I'm on a Roll...

Evidently I am really hard on trucks.  I mean, I think it might have something to do with my job and the terrain on which I travel, but I can't help but feel partially responsible.  As you have probably guessed, I am back in Laramie, with a (once again) malfunctioning truck.  But let me back up, because last week I did go to the desert and was somehow able to stay out for the full 5 days as I had intended (despite the desert's best effort to break me down), and this week I did get a whole 2.5 worthwhile work days in...so at least I'm making progress, albeit in short and frustrating bursts.

So last week I left for the desert on Monday, got there late afternoon, and managed to put in several productive hours of happy and distraction-less inventorying.  I was feeling good, I was remembering everything I love about the desert, and I was really enjoying it.  It felt great, I had my positive energy back!  By day two my positivity was flagging, as I wrestled with a pounding headache in the 95 degree heat of the desert, shadeless and unforgiving.  I drank roughly 3,596 gallons of water, took a 10 minute power nap mid-day, and powered through, still somehow putting in a 12 hour day, but feeling decidedly less happy about the whole thing.

Day 3 proved a tad frustrating when a swiftly deteriorating supply of gas sent me out to town and then, because I was already down that way I tried to access the southern part of the unit and found first that an oil/gas road had been built on top of a portion of one route that I had hoped to use for access, causing the latter half to be difficult to access and therefor abandoned.  Then, a second effort landed me on the path of an old two-track that had also since been buried by a large constructed oil/gas route, but one that had been abandoned, and if you have ever done any traveling in the desert you know that these constructed roads do NOT age well.  After the first washed out and rocky hill I felt hesitant, but continued.  The second had me paying attention, and the third washout left me concerned that I might somehow get myself into a place that I would find I could not get out of.  Frustrated I paced around the truck, mulling over my options: Waste half a day driving back to the part of the unit I knew I could easily access, waste half a day hiking the remainder of this route to decide if traversing this washout would simply land me in the thick of several more, or wing it and risk getting stuck.  Just as I was stomping around proclaiming to the heavens that "this s#!t only happens to me", a wild horse happened by and my puppy exited the truck via a flying leap out the window and took off running through cacti and sage brush to see if it would be her friend.  Fortunately she's a smart dog, and she quickly realized that the retreating horse was not interested in her friendship, so she turned around and returned to the vehicle, not the least bit sorry for having ignored my angry screams for her to come back.  That was it, I loaded her into the truck, buckled her harness into the seat belt (she did not like this), and turned this whole mess around for territory that I knew would present far fewer challenges.

Day 4, opened with a long quiet walk, cool and pleasant just after sunrise.  On a winding road alternating through sand dunes and clay flats, I strolled along happily with my puppy.  A small threatening exchange took place with an offended wild horse, much to the confusion of non-horse-savvy puppy, but other than that the walk was pleasant and uneventful.  And so I naively thought perhaps the entire day would follow suit.  By 2:00 pm the wind had picked up to such an extent that attempting to take a photo with the I-pad became akin to resistance strength training and large, Audrey Hepburn style sunglasses were required just to keep my contacts from blowing out of my eyeballs.  I have no way of knowing, but I'm confident that these winds were in excess of 50 to 60 mph, as they were consistently rocking the entire pickup truck and opening the windward door became exceedingly challenging.  By the end of the day a great deal of dust had blown into and around everything that composed my entire view of the world, my teeth were gritty, my ears had small beaches in them, my hair was an absurd rat's nest of sand and dust, and my normally black dog was an awkward shade of khaki.  It was 5:00 pm; when in the field I usually try to work 6:30 to 6:30 and so I had an hour and a half to kill but had found myself at the mouth of a road leading into the WSA (Wilderness Study Area) where mechanized transport is forbidden, and I knew I had a walk of several hours to capture the entire road.  Rather than quit early I decided to inventory the road as far as the first spur route to a reservoir, and capture all of that so that tomorrow I would be able to race through the first part and start just beyond that spur.  After quickly stuffing water and maps, snacks and a compass into my pack I set out, puppy by my side, onto this two-track, and straight towards an ominous looking cloud.  Experience told me that this giant cloud would, despite it's best effort, drop only 10 or 12 raindrops on the desert floor, the rest evaporating in the insanely dry air before ever reaching the ground, so I felt confident in my choice to continue on.

