Remote and Far Away Now

We did it! My classmates and I all became certified Wilderness First Responders on Sunday. We went to the Boxcar to celebrate at 3:30 in the afternoon, got drunk enough to hang all over each other make about a thousand plans for future trips, climbing, rescue squads and EMT training. We all confessed our deepest love and admiration for one another and then, seven and a half hours and 16 pitchers later, mostly fell asleep at the table.

I woke up at 5:00 am the next morning, finished packing, and took the train to the airport. It turns out my flight was at 12:00 noon, four hours later than I'd thought, so I fell into a reasonably satisfying sleep at the gate. On the airplane, I opened my laptop and worked on articles until we landed in Boston. I tried to keep writing on the bus up to Vermont but my brain kept twisting me in different directions and fell forward, asleep, onto the keyboard.

Today I submitted my articles, ran errands, tried to pack, sat out in the field with my dogs and tried to feel all the stuff I should be feeling but all I could feel was tired, and calm, and very aware of the crickets. I changed my cell phone ring in Seattle to be the sound of crickets, so it could remind me of summer night in Vermont. Now I'm back in Vermont and it's a summer night and the crickets make me think of my phone ringing.

Tomorrow I'll write one more article, then drive to New Hampshire and start doing gear inventory and tracing maps for a month long expedition into Maine. On Thursday, we take off. Some day soon, I'll relax and be able to write without using run on sentences, think without veering off into a hundred side roads. Someday soon, I know it.