Take My World Apart

My first week in North Carolina is progressing with wet enthusiasm. The edge of Ernestro is just striking Greensboro, and I am grounded today from my flight training at Southeast Airport. For those of you who need an update on my whereabouts, I am currently working on my private pilot's license. I am staying with my wonderful and generous grandparents for the next three weeks, trying to get about half of my license done. I'm sitting in the kitchen, sipping on Gramps' delicious GT, typing away in the awful background of Fox News - my grandparent's favorite biased news station. After Colbert and Stewart, the show just has absolutely no credibility. Gramps, the major proponent for the flying adventure, is a private VFR (visual flight rules) pilot. My dad has his IFR (I for instrument), which just means that he can fly in less visibility because of his ability to work certain instruments. To receive your license, you basically follow this pattern: 20 hours of flight instruction (after about 10 you can solo); 20 hours of solo. In this you complete a solo and dual cross-country, night flight, and several tests - written, oral, and practical.

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace,

The soul that knows it not, knows no release

From little things,

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear

The sound of wings.

How can Life grant us boon of living, compensate

For dull grey ugliness and pregnant hate

Unless we dare

The soul's dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay

With courage to behold the restless day,

And count it fair.

-"Courage" by Amelila Earhart, 1927

The edge of Ernestro is just striking Greensboro, and I am grounded today from my flight training at Southeast Airport. Grandpa and I are lounging around the house today - I am watching endless DVD's to study for my written knowledge exam that I'm taking this weekend, and Gramps switches from the Weather Channel to the Wall Street Journal and a book I gave him "The 100 Greatest Flying Stories Ever Told." I am now 2.5 hours into my hours, after two lessons with Mr. George Joyce, a 70-something retired professional pilot with more hours under his belt than I've attended school. He is especially Southern - a certain brand of rural North Carolinians. His son is a Southern Baptist Minister - after he discerned I was Christian, he keeps making innumerable flying/Holy Spirit analogies - which please and humor me. He shaves his hair close to his head, and has an enormous tendency to go on and on when we talk on the ground before and after the lessons, making parallel after parallel regarding how flight mirrors the way one should live. In the air, he is incredible. He has already given me great control over the plane (a Cessna 150 [N8477J(uliet)]- painted in the West Point colors gray, black, and gold... the "cop" plane according the mechanic's 22-year-old daughter), and is very concise and professional inside the cockpit. There are so many things to remember! When my head is focused on the instruments, confident in my handling of the controls, my brain is not concerned with the actual situation in the air (relation to horizon, traffic approaching, weather), and vice versa. But every minute flying is another minute of practice. Life is good at 2500 feet - I am lost in the creation of the Lord, left dangling by grace in the kingdom of the sky, with this new skill and discipline comes a new and beautiful interaction with the earth.

"MAY THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH AND THE THOUGHTS OF MY HEART BE EVER ACCEPTABLE TO YOU, OH GOD OF ALL."

One of the wonderful stories Mr. Joyce told was this - he was explaining the importance of the Owner's Flight Manual for gas readings, weight, capacities, etc., and called it my Bible of flight. In his career as a flight instructor for airline pilots, he would ask a professional a question referring to the manual, and the pilot would respond he didn't know. Mr. Joyce would exclaim, "You want to be a pilot of this jet, and you don't know what the manual says?! You call yourself a professional, and you don't know the answer the manual gives? That's the WORD." Now, he didn't draw the parallel, but I saw the conclusion implied. Do I call myself a Christian, and still not read scripture every single day? Do I not know what the text itself says regarding concept after concept? I spend enough time thinking/talking about God...