Unfortunately experiences breeds confidence that some might describe as "false", and in this case that would be an accurate assessment.  Although I was correct in assuming that very little of the rain would reach the ground, I was incorrect in assuming that this would cause no problems for me.  You see, immediately preceding those 12 drops of rain was a wall of wind the likes of which I daresay I have never experienced on foot before, and carried along by that wall of wind were millions upon millions of grains of sand.  So literally the instant I reached the spur route that I had intended to hike I turned to see a dust storm reminiscent of those I encountered in Mauritania, headed my way.  I quickly turned and quite literally ran, full backpack on and dog leash in hand with a confused, frolicking, and tug-of-warring puppy on the other end, back the way I had come, hoping beyond hope that I would reach the truck before the sand reached me.  I didn't.  10 breathless, awkward, lumbering minutes later I dropped to my knees and wrapped myself over my doggies eyes as the stinging sand blasted the outer layers of skin off the backs of my legs.  To make matters worse, the winds barely slowed throughout the entire evening and picked up with a vengeance sometime after 11:00 pm, shaking the truck of side to side and generally destroying any hope I had of getting a good nights sleep.

The final day of this trip was uneventful, ended early, and I was back in Laramie by nightfall.  Thunderstorm warnings kept me from returning to Adobe Town this Monday morning, and my return Tuesday went well; I was even able to get in two full, uneventful days before disaster struck again.  This time I was camping somewhere near the center of the entire unit, but at the southern end of the WSA, generally speaking in the middle of nowhere, on a little eroded two-track route that was frequently buried in sand dunes.  In the morning I got up, fed my pup, and cooked my oatmeal all while still cocooned in my sleeping bag in the 40 degree desert morning.  When I finally felt ready to emerge and take on the day, I stalled out the truck.  Odd, I thought, I've been driving a standard since I was 17, shouldn't I be able to get the truck moving without stalling it out at this point in my life?  A second effort yielded the same result, and on the third I stamped the gas and completely let off the clutch immediately and rolled away without incident.  Now that I was moving I decided to investigate the clutch pedal, because that's apparently how my priorities worked out in my head: 1) get truck moving, and 2) now determine whats wrong with it.  Seems wise.

I found I had no tension in the clutch pedal anymore until the very last instant, and sometimes even with the clutch to the floor it continued to move.  If you knew me when I lived in Saint Thomas, then you know that I have experienced such issues before, only that time with our old jeep, aptly named the adventuremobile, and stuck in bumper to bumper cruise-ship-day-traffic.  So this time at least I didn't have seven safari trucks full of tourists on all sides to watch me shove the darn truck into gear with all I'm worth and quietly pray my way through every stop sign, at least there was that.  At any rate I was so far in, on a road I had already inventoried the far end of, and I really didn't want to have to drive it again.  So I parked the truck and went for what I thought would be a two hour but turned out to be more like a four hour long hike, to finish that road, all the roads coming off of it, and a reservoir smack dab in the middle of nowhere.  When I got back to the truck I locked in the hubs, and wrestled it around, and slow and steady, picked my way all the way back to a county road.  There I called my pops to talk me through adding some clutch (brake) fluid and carefully headed for the highway, and eventually home.

So here I am again, back earlier than I intended, heading back out later than intended, but Grimace the purple truck needs his R&R time too...so that's that.  And hey, at least it wasn't a tire, so I didn't have to go back to Walmart, which I don't think my delicate psyche could have taken at this point.

