saturday 5/24

So, for the past 3 days my voice has been sounding more and more like I am an emphysemic chain smoker who has just topped out at 3 packs a day. To give you an idea of my inability to form coherent words—two days ago when we stopped at Qdoba this was my attempt to order from the Poor Burrito Maker:

Poor Burrito Maker (PBM): happy, cheesy, service industry smile “Hello, what can I get for you today?”

Me: I Decide I want to order a wheat tortilla “Hhhheeeeehhhh, I……wheeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaa”

PBM: looks slightly concerned “Sorry….what was that?”

Me: Try again “Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaa-……Wheeee-Wheee” face starts to turn red with visible strain

PBM: now slightly alarmed “Uuuhh….I didn’t quite catch that?”

Me: still determined to place my order “WHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!” people start to stare

Aiden (my crew leader): “Sorry. She wants a wheat tortilla.”

Example #2: I attempt to call one of my group members from my writing class to ask about our final research paper and he HANGS UP, telling me I have the wrong number!

I have not attempted to make any phone calls since.

Anyways, This morning, my voice was completely gone, and I mean nothing— not even a squeak of sound would come out. I tried to say good morning to someone and sounded roughly like a goose crossed with a gasping fish.

I was in a very depressed mood, continually having to repress sarcastic comments, or attempting to say them and then having people look at me like I may have a screw loose somewhere, so I decided the best place for me to be that morning was the library. I walked into the library just angry; it is not my norm to be silent, and I was worried people would think differently of me because I wasn’t talking as much or sounded like a wheezing cat when I tried. But then, as I was trudging upstairs, I passed this sign:

And I just stood there for a second staring, mouth half-agape, the other library goers quizzically stepping around this strange girl camped out in the middle of the stairwell. It occurred to me that maybe this whole loss of voice is maybe a good thing. I’ve never really realized how important voice is in my life. Voice, meaning not just the way I talk, but the way I listen too. Maybe, by being forced to lower my voice, I can raise my mind, and really listen to what's going on in other people's lives. I'm not normally a quiet person, and not having a voice forces me to see where other people will lead the conversation. And also makes me really work those 'nonverbal communicators' like...smiling... and widening my eyes really big to try and make up for my lack of input.

So, I adopted a new outlook on the whole voice situation. And then we went on a really fun hike to a Bear, Dream, and Emerald lakes and trudged up a mountain and slid down on our rainjackets.

 

Emily smartly consulting the map after our plan to trek blindly into the woods failed

 

Dream Lake

thursday 5/22

On Thursday, we volunteered for the Forest Service doing a wonderful activity called 'Swamping'. When I first heard what we were doing, I was under the impression we'd be wading through large watery bogs, however, 'Swamping' actually consists of making slash piles and then walling them in with logs to create prime bonfire material for the rangers to go burn in the dark depths of winter. 9 am we headed over to the ranger station to equip ourselves with classy orange helmets, sunglasses, and gloves and then drove to the park entrance to start our day.

**(I'll never get enough of that mountain landscape. It looks fake, like someone painted this giant mural outside of the park to lure in tourists who will then drive through ooo-ing and ahhh-ing at the peaks and then drive out without getting down and dirty in that wilderness. They make me itch to climb. I don't know why. Maybe to prove to myself they're real?)

So we started work with these 3 B.A. forest service guys and proceeded to haul slash and get slashed by dat slash for 6 hours. It's a forearm killer....

Still, there's something satisfying about that raw manual labor--I've spent the last 8 months working out my brain to the max and only having a page of penciled math problems or a tedious block of computer code to show for my efforts. Dragging those logs and throwing them on a pile--you can SEE the results. You work, sweat, bleed, but at the end of the day when you get to walk by those 48 towering slash piles, it's extremely satisfying. And exhausting. Kudos to the triple threat rangers who have to make a living that way!

Later, we drove to Longmont to get our chainsaw logging boots that feel mildly like a flesh-squeezing torture chamber with BLISTERS!!! engraved across the black leather. I have nicknamed mine "chip" and "tooth", and I look forward to our adventures together.

Wednesday, 5/21

Today, a nice man named Jim came and gave us the ENTIRE low-down on the history of Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes Park, CO. We started at the Field Seminar house right outside of Estes, and then went on a day-long tour through the Park, hitting all the important land-marks of early life living in Estes. Remembering dates is not one of my foremost strengths, so I cannot, for the life of me, recall when the "Sprig's spring cabin was built" or when the Fort we visited was in use but I think it was a really swell that doctor's cure for patients with Tuberculosis was to "SEND THEM TO THE MOUNTAINS!!", and that's how the original founder ended up in Estes Park! I am also a very poor picture taker, so I didn't get many shots, but here are some Elk happily livin life!

Sidenote: Elk really do not understand bikes. Cars they're completely chill with, but someone clattering by on a rusting mountain bike; that really throws them for a loop. As I came careening down the Chamberlain road this afternoon, I couldn't tell if they were about to charge or flee as they stood there like giant children wondering what on earth that horrible sounding creature was.

the journey begins

9am fellow road trip and summer working companion, Lewis, and I departed from Lakeville, Minnesota and began the cross-country trek to Estes Park, CO. Twas quite the adventure, setting a random address into my cell phone's GPS and blindly following whatever road karmin the garmin told us to take!

4 hours into the trip, it got HOT. Phewww! Especially when we hit Nebraska, the land of steaming 90 degree asphalt, where you have to drive upwards of 10 miles off the freeway in order to find a gas station. However, the gamble purchase of a cheap 2 bike rack was still holding up quite nicely--no casualties yet! (knock on wood...)

We also passed through a town called SHELBY!!! So kind of them to name a town after me!

Around 7pm we were starving. After sadly missing several exits that had signs of all the nice normal fast food restaurants, we pulled off at some extremely sketchy tavern in old Julesburg, Colorado--a town that bore an uncanny resemblance to Gatlin from Stephen King's Children of the Corn. I half expected to be mauled by a small child wielding a large chisel as we touristic-ally perused the streets for any type of food-like sustenance. But the tavern turned out to be a pretty classy hangout for all the old locals and could make some mean potato wedge fries. Kudos to pseudo-Gatlin's local bar!

As we were leaving, some sweet heat lightning narrowly missed singing Lewis's hair and the strangest storm started to brew. It never actually rained, but it sure looked like the dawn of the apocalypse...must have been old "He Who Walks Between the Rows..."

We pulled into the Chamberlain house in Estes Park, CO around midnight, and I set up my lil tent in the backyard. It was an angry battle of stakes, poles and rain fly, and the end result was a sad sagging green blob that was DEFINITELY not going to be waterproof if it started to rain. (I discovered the next day that the rainfly actually sinches up to the stakes and looks a lot less like a drooping blanket somebody flung over a pile of poles....I'm hoping my tent and I will develop a better relationship as the summer progresses.)

The tent; in all it's drooping glory