I have been dancing inside this internal theological conversation the last few days. I have been reading a great deal still, and many thoughts have been prompted by media presented to me. My mind is very hungry. Last night I was babysitting the neighbors' 13-year olds (who really didn't need a sitter) and the parents, Cindy and Ron, run the tightest Christian ship I have ever seen. There is no cable because the parents came home one day and saw the 17-year-old, Amanda, watching Titanic with Christina (13). They have no Internet either. Trevor (13) is not allowed to play Sim City on the computer. They only have Bible movies and Disney/old classics in their video case. They are all homeschooled. Cindy has gone to Iraq once already to teach Christian Kurdish women how to live from a Biblical perspective. Very strange. There is no trust of the parents toward the kids. I've been playing with Amanda since I was a baby visiting my grandparents, but only now have I noticed the acultural living of the children. I made pizza and we all talked about life and their activities. The twins are very normal and sociable, eager to please. After dinner we picked out a movie, and, instead of seeing "Pirates of the Carribean" for the nteenth time, I chose "Left Behind." Mom told me about the book series, and as they had sold millions and millions of copies, and it seemed all of non-New England was reading it, I was VERY intrigued. WHAT A MOVIE. It takes contemporary life, and normal characters, and exacts Revelation literally onto our society. I was absolutely fascinated. I have never considered taking the so-called rapture word for word. It is a vision! John of Patmos has a revelation and writes it down. A vision, just like a dream, has symbols. Kirk Cameron, the young star of Growing Pains was the lead, surviving in a world of the Anti-Christ and people disappearing to Heaven. I was really shaken by the film. I am borrowing the books from the Brooks' library this Sunday. If nothing else, it is at least a thrilling story.

The following question keeps popping up in my head - how serious is religion? How serious am I about my faith? At Lawrenceville, my beautiful fellowship groups gave me a sense of purpose in the community, but now here I am, facing a LIFEtime. There is no community that I will live in forever. Choosing God is so much bigger than what I've thought. My eyes were so absorbent on the idea of service inside LV bounds, on progress on campus. I had a weird thought today. I was walking in the Greensboro arboretum, cooling down from my run and sore left IT band, and I was asking myself why I kept finding myself in situations that were compromising to my value system. Without the structure of L'ville, I have been losing myself more often.

it matters not how straight the gate
how charged the punishment the scroll
i am the master of my fate
i am the captain of my soul
-w.e. henley

I am so grateful for the freedom my parents have given me. They trust me - I've earned that. I'm so glad I was able to choose a value system for myself, and not have them shove it down my throat, like it sort of is next door. I have the ability to choose for myself whether to be righteous or ungodly in my behavior. God tells us that we will never be perfect, our friends tell us, our family. So why do I feel like I have to be? I have never been perfect. No matter what I do, no matter how much scripture I read, no matter what - I will always sin. What an intense word. But I mean that - I can never be Jesus. I can emulate him, as I see in those I love trying to do, but I can never be him. But yet, in God's eyes, we are still his children, his people. We are worthy of Jesus' resurrection, we are worthy of grace for the sole reason that we are God's creation. Which is frustrating, because my actions don't prompt redemption, only my sheer acknowledgement that I want to recognize myself as a part of this faith's system of belief.

I am so frustrated in my humanity - my desire for quick gratification in relationships, in love, in work. My mind makes up scenarios where I can use rationale instead of courage. I want often to fall during a run - to rather justify myself in pain, real, visible pain instead of living. I fantasize of a glorious death so that I don't have to face the realities of living a real life for God. So that I don't have to feel guilty when comparing my own world to those who actually do suffer. So that I can live without frustration and fear, so that I can be with God in Heaven, and KNOW for sure, that my beliefs, my value system is scary it is so real with its implications. So that I don't have to acknowledge the love that exists around me in dozens of family members and friends... so I can pretend I am not loved, so that God does not touch me. Why is redemption frightening to me lately?! Why am I incredibly intimidated by the life I want to live? Why am I so afraid of what I could be if I only gave myself fully to God's purpose? Could I lead in the honest way I have only glimpsed?

I lay down my life and I put it before you -

All that I am, is in your hands.

And I'm not going to question why you're so faithful

Or why you've given me the blessing that you have.

All I need is a love to come and fill this heart of mine.

My heart is a desert that has gone dry...

I need your love to get me by.

-Shawn McDonald

I keep thinking lately, "Could I be saved? Am I worthy?" Which is weird, because I have already, offered my life to the world of God and his purpose - a multitude of times! I have prayed often... why am I so unsure of my salvation? Is this some evil force, making me think that I would rather keep myself from God, and be miserable, than do what my heart longs for, and really dive in? Spirituality fluctuates - just like any other human concept. Just like attitude, weight, and emotions, my soul flirts with the lines of mysticism, Christianity, and religion - jumping into powerful relationships, and leaping back into dark places. I am no longer in a state that I can deny what I have felt - I cannot deny God. But I wonder - how far will I go? Where are the theological rules for my life as it is? Why didn't God write, "Alice, half an hour on the Internet a day is plenty" in his Gospels? Passing thought, really. I'm desperate for answers lately... and I know where to find them, which is the crazy thing... I am also thinking, "All I need is You! That's all!" As if, if only I could have God in my life, I would be fine. God is in my life! "I have called you by name... and you are mine."