If you are reading this and thinking "man, somebody should get that girl a better truck!" then I urge you to go to BCA's website and make a small, one-time donation, and feel free to send us an email requesting that the money be spent on fixing up poor old Grimace.  Alternatively, you may call any wealthy friends that you may have and ask them nicely if they'd like to buy me a new truck.  You also might be thinking, "man, that girl kills trucks, I would never hire her to do anything ever because she just destroys everything she touches" but I assure you that I asked a reputable source and I am under the understanding that there is no way the slave cylinder could have been caused to leak by my driving, and it's more likely that it was a re-manufactured part that was faulty and failed well before it should have, regardless of how it was driven.  So if you feel that way you should still go to BCA's website and make a small, one-time donation and let them know that you know I'm not a truck killer, at least not on purpose...

Here, I'll even give you the link!  Because I'm so thoughtful!  http://www.voiceforthewild.org/page.php?id=donate#.UcTlQ_ksmys

Wild Horses

Wilderness Doggy

That's some strong dirt!

Adobe Town

Adobe Town

Sunset Road

DUST STORM!

Ominous cloud...

Adobe Town

My Faithful friends

Sunset

DUST STORM!

Adobe Town Valley

Wilderness

I have been on hiatus for....oh since about the day that I got to Wyoming and moved into a truck in the Red Desert.  My truck-inhabiting days are coming to a swift close though, thanks entirely to the Wyoming winter that dropped 8 inches of snow on us over the last 2 days.  So now I feel it is time to share some stories of my wilderness inventorying and of what this has all come to mean to me.  First, a bit about what I really do, because I have come to find out that many of you have no idea, and that is okay!  I am quite happy to educate you all!  Below is an excerpt from an article about my work that I wrote for the winter newsletter sent to members by the non-profit I work for, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, to read the whole thing please consider joining BCA and supporting the great work that we do!

"Even those who are conservation minded don’t always have a strong grasp of what a wilderness inventory is, and why they are important.  So what do I really do?  I map routes, roads, and human influences in otherwise predominantly un-human influenced areas.  Why does this matter?  Because if I can prove that these areas possess “wilderness characteristics” such as outstanding opportunities for solitude and primitive recreation, than I can potentially be a catalyst in their lasting protection, and what more can I give to the generations to come than the joy of a wild place preserved?"

So this is what I do in a nutshell, but what I really seem to do is take a lot of photos of roads and change a lot of flat tires.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my job, it is perfect for me, I love the challenges and the beauty, and the fact that I have the real potential to bring about lasting change for at least 5 small corners of the beautiful Wyoming Wilderness.  And I am really good at changing tires.  Here's the wonderful part, I think when you are doing good work, good things come to you, and although I have had 3 flat tires in the course of this summer, at least 2 of them happened at just the right time.  By this I mean that when I am in the desert I rarely have cell phone service, and I tend to stay out for between 4 and 8 days at a time, i.e. longer than the accuracy of the weather forecast that I checked before I left.  Rain in the desert means slippery and dangerous roads and no chance of getting any work done, not to mention a greatly increased chance of getting stuck. The second to last flat tire that I got forced me to leave the desert 4 days earlier than planned, but just in time to miss 3 straight days of rain.  The last flat tire was this Sunday night, in the dark I might add, and it sent me into town 6 days early and just in time to find out that 3 cold fronts were headed right for me; dropping not only temperatures, but also several inches of snow.  So I appreciate my flat tires, for all the trouble that they have caused, I suspect that they have saved me from quite a bit more.

Plus I love the challenge, changing a truck tire is no easy task, and I've had some doozies, tires so flat that I can't fit a jack under them, in darkness, and rain, and cacti were often involved.  Every time I finally get through changing a tire I feel like a rock star; yeah, I just did that, all by myself, and I could do it again if I wanted to.  I love that, almost as much as I love the feeling of completing an inventory, now that is a victory.  By the time I am done with an inventory, I know every route, road, fence, and structure on a property; all the folds of the topography, and all of the property bounds.  I can navigate like a pro, I can hit any little 2 track road, no matter how small, and know exactly where I am, I can point to every hill I hiked and every arbitrary property line that I surveyed.  I love that, I love the feeling of accomplishment that comes with the completion of something like that; yeah I memorized those 12,000 acres, and now I'm going to go do it again with 10,000 more, no big deal.

