Whoops--I forgot where I am

The first month I was in DC, I was attached to the high and dry forests and mesas of New Mexico from whence I had departed.

Now, as I approach my last month in DC, I forget that I haven't moved to my new home yet, the red rock deserts of Utah where forested mountain clusters rise like freckles on the desert landscape. (Do freckles rise? I hate the pimple analogy).

I woke up this morning and red for a few minutes in bed as the sun streamed in my window. When I got up, I even walked over the glass patio doors in the living room to feel the outside temperature. But by the time I walked out of the apartment building, wearing two-layer shortsleeves and a thin jacket, I realized I am not in Utah yet! This Dorothy was hit by a gentle wind and an urban sidewalk shadow that made her realize that when it is sunny on this here East Coast of the USA, it is colder than on the cloudy, warm day prior. Out west, it can be anything on a sunny day, because it is almost always a sunny day. And when the day before was warm, it tends to be warm the next.

Not here though.

However dizzying this constant change of place (pace?) may be, you can rest assured that I will never pull a NIMBY (not in my backyard), because chances are that someday it will be my backyard!

Women Protecting Wilderness

"To me
nature is a salve for the soul.
I am:
humbled by its majesty
awed by its diversity
inspired by its details
soothed by its beauty
awakened by its scents
intrigued by its adaptability
encouraged by its durability.
It connects me with my ancestors
and gives me hope for the future.
May it stay."

-Sarah Grant, Outdoor Enthusiast, Healthcare professional, Lover of Life
Salt Lake City, UT

I love it when other people articulate things for me!

"The different modes of transport that command greater speed point to how the world is experienced when organized on the fast-changing time-space-speed vectors. Space is conquered with the acceleration technology and the distances are measured on the basis of speed and not in spacial terms. In other words, the distance between two given points is measured by how fast one can reach a point rather than by the actual spatial distance. The speed at which we cover the distance--on foot, motor vehicle, train, and airplane--determines how we experience and remember the landscape en route, witness ordinary minute happenings, and interact with the people inhabiting those landscapes."

-ravinda kaur, "the last journey: exploring social class in the 1947 partition migration"
[courtesy Erica W.]

Red Rocks

"Three hundred million years
of the Earth's making
are written here on red rock,
faces smooth or swirled,
streaked, striped, or banded,
creased and creviced, scoured and pocked,
sculpted into figure, frieze, and phallus,
tower and spire, chimney, mesa, bluff and butte,
rust red against Utah's cobalt sky.

Red rock scarred, or stained black
and silvery slate with "desert varnish"
by microbes grasping minerals from the air.

Rocks reddened by traces of iron,
fissured and finned, eroded into shapes
named mushroom, goblin, hoodoo,
evoke a sacred space. This stark,
vast, dry, and fragile place
is slow to change, impossible to repair.

Red rock stretches away to the horizon
or falls sharply to the secret canyon floor,
presses in, blots out patches of azure sky,
slices off light, forces our thoughts inside.

We humans have never been so small as we are here.

Judith Wolinsky Steinbergh, National Geographic Magazine, March 2005
"84532: Writing on the Land"

The day I get that Delicate Arch license plate on my hybrid-electric truck is the day I feel at home

I have relocated to Washington, DC for the purposes of a further decrease in pay from my SCA Intern wage, living with my parents, and learning about how our government gets things done (arguably). On a more positive note, I now live in the land of glorious public transportation and get to work for a strong, respected (some might say pushy) Wilderness advocacy group. Details will develop as to what, exactly, I do, but for now just know that if you can't relate to the people that actually make the decisions, there is no point in trying to convince them to make yours. This statement means that at some point I will ned to take up field or ground work with the locals, but this is just one stepping stone in building my skills to fight for humans kind--because if we keep trying to have dominion over the earth and the species with which we share it, God will only smite us. If we coexist and integrate ourselves with the balanced chaos that is nature, then we will hopefully protect and then pass on all sorts of developed and undeveloped marvels to our children.

Learning how to articulate the importance of undeveloped spaces and proper development of developed spaces is my challenge. Carrying capacity if my pal. Building firecodes and traffic jams are my analogic friends. And preserving Wilderness and habitat corridors is my passion, for the sake of those of us that live here today. That way we don't have to pay even higher taxes to clean our muddied drinking water, repave our washed-out roads, and to have an ambulance respond to a vehicle accident with wildlife that had no where else to go to get to more foraging land and therefore became roadkill.

It's hard to figure out how to make an impact. I guess we just have to go about our passions and hope that we can spark curiosity or change or hope or love.