I don't know how to play with literal Christianity - the hardball of Left Behind has left me feeling, well, Left Behind. Confused about how to play with my own liberal, internal, action-based faith. Amy Julia talked about literalistic Christianity, which my mind clings to - a translation of the Bible in which every book is taken for what it is - a story, a narrative, a prophesy, a vision. My life is the only full story I know. It is filled with so much beauty, I am pained that I feel troubled in it, guilty. I want to lift this all up in prayer, and have, but it feels forced. Striving to be like God, to follow the Word and what we know he wants from us... my heart cries for it, but it is so hard. It is so painful to be a Christian! To know what is Right and true for my life... and to not choose that consistently - both internally and externally - hurts like, well, like Hell. It is time to get out of the boat and walk on the water again. It is time Believe again. Believe with me in a life of love. What are we, of any faith, without it? God is my crutch, my lifeboat, my friend, my creator, our enveloping air. I am deep in some sort of odd anxiety to move myself to read and practice scripture more consitentely, but am constantly frustrated and deterred by something - whether it be the jewelry wearing televangilists I watched last night, late, or the weird parenting of the neighbors. Why am I allowing these people to take away from my experience of God? Why is everyone reading about homosexuals and salvation, but no one is reading about LOVE and GRACE and leaving materialism behind! What Bibles are they reading?


I really feel encompassed by the Earhart poem above. MY bitter joy has heard the sound of wings in Colorado, in the skies flown by the 150. What I need for the day, for this complex darkness of confusion and doubt, of paradoxical joy, is courage. Courage to know that I can move toward this wide expanse of unknown and that God will walk by me through the tunnel of life. "Draw close to him, and he will draw close to you." - James 4:8.

"Be still and know that I am God."

Have faith, Alice.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless falls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew-

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

-John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

the greatest commandment!

"LIVE IN LOVE"

Let us walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, in offering and Sacrifice to god.

-communion prayer.

Recently Read:

Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt - Anne Rice : Awful, really. Neat thoughts, but all of the best ones are actually taken from the gnostic gospels - i.e. Jesus the boy turning clay sparrows into real birds - Beautiful! Poetic! The story portrayed Christ as a confused little boy struggling with the ideas of his power and godliness. Rice, in my opinion, was presumptuous and hasty in writing out the flow of Jesus' thoughts. Children have the capacity for amazing spiritual lives, but the Rice Christ was not as impressive, nor articulated well. Rating: C-

Currently:

The Scarlet Letter - N. Hawthorne: A classic finally entered. My only complaint: have to look up "ignominy." ;0) Fabulous story... who is Hester's lover? Awful self-destruction of the deformed husband. Time will tell.

At the Beach! Books Read and Eyes Up

The yearly Rice/Hodgkins/Thompson gathering at the beach has arrived! The family has gathered in its many multitudes at the Oak Island (formerly Long Island) beach, and we are all soaking in each other with ridiculous amounts of love exclamations during our ever-brief time together. What a wonderful way to close the summer! The water is warm and the weather fairly clear. Turtle nests line the beach and the shore is relatively empty at the end of August, due to school starting so early in the South. The Uncle K's have taken their family's back to the Raleigh suburbs for the start of school - the big K for sweet Charlotte, 5th for Colty, and David's entering 8th as quite the king; Drew's heading into his senior year, and John, returning from a remarkable year in Germany, is also closing school with his senior year at Davidson College.

So many of my dear friends are entering college right now... I am struggling with two-fold jealousy - they are having all sorts of adventures for one, and secondly, making all sorts of new buddies. But at the same time, I am extremely excited for them! Bruce is at UVa already (a topic that was brought up over tonight's crab/flounder dinner and made me very self-conscious and confused again about whether I made the right choice for, as Uncle Robert, my super-Southern uncle, put it, "unhappy people in Connecticut." Sigh... cest la vie!), Nana at Duke, Raj at UVa, Alice at Davidson, and so on and on it goes.

