to bees or other wildlife, has no flowers or attractive colors, and ultimately offers no real use or benefit to mankind or the earth. Yet in every city, from the desert yards of Utah, to the local parks of South Dakota, to the highways of Virginia, you will find this plant grown, supported, and maintained, for no apparent reason other than tradition and social normalcy. What's worse is that when I was in Mexico this phenomenon has caught on. People trying to grow grass in places where it is near physically impossible without continual human support and intervention for the sole reason of having the appearance of wealth. Just think of how much money and water we would save if we didn't have grass. Now think of how much beauty and life could be fostered if we simply let grass be overtaken by native plants or decided to plant a garden or wildflowers instead. There is a crisis right now with a shortage of bees which among other things has been linked to a lack of habitat and food. Many people don't realize that the fate of the bee and man are intrinsically linked as bees pollinate nearly 1/3 of our food crops - apples, avocados, almonds, cucumbers, onions, strawberries, cherries, cranberries, carrots, and many more cannot reproduce and feed us without our insect friends. So what am I doing about it and what can you do about it. Overseed your lawn with clover instead - it's drought resistant, grows to about six inches in length and then ceases to grow, produces attractive blooms, fixes nitrogen into the soil thus fertilizing itself, feeds honeybees and other wildlife, and is just more attractive in general. Or you can simply let your lawn grow. Sure the first few years will be rough, probably full of some "weeds" and other unattractive species attempting to reclaim and resurrect the land but after a few years you'll have the first stages of a forest, or a meadow, or of whatever is supposed to be there. As far as I'm concerned the only place grass should be is in the football stadium or soccer field. Just let it grow, who are you fooling, you never enjoyed mowing your lawn anyway!

Strawberries

           My last recent "possible" goal is the start of a vegetable garden on one part of my giant lawn. I read up on all the different techniques and strategies undertaken for gardens from tilled row gardening, to raised bed square foot gardening, to sheet mulching with companion plants. I eventually settled on the cheapest and longest lasting method I could find on the internet, the hugelkultur method. Hugelkultur is German for "mound culuture" and it is a gardening style that has been used successfully for centuries in eastern Germany and is just now being realized for its ingenuity and simplicity. Hugelkultur in it's simplest form is burying a pile of logs in soil and then planting atop this pile or mound. Taken to it's extreme you can add in layers of cardboard, leaves, grass clippings, compost, and straw in a pattern leading to hugels as tall as six feet. The advantages of this style are that you are creating more surface area in your garden thus gaining more yield per square foot but more importantly once established you have little to no watering or fertilizing for the foreseeable future. The hugel attempts to mimic the natural forest floor with the buried logs slowly rotting and giving off important nutrients over the course of years while also serving to store water during rainy periods and slowly releasing this water to the mound during dry periods. An effectively constructed hugel can remain untouched for twenty years and yield better results than more intensive forms of gardening like your typical raised beds or row gardens that need attention every week. So I now have some 30 square feet of hugels only about two feet high planted with an array of herbs and vegetables. In the future I'd like to put more thought into what I plant and where I plant it but seeing as how I entered the gardening season a little late I'll be happy just to see something grow! I want to get to the point where through canning, drying, and a root cellar I'll be able to provide my own produce year round but like I said before; all in good time. 

           I'm in new territory; socially, mentally, and physically. I'm surrounded by farm fields littered with the stalks of last years corn crop. Now as I write this paragraph the land has been tilled and the new corn seedlings are already emerging. Soybean, corn, wheat; those three crops account for nearly 3/4 of what is grown across the entire US and the demographics in Wisconsin don't look much different. Much like the phenomenon of Kentucky Bluegrass, Americans are fixated on a few species that require heavy intervention and heavy machinery to attain yields. Call it tradition, call it comfort, call it government subsidies, call it the demand of the market, call it just getting by, whatever the case I hope to be doing something different on this property with the tillable acreage in a few years time. As I walk my land I come across a single red tulip in a sea of grass. The symbolism strikes me. I hope that'll be me; offering some beauty and diversity of life, in a place where mono-cultural homogeneity is all that I can see.  