It's not all fun and flat tires though, the advocacy side of things (what I'm getting into now, since my field work is wrapping up) is a challenge of another sort.  The term wilderness means different things to different people, and many tend to visualize pristine mountain streams and dense forests when wilderness is brought to mind.  That's great, because those are wildernesses and also deserve protection; but a desert is too, although many have trouble recognizing this as wild land and not waste land.  The definition of wilderness that I follow comes from the Bureau of Land Management, because they are the ones who will make the call as to whether the land that I wish to protect qualifies for wilderness protection, but folks who have no experience in wilderness designation and its official definition tend to have a definition more like this one in their heads:

wil·der·ness  (wldr-ns)
n.
1. An unsettled, uncultivated region left in its natural condition, especially:
a. A large wild tract of land covered with dense vegetation or forests.
b. An extensive area, such as a desert or ocean, that is barren or empty; a waste.
c. A piece of land set aside to grow wild.
2. Something characterized by bewildering vastness, perilousness, or unchecked profusion: the wilderness of the city; the wilderness of counterespionage; a wilderness of voices.

I resent this definition, especially part 1.b., which describes wilderness in deserts as "barren," "empty," and "a waste."  These are the attitudes that I face in my efforts to encourage others to protect these areas, a sentiment that there really isn't much there worth protecting.  It's not their fault, usually they have never been, have no idea what is or is not there, and some of them don't even know that Wyoming even has a Red Desert, at least not beyond the run down gas station at the Red Desert exit on interstate 80.

There is a lot more to this area than what can be seen from the I-80 corridor, acres and acres of beautiful buttes and sage brush country, wild horses and pronghorn herds, startlingly beautiful sunrises and sunsets, million upon millions of stars in the night sky.  These beautiful natural treasures are slowly being encroached upon by various energy and mineral extraction developments in such volume that it will take decades for the land to recover, if ever.  Below is a picture of the Jonah Field, the poster child of inefficient and destructive energy developments, from The Daily Climate.  This is the kind of development that I wish to prevent.  Don't get me wrong, I am not "against" the energy industry or fuel extractions as a practice, I am a realist and I know how heavily we depend on them in every facet of our lives.  The goal of my work is not to stand in the way of energy development (wilderness designation is one of the few designations that protects land from energy and extraction based leasing) but I am hoping to encourage innovations in smarter growth and development.  In short, I know I'm not going to stop the interested companies from getting at the fuels in the earth underneath my proposed wilderness areas, but at least I can ensure that in order to get at it they have to be smart about it and not destroy the land above it.

So this is my life these days, each day a wonderful adventure trying to protect the Wyoming wilderness.  Obviously I am enjoying it, but I am also saddened by it too, the mere fact that I need to fight the fight that I am fighting means that despite how far we have come as a society, in general people still forget that without this beautiful planet we would be nothing.  Nature has created a perfect, balanced system all on its own that we are slowly taking apart, one piece at a time; the least I can do is to try to be the proverbial barefoot hippie girl, trying to hold my ground against the bulldozer of development.

"The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering." 

-Aldo Leopold

Time flies when you're unemployed...

It is almost July...did you know that?  Why didn't anyone tell me?  Once again I haven't written anything in weeks, but this time I have a series of perfectly valid excuses for my lack of updates....for one, my brother got married again to his beautiful wife, Hsiao-Han, this time in VT (where our family is) because last time it was in Taiwan (where her family is) and then there was a small one in NC (where they met and live) so they owed us a wedding, since everyone else got one.
I was in the bridal party, and I had a blast welcoming my sister-in-law to the family once again.  It was a beautiful ceremony up at Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe on a beautiful spring day with lots of friends and family and I don't think the day could have been more perfect!