Spending time with children is one of the most rewarding things about the beach. I am (notoriously) way to serious, and so my friendships with people like Nana and Sarah Thomas are so valuable because they make me free again when it's time. They help me let go. Playing with Aunt Charley's 9 month old Claire these last few days has been so amazing. 4-year-old Cecelia and her counterpart Charlotte (5 yrs) cover me with sand and hold hands in the waves. We often say simple pleasures for simple minds, but after all these high school years of wanting complexity and then being held slave by it, I am given great pleasure by their simplicity. A diaper change or meal for Claire, a game of jumping and house for the girls... life's daily turns take on a timeless feel around family. It feels like so long since I've been here. Lawrenceville was really an eternity I realize more and more. I slept for 9 hours last night and dealt with such exhaustion that I took a three-hour nap! Ridiculous. Sweet pleasure for a worn girl. There is no goal of the diaper change or dishwashing here. It just has to be done and is done without much glory or hoohah. And I know all these things, I knew all this... but it so important to place yourself back inside a functioning family unit for a time, leaving behind my own (appropriately so) self-centered world of approaching adulthood and figuring out my place in this enormous earth of opportunity.

I have been reading a great deal lately. On Janos' recommendation, I am just starting "Catch-22" , and have finished L'ville's summer reading book "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." I seriously give this book eighteen thumbs up. It was short, sweet, and inspiring. "Elle" magazine's French ed-in-chief suffered a massive stroke at age 43 (ah, so young!), and dealt, for an incredible year and a half with "Locked-In Syndrome." He was completely paralyzed, but could blink his left eyelid. He wrote an entire book. Just one of those mind-blowing, poignant accounts of what we are really capable of - extreme patience, sincere joy, and true victory of the human spirit. I will probably forget about the book in time, but it was not at all a waste of time. Of course LV would assign a great book after I graduated. I was sincerely disappointed with many of the reads from second to fifth forms.

Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz," a post-modern compilation of about 15 essays/vignettes on the author's relationship with faith, culture, and people, was recommended to me by Bama (very passionately) and her father, by Alice Grant and Gwyn Pohl. What a READ. What a gorgeous, simple, human dictation of one man's extremely honest world. I read it quickly, wondering what the heck he was going to do as he struggled with balancing the OBVIOUS principles of Christianity with hypocritical Christianity and a world of sin. I agreed with him on many, many points. Christ was not political!! He is not some way to hold onto power, nor is he the opposite of the spectrum, dancing inside promiscuity and some world that does not define values. The "Live in Love" commandment Miller refers indirectly to the whole book is fascinating, and something I definitely have a hard time with. He approached the Bible and the teachings of Christ with an awesome free-spirit approach - taking things for what they were, and exposing broken behavior on the part of all hateful Americans. Thinking about "loving your neighbor" in a new way - Miller brings up the point that all people learn whether or not they are lovable from other humans, and it is so crucial to love all people around us because through friends and family, people come to know that they are valued. A lot of times God works through us this way - letting us know that He loves us through other people. Pretty simple, but when you feel a personal revelation, you feel it hard. I believe so much in the principle of love, believe so strongly that that is the real cornerstone of my faith period. I was raised this way, and I hold onto religion this way. For many people, grace, salvation, resurrection, mercy, self-knowledge, joy, and worship are the cornerstones... I think that these are all just synonyms for each-other, for in what I know about my relation to the universe, I know that these things are all symptoms of love. Paul is right, ever right when he transcribed the Spirit to say, "God is Love." Anyway, I really enjoyed the book. I felt like I could have written it. I think a lot of people - Bama, Alice, Dr. Z - felt that way too, and that's why it's doing so well - because it's real and honest in a youth and adult culture of fronts and power games. What a relief to know that someone out there is worrying and dealing and praising along the same lines as me. What a relief to know that my favorite people are enjoying the same words! What a burden lifted... true friends are present in my life.