        There are many things I do not know, but what I do know is that I have dreams... dreams of sweet dripping honey, of black soil between my hands, of colorful wildflowers on a forest floor for as far as the eye can see, of a babbling brook off in the distance... she ain't much right now and truth be told this property has already broken me down and made me scream in anger more than once these past few weeks... the journey won't be easy, but then again anything worth doing hardly ever is. For all the cursing to the gods that has taken place here I have had an equal number of instances where I was screaming with joy and laughter at the sweet victories that I have achieved. Turning my faucet and getting water, feeling the heat come through the vents of my furnace, eating my first breakfast on my porch in the morning sun, witnessing a pair of cranes forage in the wetlands while a flock of red winged black birds alighted on the cattails around me, the construction of the hugels and the first life emerging from them, and the realization that I finally have a place to call home. I've seen most of this country and no doubt I will continue to travel and seek out those special places and make friends and memories along the way but there comes a time when a man needs to put some roots in the ground both literally and figuratively. I'm done searching for Eden, I'm ready to start creating it. 

Mexico: Puerto Escondido

"Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as life goes on..." As someone who has a mind for strategy (just challenge me to a game of risk or settlers of catan) and who also likes to appear competent to those around me, making a fool of myself in public is something I am slowly getting used to over time. The image that the quote by Samuel Butler above invokes is that life isn't always beautiful and harmonious it involves stumbling, tripping, falling, and often times suffering embarrassment. All of us are new at some point, all of us are novices in something, all of us get confused, all of us are embarrassed at times, all of us are forever learning, all of us are living. I like to think in these last 3.5 months I've been doing a lot of living, been doing a lot of solos in public on instruments I've never really played. From teaching English, to dancing salsa, to simply speaking Spanish, I've been throwing myself into a lot of new roles, trying out a lot of new solos. Life in Puerto Escondido is no different.    
       

After driving 40 minutes east from Puertecito Arturo dropped me off at the end of a dirt street in front of a hostel called Frutas y Verduras. There's a sign posted out front saying that volunteer workers are welcome, and this is the same location that my French Canadian friend Juliette has been working at for the last two months since our TEFL course ended, so I walked in with confidence looking for work. I was told the boss was out but would be back that evening and would talk with me then about volunteering in exchange for a room. Normally waiting around for two hours would drive me nuts but I wasn't just in any old town. I was in La Punta, the surf bum traveling kid neighborhood of Puerto Escondido. Little hostels, surf shops, and cafe bars dot the main dirt road that runs parallel to the shore and makes up the heart of La Punta. I walk down the road and I can't help but feel like I stumbled into the Mos Eisley of Mexico - for those who aren't familiar with that Star Wars analogy, La Punta tends to give off an old wild western vibe and it attracts some very interesting characters from around the world (or if you're still following me on the Star Wars train, the galaxy). The distinct difference between the fictional city of Mos Eisley or the classic Western one horse town and the neighborhood of La Punta is that while the former are places that are entirely devoid of water this is a place that owes its very existence to water. Surfers and traveling beach goers fund the local economy. So rather than stop at any of the shops I continued down the dirt road that led me to the beach and joined about a dozen or so other people who were strewn about on the sand, soaking up the sun and watching the surfers. 
       

La Punta is appropriately named "the Point" because the neighborhood is located at the end of Playa Zicatela (Zicatela beach) where a rocky peninsula juts out into the ocean. The nature of this peninsula and the giant rocks surrounding it create a point break that makes it a great spot for surfing. The waves of La Punta consistently break and peel off 20 meters from shore when they make contact with the point while the rest of the waves on the beach break only a few meters from shore making them more or less unsurfable and extremely dangerous. I watched in amazement as about a dozen surfers sat nearly on the rocks of the point in order to catch waves and then rode them in eerily close to these boulders - one wrong move, one bad wipe out, and you could find yourself being smashed into a rock with the power of a tidal wave - with a broken neck or if you're lucky just a broken board as an outcome. 
        After watching these surfers and getting sufficiently sweaty in the afternoon sun I returned to the hostel only to find that the boss was in but that he was too busy watching tennis to meet with me today and that I'd have to return tomorrow. "Too busy watching tennis," words I know I will never utter in my life, especially when it concerns someone wanting to volunteer for me; watching tennis... the only thing worse is watching golf. I was laughing out loud when I heard that excuse and wasn't quite sure what I was going to do for the night and then I ran into Juliette. When I explained my situation she told me that's just the way the boss was, sometimes it took him days to meet with prospective volunteers. She was sympathetic and told me she was going to go crash at a friends place if I wanted to stay in her room for the night. Happy to have a place to finally put my backpack and guitar I was free to wander the neighborhood unencumbered. It's then that I see another familiar face, as the one and only Preston comes trotting down the street