Excuse number 2:  I PASSED THE FE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (And I was so excited when I got my little "You are now officially an engineer-in-training" certificate in the mail that I couldn't do anything but smile and jump up and down for days, and the jumping made typing difficult.)  I got myself a bottle of classy bubbly and toasted my new title (Shelby A. Perry, E.I.T.) with some good friends and had a "Shelabration!"  So hey, that's awesome....and makes me feel like I didn't just waste the last couple months of extensive studying....

Excuse number 3: I was unemployed.  I know typically that means that you have more time, but in my case it meant that I did more hiking than I have done in ages, volunteered a whole bunch with the Conservation Commission in Johnson, applied to the 2 or 3 jobs per week that I found interesting (I have the patience to be picky in my job hunt and I have decided that my happiness is worth it), and found new and interesting things to cook, bake, and create.  I put all that free time to good use until it wasn't all that free anymore, which is the way it should be.  Annnyyyywayyyy, all that being said, somewhere along the way all of that job applicating paid off, which brings me to excuse number 4:

I.  GOT.  A.  JOB.  About a week ago I got a call from one of the positions that I interviewed for and really really wanted, and guess what!?!?!  They wanted me too!  So now I'm hitting the road, actually in 3 days, for the mystical and exciting land of Wyoming!  That's right, I'm moving from the second least populated state in the country to the very least populated state in the country...raise your hand if you didn't see that coming...yeah...that's what I thought.  

Sooooooooooooooo as you can see my life has been quite busy lately, and is only going to get busier, as I pack up my life and move back into my Honda Civic for the 2000 mile trek out to Wyoming.  I am so incredibly excited (although I am quite sad to leave Johnson, which has grown on me lately) to start my new adventure!  Wish me luck and get excited!  As usual I have been baking up a storm, because packing is boring and I would rather feed my friends that pack my bags.  I have made a few repeats (these cookies and cream cheesecake cupcakes went over well with my friends here, I (of course) made truffles, and for my brother's stag party I repeated these Irish car bomb cake balls) and a few new ones, like a blueberry knotweed crumble for the conservation commission meeting and a (and this one is an original, wrote the recipe myself....) Maple Bacon Cheesecake that came out pretty okay if I do say so myself...the recipe is to follow.  Wish me luck on my new adventures, pictures from the road to come...  

Maple Bacon Cheesecake:

Crust:

about 4 cups graham cracker crumbs

bacon grease from half the bacon

a few tablespoons of butter (until you reach the right consistency)

Dash of maple syrup

about 2 pieces of maple bacon

Filling:

4 8oz packs plain cream cheese

1/2 c sour cream

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 c grade B maple syrup

Topping:

4-5 pieces maple bacon, cooked crispy

1-2 tbsp brown sugar

Combine crust ingredients in food processor and press in bottom of greased 9 in spring for pan.  Beat filling ingredients together until smooth, pour over crust and bake for 50 minutes at 350 degrees.  Remove baked cake from oven and let cool/set 10 minutes on a wire rack, filling will settle down into the pan.  Chop topping ingredients together in food processor until small bacon bits are evenly coated with sugar, sprinkle over cheesecake after it has cooled for 10 minutes.  Let the cake with topping cool in the hot (but off) oven for 1 hour, transfer to a wire rack until it is room temp, then cool in fridge over night if possible, but at least 4 hours.  

I don't have a picture of it being enjoyed because it was so delicious I literally could not stop to take one.  Sorry, maybe I'll make it again so you can see the end result.

April?!?!