I love to read because at Lawrenceville all of the reading felt compulsory after a while, after the summer or vacation rest wore off. I love to learn, don't get me wrong, but when you're dancing between clubs and running and late early mornings every day, not to mention AP's and academic standards, loving learning takes on a bit of a different form. Lawrenceville could work on being healthy in a major way. I got a lot out of it, a hell of a lot, but sometimes it was shoved down my throat a bit (this commentary is, I acknowledge, mostly the fault of my own absurd levels of expectation... but that isn't to say that most LV kids don't suffer from it, so the place could do a bit to handle the issue of sanity at the school). I got headaches my senior year when I read, so I took to reading many fairy tales before I went to bed. All kinds - Native American, Indian, Russian (my favorites... due to Mom probably) tales of Baba Yaga, birch trees and family, English, Hispanic, Indonesian; they helped me relax and sleep. Simple stories that didn't take much energy to get through and smile from with their easy morals and easy characters. These tales didn't hurt my head (which actually did hurt physically, right in the back.. probably a combo of dehydration and stress... weird though). But I have been longing to read classics again, really engage literature. Note to self: I have to read "Howard's End" also... that is a must. I missed being a "bookworm", but my mind has become hungry again, and it is devouring whatever I put before it. I've been browsing through Mom's book, Gail Sheely's "Passages," and have found it very intriguing. How human are my insecurities, my commonality. I am so relieved to not be alone in the confusion of growth and transition. Not that I am one of a pack, or one of a species, one in a million faces (as the Christian Rock song goes), but just that I have the safety of knowing that my emotions are psychologically expectable, that the frustration and fear I have in leaving my complex (love/hate/ideals) nest at L'ville are not easy, but eternal. Moving forward is a struggle, but one that must be embraced. Here I go!

"There are but two or three human stories that keep repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never been done before."

We are at OI until Saturday. Perry ships out to Ropes on Tuesday, and I am so excited for her to handle all of her leadership positions and incredible thoughts with the school community without a shadow of Hodgkins cast over her. When Leland left Lawrenceville, I became my own person. And now, so too will Perry. She has so much to offer, and is responsibly putting her own touches on everything from cross-country to WILL. How odd that none of my ohsix faces will be present! With the class, so too goes the school...

And then I am off to Greensboro! Toward flying and prepping the Long Trail journey! Uncle Kemp has a million tips and pieces of gear for the backpack. Everything ahead smiles with anticipation and potential. Below is the chapel speech I gave at camp. One of the best things I've written, I think. I read it slowly - I was pretty choked up. Cheley is tied up with a neat little ribbon, as is Lawrenceville. So long, mountains, see you in who knows when. I'll be seeing the Green ones in a month + 4 days.

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Remember the Hills

I lift my eyes to these hills - from whence cometh my help.

At Cheley we have faced many hills - Hagues looming before us on the Mummy Kill, the Cheley Challenge bike ride, the unfortunate hill of boathouse duty. Hills are hard work, and thus we are helped. Out boundaries have broken down under sweat and grit, under the sounds of sisterhood rising into the night sky. I have looked at these mountains, these hills before us - tangible and abstract - and watched my peers trudge or bounce up them, placing one foot after another. It didn’t matter if you were first or last - we all made it to the top.

The hills stand and taunt to some, invite to others - they reach impossible heights, and I sit here every Sunday and force myself to remember that my comparatively minuscule body walked across the distant range. I remember what touching holiness felt like - the power and tender humility of standing about treeline countless times - the mountains ringing with names loved and unknown - Newly, Keller, Henderson, Engeln, Rausch, Alexander, Boat, Bond...on and on - ringing with those countless women - strong and free - that walked these hills before my two feet knew how to move me up and down. Time and conscience balance together to meet goals and push me back to this place, here, now, where I look back longingly, lovingly, on my endless, endless memories, and I stand in this place of passage and transition, here on the threshold or adulthood, in the comfort each summer has given me - that it will only get better.

I am so ready to leap into responsibility, ready to give to those who will come next the same empowerment I have known here - to believe that friendship could exist so truly with mentorship. I have learned that the hills will give me the peace I need. I lift my eyes to them, I walk them again and again, and still they retain mystery and endless lessons - patience, friendship, determination, joy.

