The conservation land behind my parents house in Bolton Center was a lavish playground for my brother and I growing up. We built forts, played on piles of flat stones that rocked like see-saws in water-filled hollows and made wood-fiber concoctions from the hearts of rotting trees. In the winter, the four of us would wax up our wooden skis, grab bamboo poles and head out into a winter wonderland, all the trees and rocks sparkling with a layer of clean, white snow.
Perhaps it is this memory of being surrounded by nature that made me quit my lab job in Bellingham, Washington, and try my luck as a seasonal outdoor educator. I left Seattle in my brother's 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme on May 6th, 2001. Luck plays a big part in creating a successful peripatetic lifestyle and he and his wife were moving back to Bolton at exactly the same time I was trying to leave Bellingham. I offered to drive their car across the country for them.
I knew I was an addict when my heart actually sped up as I caught sight of the interstate's on-ramp. I revel in the feeling of freedom and adventure and the transition from the known to the unknown that comes with traveling. Driving East from Seattle, I dawdled in the high desert of the Idaho flatlands. I was on Route 20, a two-lane road, straight and narrow, speckled with a few scattered farm houses and cars. Dry, but blooming with springtime.
Listening to The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, I didn't want to reach a destination. I wanted to drive forever through this sage-covered land, alone, speeding down the pavement, wrapped up in a fictional world where emotions were strong and became mine and I wiped tears from my eyes and thought about friendship and love and pain. I pulled over once, just to stand in the wind and look into the softly rolling hills to the North.
I drove past the entrance to the Camas Marsh Wetlands, stopped, and turned around. Finally slowing the gigantic beast that is my vehicle, I slipped down the dirt road bordered by brown farmland on either side. Turning into the marsh, I was alone with the birds and strangely few insects. Two gigantic feathered creatures crossed the road in front of my car, stepping from wet pool to hard-packed reddish dust to glistening pond. I believe they were whooping cranes. They even danced in the marsh for me.
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So I was willing to try work as a technician, but now, after three years I yearned for something more rewarding and something outside. I applied to teach for the Colorado Outward Bound School. I had had enough of drizzly Bellingham winters anyway. One of the perks of the technician job was that I had gotten two months off every summer. Naturally, I couldn't help but travel during those months. The first summer took me back to the East coast and more work with Cornell Outdoor Education. The second summer found me changing all my plans at the last minute to fly, on three weeks notice, up to Valdez, Alaska, to work as a kayak guide. When I got the positive news from Outward Bound, I gave notice and packed up all my things. I felt as though my life was flying by and I wanted to get out of the lab and into the woods before I ran out of time. So in May, I was on the road to Bolton, with a side-trip to Colorado for training, spending nights at appropriately spaced friends' houses along the way. The Camas Marsh was near my old college roommate's house in Sun Valley, Idaho. We reminisced late into the night.
Five hours of sleep, one sunrise, 4 fill-ups, 5 quarts of oil, a depressing book, an entire Dixie Chicks tape (seemed appropriate, somehow, in Wyoming), a disturbingly large amount of splattered yellow butterflies, a surprising variety of gluten-free junk food; including, but not limited to, an entire package of frozen strawberries; one 45 minute rest/nap stop, 14 hours, 777 miles, one sunset and far too much desert later I arrived in Boulder, CO.
As André Gide said, "One does not discover new lands without consenting to loose sight of the shore for a very long time." I can't say that my parents were actually excited by my decision to leave a nice government job with benefits and stability, but luckily the computer lost the e-mail in which they told me exactly what they thought. Now they are supportive. I think I managed to persuade them that they were lucky I was going to come back to Bolton in between my training in Leadville, CO and my first course in July.
After ten exceedingly full days, I emerged from Leadville with only a sore throat - no blisters, injuries or other ailments. I was, however, rather tired, which I'm sure has nothing to do with staying up late in a wood-fired sauna on the edge of a beaver pond at 10,500 feet with the rest of the graduating class. I decided to leave when the person perched on the shelf above me started sweating more than I. It's one thing to be covered with sweat, it's quite another to get showered with someone else's perspiration.