Preston and I re-enacting the Titanic during sunset

with a huge smile on his face. He's been in Puerto for the last two weeks taking Spanish classes at one of the local language schools and is staying at another hostel in La Punta. He asks me if I want to climb up to the light house on the point and watch the sunset. It's strange, I think I've watched more sunsets in my last three weeks in Puerto than I have in any other three week period of my life. It's just part of the culture here. Everyone drops what they're doing and heads to the beach, like moths drawn to a flame, to sit in silence and watch the beautiful spectacle that takes place over the ocean every evening.
      The next day I showed up at 10am as planned to meet with the boss but he was once again occupied (more Tennis?). Instead I was redirected to a young woman named Hazel who told me she needed help in the kitchen preparing meals for the staff. She asks me how much experience I've had as a cook in the restaurant industry. I laugh and tell her none. She asks me how much experience I have had in general in the restaurant industry waiting tables or as a line cook. I continue to smile and tell her I worked for Five Guys for three months but that's the extent of my restaurant experience. She nods slowly, and asks, almost as if she already knows the answer, "what kind of specialty dishes can I offer?" There's a five second pause as I search for a response, and I tell her French toast... we both immediately burst out laughing. She tells me we're going to make it work and welcomes me to the team at Ziggi's Kitchen. 
       

Frutas y Verduras isn't your typical Mexican hostel catering to poor international travelers looking for nothing more than a mattress and possibly a roof. With a swimming pool, rooftop bar with a big screen tv, and private accommodations it feels closer to a resort than a hostel and the people who stay there represent this; folks with kids, those who are older, tourists, travelers with money, and generally speaking people who are more straight laced. The "boss" and founder of Frutas is a Slovenian named Tomo (the elusive fan of tennis). He and his Slovenian friend Allio created Frutas some 8 years ago, and have worked on creating a little oasis in La Punta ever since. Given that these men actually live on the property and it is their home as well as their business they have poured their heart and soul into making it as clean, organized, and beautiful as possible. Frutas is also a hub of activity, and Tomo and Allio have some twenty employees and volunteers that work at Frutas and its three subsidiary companies. Connected to Frutas is Cafe Ole; a bar/restaurant that specializes in serving crepes, smoothies, and mezcal - Moringa; a market that sells local organic fruits and vegetables along with fresh baked bread and other eco-friendly consumer items and Ziggi's Kitchen; a place where teams of chefs prepare mainly vegetarian meals for the staff of Frutas, Cafe Ole, Moringa, Tomo and Allio, as well as offer dinner to the general public. This was my new work place. 
     

 It's quite ironic that my last post included a whole paragraph dedicated to how jealous I was of the cooking skills of the people around me and how I wanted to learn more about healthy cooking and now here I was, a cook at a mostly vegetarian restaurant. I wish I had paid more attention when I was at La Joya. I spent my first two weeks working with Hazel, the founder of Ziggi's Kitchen who also works as a seasonal chef in Norway, Lucas, a chef from Argentina, and Lynette, a raw vegan chef from the States. There was rarely a plan when we walked into the kitchen. We'd look at the fridges, see what kind of produce was lying around, find out how many people we were expecting to serve, throw ideas back and forth for a few minutes, decide on a menu, pick out some music, and get to work preparing for our lunch or dinner deadline. Even though this was an area I had relatively no experience in and I found myself constantly asking questions, "uh how do you want me to cut this zucchini, what's linseed, why are we rubbing eggs on this dough, where's the olive oil again, when do we take this out of the oven," I was glad that this was the place I was introduced into the business. After seeing shows like Top Chef and Hells Kitchen I was waiting to be judged for my lack of skills but everyone I worked with from the three trained chefs above to my fellow volunteers all attempted to teach me what they knew and share their knowledge with me. Ziggi's was more a place of learning and experimentation than the stressful kitchen of the tv shows or what I presume occurs in most popular restaurants on Friday nights. It also helped that the folks I was cooking for were all people I knew since my friend circle outside of work mostly included folks from Moringa and Cafe Ole so it really did feel like I was just making food for friends. It's easier to play that solo in public when most of the public are your friends. My one regret from my experience in the kitchen was that I wish I took more pictures of what we created. Just for one time in my life I wish I was one of those people who is always taking pictures of their food before they eat it because we had some masterpieces, food that looked as good as it tasted; vegan pizza, fresh baked bread, key lime cheesecake, numerous colorful salads, veggie burgers, and dozens of other delicious dishes that I helped create over the course of three weeks. 
         