Cheley has taught me by philosophy and example, in the woodwork of people and programs, to follow the greatest commandment there is - to live in love. In the complexity of retaining a childlike wonder for the glory around us and mathching that with reality and obligation, I have found this CILT summer that progressive idealism is possible, but not as simple as it seemed in Lower Chipeta - where values were values and that was life. Instead, I realize that in a community where the director is the voice is the sweeper, where leadership facilitates instead of dominates, I realtize that inside the frustrations and mortality of adulthood, inside all the responsibilities and complications, that beauty is not in love, but in choosing love over and over and over again inside an elemental simiplicity. I have learned that change must be owned, as I stand here, owning these last eight summers, owning who I’ve become because of this massive house of worship. I heave leaned on Cheley, and learned that Cheley leans on us. The wilderness leans on our protection, the columbine on our choice to step over it, the hills lean on leave no trace, on our footsteps - our decision to climb them so that they can fufill their mission and offer us help.

There is a misconception that we owe all to the helping hills - that they give and we receive. But sitting on the rocky shore of Lake Gibraltar, staring up at Ogalalla for the second and perhaps last time as true women choosing to be children of God, our eyes wander up - and the hills give back in alpine sunrise glow, in character, in confidence.

So I wonder now - a term having blown by in music, hills, love, leadership, and horses - I wonder how I will know help, get help when my eyes look up and only see New York City skyscrapers, and the suburbia of New Jersey? How can I handle the thought of future when so little remains the same in my world of technology and adaptation? When my eyes see screens and my ears hear horns, when my mouth tastes pollution, and my fingers feel infinite metals and plastics instead of dirt? How will I keep the Code when the night is dark, and there is no pure motivation? No one will give you a cell phone patch; no one will give you a key for loving your children; no one will support you in holding yourself as accountable as you are held here. The hills are literally visible. How can I allow this Cheley era to close my childhood tonight?

I can’t. I cannot let go - and nor should I... nor should you. I will transition all I know and love, but never let go. I will hold onto friends - I will hold onto Sarah Thomas until she is a godmother to my children, I will return to the hills, I will live in love, and I will sink into the foundations of morality that this sanctuary has blessed me with. I will know that if my headlamp burns out, Elise will light my footsteps. I have sworn, as you have and will and should, that love would begin with me, that that was my solemn vow, and that I would never forget the dear old Chipeta girls I loved so well. I have met you all in Rumi’s field beyond right and wrong, and have loved so hard and so fully, that saying goodbye at this stage in my life could not be harder or more perfect. I will never doubt in the darkness what I have known in this light.

I will close my eyes on the less magnificent East Coast, and think of the hills once more - and help will come. It has always come. From the hills I have gathered courage - I have visions of the days to be. I have the strength to lead and the faith to follow. All this I give to Cheley.
Camp is done. Gone this bright sun - I am torn from Lake Gibraltor, from these hills, from this unimaginably blue sky... But all is well, for I have lived in love and protection here. I have no reason to fear - I will safely rest, for I have met God, met myself... met you... and learned that God is always, always, always nigh.

Camp means eternity. Camp means friendship. Camp means self-knowledge.Camp means love to me.

Remember the hills. Keep looking up.

Gotta Serve Somebody

I want to post my pictures for everyone to see... if you have a "Facebook" then feel free to access them that way. In time they will appear with lovely stories and faces. I am back in New Jersey - Mom and I drove back together last night, and returned to two friendly cats. Well, one kitten who keeps attacking poor Sandy cat, who is seeming more and more like an old grouch these days. Frankie (the kitten) keeps jumping up onto Sandy who is about triple his size. Sandy hisses and doesn't get any peace. Priceless. At least good for relieving any sort of negativity I'm having at the moment. The drive wasn't too long...We couldn't bear to eat dinner at the nasty fast food places, so somehow we ended up with chips/chocolate and a hot dog each. A healthy alternative!

My year off is really about to "officially" begin. The North Carolinian beach beckons as always as the final climax of summer travels - a full week at the shore's Oak Island with the Rices - promising for good weather, good times. After that I am going to Greensboro, NC, with G&G for flying! I'm super excited, but Leland did note that my driving skills have not been so incredible... another cough... and he made me giggle thinking about amplifying that several thousand feet up in the sky. Old Julie (G'pa's plane) better take good care of yours truly.