Wow...where does the time go?  How is it April already?  I haven't updated this in a while...and not for lack of trying.  I have like 7 drafts started, I just really don't have much to say these days.  I'm at home, I've pretty much been laid off from work, I'm studying for the FE (which is in 5 days!  eeeeek!).  On a more interesting note, I have been playing with photography a bit, in some new fun ways.  Cory suggested the possibility of pursuing photography as a business, and so I have been playing with the kind of photography people might pay for.  There are, of course, some of the usual puppy portraits and landscapes to share:

 My nosey Josey...

Bella-butt

Sparkling mountain streams...

And beautiful secluded meadows.

But then I have also been playing with portraits and editing...and for now, the only model I have to play with is me.  Sooooo as much as I HATE self portraits, I came up with a couple today to edit and share for practice...soon I will be taking some of some other, more interesting people.  Until then, there's me.  

 Me, in color.

More me, less color.  

These would be better if I had Photoshop, but of course I don't at the moment.  Anyway, that is what I have been up to...cooking, eating, studying, sleeping, and always, taking pictures.  Soon I'll remove studying from the equation and add MOVING!  Not sure where, or even how, but I'm outta here!  Thanks for your patience with my lack of posts...more to come soon, just as soon as my test's overrrr and done!  <3 

Taiwan and belated thanks givings...

Here I am, home again, after a whirlwind of adventure in Taiwan to celebrate the engagement of my brother, Cory, and his girlfriend (who is now his fiance!), Hsaio-Han.  I had a great time on my trip and I learned a lot about Taiwanese and Chinese culture, which I have had limited experience with in my adventures thus far.  We had many family meals with Hsiao-Han and her extended family, including lots of authentic Taiwanese food, Japanese food, Thai food, and more.  I continue to be blown away by the hospitality and generosity of each new culture that I experience.  I had a wonderful time getting to know everyone and was very glad for our gracious hosts who translated for us, showed us around, and right from day one, treated us like family.  We'll have some big shoes to fill this spring when it is our family's turn to host them.  It is customary in their culture for members of the family, such as uncles, aunts, and cousins, to want to treat the guests of their family members to a meal during their stay.  We were spoiled, truly spoiled, during this trip and when it was time to leave I had no words that were worthy of the thank you I wish that I had been able to articulate.

In my travels and adventures through life thus far I have seen families in Africa host friends and family members to the point that they could barely afford to feed themselves, go miles out of their way to walk me to work when they had only to walk half that distance to get to their own, give up their own plans to help keep me safe in mine.  In Taiwan I watched family help family by loaning an apartment for us to stay in, loaning our hosting family a van for our transportation, treating us to dinner, helping cart us all around, and most of all never making us feel like an imposition.  In Saint Thomas friends brought me fresh fruit and veggies while I was working the desk, gave me rides or allowed me to borrow a car to get anywhere I needed to go, treated me to many meals and drinks when money became tight for me, and generally appreciated and treated me like family, all by people I had known for all of a month (and also by Nicole, whom I have known and loved since we were assigned to be roommates freshman year in college...love you apple-bottom-whiskers!)  In California I was offered several different home-stays while searching for a place to live, I was picked up and put up by friends when my car broke down in the middle of the road, I was given rides and places to stay, taught the area and shown around by almost strangers just because I was new and had no one else to rely on.

Traveling never fails to remind me how lucky I am in all ways - I have fantastic parents who will take me in whenever I run low on money and want to live without rent for a bit.  I have fantastic family members who will get up at 4 am to drive us to the airport without batting an eye.  I have fantastic friends who have taken care of me so many times and in so many ways I don't even begin to know how to list them all.  I have had the opportunity and the freedom to go to college, get an education, find what I am good at and find what makes me happy.  I have the freedom to live at home and bar tend on the weekends for a few months in order to be able to turn down high paying jobs that bring in to question my moral values.  I have created a life for myself that allows me to move and travel and try new things whenever I want to, that has allowed me to find my passion, and to work my way towards it.  Sometimes I take that for granted, I try to reach beyond my means because I am so used to being caught before I fall, so its important that every once in a while I stop and take a look around and realize how much I have been given, and how much I should be thankful for.  This Thanksgiving I was on the opposite side of the world, so far removed from all the "normal" Thanksgiving traditions, and yet the day still managed to remind me to give thanks for all that I have.  So thank you, to my hosts, my family, my friends, and to everyone who has helped me along my way.  I know that I never hesitate to ask for help from friends and family when I need it and I hope none of you will ever hesitate to ask me for anything either.