Lucas and I enjoying a lunch we cooked

My experience in the kitchen confirmed that I am still very young in the world of cooking but that for the most part making good healthy food is as simple as looking up a recipe and having the confidence to experiment and make mistakes. It also solidified how we can come together over meals - not just eating meals together at the table but making them together in the kitchen as well. I found myself working most often with Lucas, the Argentinian chef who spoke about as much English as I did Spanish, as well as with Arte, one of the other volunteers who was also from Argentina and spoke little English, and we still managed to communicate and create dishes I never even knew were possible to make. So I have no excuse when I return home... if I can cook and collaborate with folks with whom I don't share the same language with then I can make food with anyone. I don't think I'll be joining the restaurant industry anytime soon but I want to make a point to set aside one day a week to try cooking something new and maybe invite different friends to join me on each occasion and possibly even teach me a recipe they already know. Like I said before, food ain't just about energy or nutrients for our physical well being, it's a chance to socialize and deepen our connections with one another as well.
     In exchange for cooking one meal a day six days a week I got a free room at Punta Paraiso a hostel just down the street that belongs to Tomo and Allio and is more or less reserved for volunteers or other travelers who are looking for a cheaper option than Frutas y Verduras. When I arrived at Paraiso there were people who had been living there for months, folks like Juliette, who were more or less on a permanent vacation in Puerto - surfing, drinking, laying around on the beach, and working part time to earn a free place to stay. It seems to be a common story, folks who drop by La Punta thinking they're going to stay for a few days and next thing they know a few months have gone by. They come from around the world but it seems like Argentinians, Australians, and Western Europeans make up the majority of these travelers. Believe it or not I've yet to meet another American here, other than Preston of course. They come for the beaches or the surfing and they stay for the laid back atmosphere and culture. I pretty much only wear a shirt when I'm working in the kitchen and I haven't worn shoes in days - swimsuits and bare feet are the accepted apparel, anything more and you look like a tourist. Many of these travelers are also here as kind of a pit stop to make money to fund the rest of their journey; ironically, many of them seem to spend more money on booze and cigarettes than they save or even spend on food but hey it's their vacation, and most of them don't seem too worried about being stuck in paradise. I do enjoy the communal living at Paraiso though, it's like having an international family, we work together, play together, and live together. Because of this experience I have new friends from three different continents. 

Argentinians, Mexicans, Germans, Italians, and the lone Gringo

     

Lewis, Lena, Arte, and Myself (The Clean Crew)

One downside to this communal living is cleanliness. I feel like whenever you get a half dozen young people together any sense of responsibility for their belongings or surroundings goes out the window - dirty kitchens, spoiled food, and dirty dishes become the norm. I might not be a chef but I know how to keep a clean living and cooking space. I spent my first morning at Paraiso throwing out rotten food from the fridge and rewashing all the dishes in the kitchen because even the "clean" dishes were dirty. The problem with communal places is that the bystander effect often comes into play and nobody seems to take ownership over their personal messes or the debris that gathers over time when you have 5 or 6 people living in one spot. I've become good friends with Leo the cleaning lady here, ever since she saw me that first morning cleaning at 8am while everyone else was sleeping in from a night of partying I've been her favorite. Things have changed from that first day though, there's fewer of us now, and everyone that was here when I arrived has moved on, making me the new elder of the hostel. I like to think I set a precedent of cleanliness and organization - one that I hope continues after I depart, for Leo's sake! For as clean as I was I couldn't escape one of natures worst creations that often occurs in a dirty environment. 
      I felt like I didn't sleep much my first few nights in Paraiso. No it wasn't the partying, it was a combination of the heat and finding myself awake every few hours furiously scratching my body. Sure mosquitoes were part of the issue but I started finding other strange bites on my upper arms, chest, and neck. On my third night I awoke in the dark to feel crawling sensations all over my upper body, I immediately grabbed my headlamp and was horrified to find nearly a dozen six legged oval shaped insects slowly crawling on my body and the sheets. I jumped out of bed and saw them crawl away from the light and into the dark corners around my bed and pillow... annoying biting six legged bugs that leave strange bite marks and that hide in my sheets; I had bed bugs. Bed bugs were something I had obviously heard of before but as a species and as a pest they were something I really didn't know much about. As a kid I remember my parents telling me, good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite. In high school I remember going on a service trip to the Dominican and bringing special sheets that were bed bug proof because we were concerned about the red marks they might leave on our skin from their bites. In college we were told not to take furniture from off the street because it might be infested with bed bugs; we still took every free futon and chair we could find. Now here I was in a foreign country dealing with an insect I knew nothing about other than that I didn't want them. That next day I began investigating. For starters the bites weren't just about leaving red marks, these things were parasitic insects that lived off of a human host and awoke in the night to feed on my sleeping body. They were little vampires that left itchy bites (and the whole red rash reaction is something that doesn't occur in most people, myself included). Even worse is that once you had them, they were nearly impossible to get rid of. Extreme heat, cold, or fumigation is the only way to get rid of the bastards and if you miss even a single one they will continue laying up to seven eggs a day with each of the offspring being able to live up to a year before having to feed. I read horror stories online about people who spent thousands of dollars to rid them from their house. I read about how other travelers had to burn all their belongings to keep from spreading bed bugs to their next hostel or from bringing them back home. The more I learned the more despondent I grew. The nights got worse. I awoke to find even more of them crawling over me and now it seemed some of the bed bugs had made their way into my hair as I could feel them crawling on my scalp. 