We had spent five days in the Collegiate Range, hiking up to the Three Apostles and climbing Ice Mountain. This imposing mountain is just a few dozen feet short of 14,000 feet tall. Our route took us up a narrow, short gully, across a sloping snow field and up a couloir that required 7 fixed ropes. Definitely ice axe territory. As always, the technical nature of the climb brings out qualities in the participants that are not normally apparent. Some members blossom and fearlessly head up the slope to set anchors. Others withdraw to focus on their own internal battle - which side of the brain will win? The logical, rational voice that knows it is safe or the emotional, survival side that won't stop screaming that this is crazy? Three of our group did not continue to the top due to the exposed, steep nature of the climb. The rest of the training was full of classes and cooking and sunning and being in denial of the fact that the snow platform we slept on was now surrounded by a moat.
An outdoor education institute is easily recognized by the myriad of pickup trucks, vans and Subaru wagons in its parking lot. Those instructors who own such a spacious vehicle are lucky, for they always have a place to sleep. I, however, was driving a Cutlass Supreme, packed to the brim. There's nothing more unsettling than emerging from the woods after 10 days or a month, blinking stupidly at all of civilization and realizing that a tent just isn't going to cut it. Especially if you happen to be in the middle of a city.
After training headed back to Boulder, hoping some friend would have an open couch. I ended up in Fort Collins (it always helps to have a backup plan). I guess the old saying "I'll sleep when I'm dead" is more appropriate than I realized. I ended up with a friend who was also hosting about ten of her college buddies. I needed sleep but who could turn down an offer to go white-water rafting with a bunch of guides in training, even if it meant waking up at 6:45 AM? A class 3+ river is made infinitely more exciting when travelling in a raft guided by someone who's only run the river three times and never without an experienced guide by his side. I'm sure we made an extremely professional impression on the paying clients as we all screamed helpful advice to our "guide" while we headed sideways towards the bridge pilings. Definitely worth the sleep deprivation.
Everyone always complains about how unpleasant it is to drive across Nebraska, but I actually thought it was rather attractive; gently rolling hills, lots of farmland with quintessential Midwestern silos and farmhouses scattered throughout. The Oldsmobile, which I named Bruce, particularly enjoyed cruising on the flats again. The steep hills had been quite a challenge for the lumbering giant, loaded down with all my junk.
Nebraska inspired a comforting feeling of food. The East and West coasts are distinctly isolated from the growing fields of our country. We rarely are reminded of the vast amounts of land dedicated to producing all the staples from which we derive so many of our meals. Think of all the pasta that starts out in Nebraska. It'll give you much more of an appreciation for that maligned state.
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Driving across the country is something I both enjoy and relish the end of. It often provides a much-needed respite from constant stimulation, allowing you time to think. It also allows your body to reconfigure itself into a stiff, junk-food-consuming seat cover.
As I left my old college town of Ithaca and its heady intellectualism, my mind was spinning with endless possibilities and thoughts of rush hour traffic in Worcester (thanks Mom!). I came up with grand plans for aiding third world research labs and travelling the world over. Coffee certainly makes me ambitious. Somewhere in Massachusetts the coffee wore off and my brain turned to grand plans of deciding which CD to listen to and wondering which country would have the best Latin dancing and if becoming an exceptionally talented Salsa dancer would constitute a good use of my college education. I'm thinking Cuba.
Lately, after being away from Massachusetts for ten years, I've noticed that every time I return the beauty of New England stands out more brightly than before. I remember being determined to leave. I refused to apply to any colleges in New England ("I've done that, Mom! I want to go somewhere different!"). Now, however, the narrow, winding roads connecting Bolton and Harvard strike me as being steeped in history. Where else in our country can you see gigantic trees only inches from the pavement, perilously stuck between ancient stone walls and screaming cars?
There's something about being home that makes me curiously content to live a quiet, peaceful life - indoors. Maybe it's the computer, which recently acquired a cable modem. Maybe it's the abundant larder, chock full of interesting foodstuff. Maybe it's the Boston Globe, a welcome change from that thin wafer called the Bellingham Herald. Maybe it's because I want to be part of New England, which might just have saved the world by creating a Democratic Congress. Maybe it's because I have so much stuff here that every time I come home, I spend hours just going through it (trying, however ineffectively, to throw some of it away), and I end up finding all sorts of mementos of the past. Maybe it's because we live in the middle of no-where (although you wouldn't think so judging by the traffic outside) so there's no-one stopping by to entice me to go off on some Grand Adventure. Maybe it's because I don't need to go anywhere.
Tina Woolston holds a bachelor's degree in biology and a master's degree in animal nutrition [sic] from Cornell. She learned to love nature in Bolton before she moved on to the great outdoors.