Some pictures of my fabulous trip to Taiwan:

Onward and Upward

I have officially departed St. Thomas.  Bittersweet as always, I look forward to moving on but if I wasn't sad about leaving than I would have done it a long time ago.  I had a great time with a lot of great people whom I will miss intensely.  I learned a lot about hotels and hotel management and island living, and so much more.  I get a little misty every time I think about the fact that I can't just pop over to St. John on my day off anymore, every time I think about what I'm going to miss this winter (Gremlin's Birthday first and foremost, but also the beginnings of my friend's new business, all the boat trips, discovery days, and local events), whenever I think about all the fantastic friendships that I made there, and every time I consider how freaking cold it's going to be at home!

So here I am, unemployed and adventuring once again...first big question I need to tackle: to go abroad again or stay in the US...or maybe another US territory...Guam anyone?  Next:  to grad school or not to grad school?  And finally, if yes on grad school, what exactly do I want to study?  I know I already have plenty of options open with just a bachelor's in engineering and if I study something different but similar it would open up new doors without closing existing ones - so for me that would be ideal, the more doors the merrier!  I love doors!  Options are my favorite, except for times like now, when I am paralyzed with indecision at all the options that I do have.  I think the most important thing I need to remember right now is that all of my options are not going to pan out, that's life, so perhaps I should just apply for every single thing I am considering and see what I get before I get too caught up in making up my mind.  For that I will need a list of everything I want to do (or what I want to do the most right now because I'm pretty sure making a list of everything I want to do is impossible...because I would like to do everything eventually...) So here goes:

Grad School - either here or abroad, in an environmentally or developmentally relevant field either in the state or abroad....if I go abroad I would like to go to either England, Ireland, Australia, or perhaps Poland or Belgium or somewhere else entirely....

Job - entry level environmental engineering job...sounds tempting but also very scary because that had the ring of career to it, and if I'm finding something career worthy I damn well better love it.  So in this area I have every right to be, and definitely will be picky.

Volunteer - You all know my Peace Corps term got cut short...it was pretty devastating in the moment, but now that I've had a few years to work and travel and generally work towards recovering from that, I think I might be up for another go...I also adored AmeriCorps and would be just plum thrilled to do that again for the right opportunity as well.

Short Term Job - temporary solution, all about having money in the here and now.  Tempting, as something to hold me over in the moment, but also tough to commit to because it can make things so easy in the moment that its hard to move on to the bigger future-making and goal-relevant type ventures.  I have done this a bunch of times (ie. Seasonal trail guide, UPS holiday helper, sales person at pet store, grocery store sale tag changer, etc) and every time it gets me through the moment but also slows down the real hunt for my next adventure (with the exception of the grocery store one, I hated that job so much it made the hunt for a new adventure more furious and I put in my notice 3 weeks early because I just couldn't wait).

And those are just the broad categories of options, within those categories there are a million possibilities!  I love potential, it's like all the things you are capable of being and doing quietly waiting for you to reach out and pick one thing to strive for.  The important thing is that whatever I do next I give it all I've got, and learn everything I can from it, because that is what life is all about!

Wondering what I'm doing now?  Hanging out at my friends place in Tampa, FL, dreading my return to the great frozen north, and playing with her puppy dog while she's at work.  Got a few excellent shots of little Gizmo yesterday...included below.  Taking pictures is my favorite.  Someday I'll make that my job, when I win the lottery.  For now - Gizmo glamour shots are still a hobby!