         I alerted Tomo and he immediately had Leo do a full inspection of my room searching for the bed bugs. She saw the corpses of the bugs I had killed but said she couldn't find a source in the sheets or the mattress itself. Just to be safe they moved me to another room in Paraiso. Five sleepless nights and the bugs were still there when I turned on my headlamp in my new room. As I scratched my head and pulled the bugs out of my hair I had a horrifying epiphany, the bed bugs were living in my hair, I wasn't just their food, I was their home. The next morning I went into the ocean and laid with my hair submerged in the salt water for a good hour hoping I could drown these spawn of satan but when I was showering I began scratching my head I found some of them still crawling. Ahhh, was I going to have to cut my hair? As I thought about the past nights tossing and turning and the thought of these blood sucking pests living on me I told myself if that was my only option, to cut my hair, that I would do it, I'd get rid of my mane if it meant being bed bug free. That night I told Tomo about my situation - that the bugs had followed me into my new room, that I feared they were spreading, that my hair was the host, and that I was willing to do whatever was necessary to get rid of them. Tomo listened to my story, and after a dramatic pause in which I could see his mind calculating a response; he told me I didn't have bed bugs...  I had lice. Hallelujah! I was ecstatic. The thought of having to burn my belongings, cut my hair, and of having possibly spread an infestation of bed bugs into the hostel had taken it's toll on my state of mind. The revelation that it was lice meant that my enemy was mortal, I was back in the fight. Lice can only survive 24 hours without a host so if I got rid of the one's living in my hair and waited a day the war would be won. That same night I doused my hair in olive oil, wrapped a plastic bag around my head, secured it with a bandanna, and waited the recommended 12 hours. The next morning my hair was disgusting - oily and full of the dead bodies of my enemies but it was over. As insurance I went to the pharmacy that afternoon and purchased some of the special lice shampoo and gave my hair a good cleaning to eliminate any possibility of survival for eggs or adults. I still don't know where the lice came from. No one else in the hostel had any problems with them. My original room had been vacant for a few days so that wasn't the source. I hadn't shared any hats or put my head on any strange pillows or places. Seemingly spontaneous. It doesn't matter where they came from though they were gone now and should they ever come back I know how to swiftly destroy them. 
         Aside from fighting lice and cooking in the kitchen I also pursued something I've been itching to do for the last three and a half years; go surfing again. When I was in California I signed up for a three hour surf class/excursion in Crescent City. Our instructors simulated paddling and popping up on the board while we were on the beach and then sent us out to the waves to try our new skills. They told us to not be disappointed if we didn't get up that day since like any activity it took perseverance and time to improve. Well I caught my first wave and also successfully popped up on that wave as well. The sensation was addictive. When after an hour and a half my classmates and even my instructors called it a day because they were too cold and tired I remained in the water and continued to get waves with the whole bay to myself (Lake Michigan and Superior continue to make any other lake/sea feel like bath water, gotta love those Wisconsin roots). A few weeks later I went surfing with my brother and my friend Aaron and had a similar experience. We found an empty beach and spent the entire afternoon riding waves with seals and presumably a few great whites to keep us company. When I arrived in Puerto that first day and watched the surfers out on the point I told myself I was going to join them and relive those memories from Cali. 
     