Today I saw two good friends in New York City, and thought about returning home to such an urban environment from the Rockies. Still had a fine time! Just missing the real natural world in these cities of marginalized parks and gardens. Tonight I finished a terrible Michelle Pfeiffer movie and watched a Daily Show/Colbert Report with Daddy and Nene. We were all dyyying with laughter. Mom fell asleep with the kitten. I love love love my family.

Hope everyone out there is doing well - can't wait to see L'ville friends the next two days and a cookout with Mr. Silver and the L'ville Biloxi players!

Home Sings Me of Sweet Things...

I'm home!! Well, technically, I'm up in Vermont, but home all the same. How grateful I am to be here... New Jersey was overwhelming with all the people, cell phones, traffic, and general noise noise noise noise! As the grinch would say. I feel much better in Wilmington - a smoother transition from the serene isolation that Cheley offered so freely. What a month I had! Horses, friendships, mountains, altitude... my eyes close to remember the wilderness and people. I miss everything already.

Leland and Dad ended up surprising me and Perry at camp on Friday! I didn't get to see them until Saturday's horse show/recognition night, but was so thrilled when I saw Dad walking over the dining hall nonchalantly as I returned from the riflery tournament. I gave him and Nene long hugs - I must admit that I was fairly homesick for a good chunk of Cheley - not so much becaues of where I was or who was around me, but because of all the changes I've dealt with (graduation, CILT'ing, lots of travel) lately. It was awesome to see them. Leland has never been out to Estes, in all 8 years I've known the camp, and having him talking to my friends and enjoying the beloved mountains was something I've wanted for a very long time.

I spent most of the four weeks participating in the riding program (Western) with Melanie, Gwyn, and Jess Feltner. Learning the skills and details of the animals, I was very pleased to have a new branch of Cheley unfold before my clumsy hands. Everything was new, slightly dangerous (at least to me), and an adventure. We rode up and down mountains, around the rings, and back and forth from the ol' barns. I touched a previously untouchable experience. I won't say that I'm cut out for it, like I am for the mountains and my feet, but I will say that it was beautiful. When Dad and Leland showed up, I had to participate in RP drill, and I had an enormous fear that I was going to fall off of my horse, Dreamer. We walked and trotted ( I had to canter because Dreamer can be such a fatty) to music from Alexander, lowering the flag raised at the beginning of the show. I didn't fall, but Le kept whistling inappropriately during the drill, so I still got to blush from embarrassment.

Recognition night was really beautiful - I received my spurs, and key ceremony was lovely per usual. Angela did a great job. Many incredible women were there that night. I get shudders (the good kind) when I think about the people and atmosphere that day. I gave a "What Camp Means to Me" speech at Chapel the next morning (or afternoon - it was a LONG service), and caught up with many old campers that had not returned - Bigley, Zellner, the Stafford Sisters, Taylor B, on and on. I had many old men stop me to tell me they had cried during my speech. I didn't know what to say - it was a little awkward, but definitely touching. Banquet was gorgeous, and the counselors were so cute as they served us food and drinks. I sat with one other CILT and some campers. I cried when some little 10-year-olds

I showed them the Circle Peaks hike I did with Senior and Perry described the many ranges she had walked across. Leland was incredibly receptive to the park, and I think (hope) we will work there together in two summers. How can I explain my weeks in words? I feel drained from all of the gentle and wrenching farewells I've endured so recently. I may be a bit grouchy being home - my awareness of cell phones and internet, music and roads is heightened, and I feel a bit cynical regarding nature and the crowding world of humans on it.

We barely made our flight after I left some luggage in Senior, and Dad retrieved it while Nene, Per, and I tried not to sleep next to Mary's Lake. Perry and I passed out while Dad bombed to Denver in the rental car. So long Colorado!

My faith in people and nature has been restored, and thus, my faith in the big man upstairs. If only it was so easy to acknowledge those things in New Jersey! I must try harder, listen harder, open my heart to God harder. The same God who created the Rockies is the same God who created the people of New Providence - a seemingly simple thought, but drives me crazy with its implications for my faith life and behavior. I move from a world of my heart to a world of my mind trying to be my heart.

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I am definitely still on Colorado time. Late nights, late mornings.