  Well boys and girls, sometimes some things are best left to nostalgia. Zicatela beach in Puerto, aka the Mexican Pipeline, and La Punta are not the same as the beaches of Northern California. For one, the waves here are for experts, there's a reason why the X Games for surfing are hosted here along with numerous other international surfing competitions. The waves in California were small, would break far out from shore, posed no danger, and could gently be ridden in. Here the waves could swallow you up, send you headfirst into a sandbar or a submerged rock, split your board in two, or send you into one of the many other surfers on the crowded water. Compared to the serenity and bliss of California, Puerto was stressful while at the same time very boring. If I were alone maybe my experience would have been different. But add in some fifteen to twenty surfers all clumped together in a space the size of a basketball court and suddenly surfing becomes a whole different experience. There's rules on who gets to take a wave and between locals, experts, and teachers with their students you basically have no chance of getting a piece of a good wave as a beginner. If you're new you often sit closer to shore and try to pick up on the waves that the others sitting farther out miss; however, legally, you have an obligation to avoid surfers riding waves which means you spend more time playing frogger and avoiding the path of other surfers than even attempting to catch waves. Eliminate all the other surfers and Puerto still wouldn't be ideal. The waves come and go in... well in waves. California had a continual stream of small/medium waves that were fun for beginners and arguably for intermediate riders while Puerto was more of a go big or go home type of surf spot. Small waves didn't exist. You would sit on your board for maybe 30 minutes before a set of 4 to 6 giant waves came in. Many times the majority of the surfers would just turtle (purposely fall over) or paddle over the wave as they were too dangerous to ride while a few daredevils would go for them and expertly ride them to shore. I guess that's the thing, if you're new to surfing don't go to Puerto, even if you're okay at surfing, probably don't go to Puerto, if you have a death wish or have years of experience then yeah this is the place for you. 

        I spent a week with a surfboard and went for a few hours each of those days often waking up at sunrise to try and beat the crowds. I may have been a complete novice but I like to think I at least looked the part and was able to mingle among the other surfers and strike up a few conversations. I met a German guy who came to Puerto to surf and had been here for a month but in his first week he caught a wave too close to the rocks and crashed. He ended up bruising his knee badly and also destroying his board. If I ended my week without having to pay for wrecking a board or incurring an injury I was going to be happy (gosh what low goals, ha). I got tumbled by a few giant waves (basically felt like being in a giant washing machine) but all in all I avoided making any serious mistakes, no injuries, no damage to the board, didn't piss off the locals, it was the vanilla experience I hadn't signed up for but hey I'd take it. It's strange to think that here I was, basically a brand new surfer, merely wanting to survive sharing the same waves with expert surfers from around the world. One local guy that was surfing with us was a former long board world champion, or so I was told. Regardless of what possible titles the man had won he was a hell of a surfer, literally dancing and jumping on his long board as he rode monster waves in from around the point. There's no other sport quite like it in this regards, where in the same space you can have world champions mingling with those who are beginners. Imagine casually going to go shoot hoops and Lebron James just happens to be on the same court as you. I guess my surf experience has been a lesson in humility, don't jump ahead and try soloing with the expert musicians at a sold out concert - instead do your own solo, preferably on the empty beaches of Northern California, where only the seals and sharks will notice if you hit a wrong note. 
    I'm looking forward to getting back to the familiar, getting back to environments that are more conducive for me to strike out and learn some new instruments. These last four months have more or less been one big solo, one big learning and living experience. Really, when I look back on everything I've done since graduating college this has been my life, throwing myself into ridiculous situations and stretching that comfort zone to places I never thought possible. Tell that shy college sophomore four years ago that he'd go on to lead boundary waters trips for folks with disabilities, make speeches in front of hundreds of urban youth, wander the desert and battle demons with a tribe of kids, or be at this hostel in Mexico having all of the above experiences right now, and he would never have believed you... it's amazing how much we continue to learn and grow. I'm proud of what I've accomplished so far, and I can only begin to imagine the possibilities going forward. Who knows what I'll be writing about in four years time.