Bears: Trounced, Paradise: Attained

If gorgeous wilderness wasn't enough to get the academic year moving on a high note, Reed itself has pulled out all the stops to insure that we, as new students, are made to feel, not only welcome, but completely infatuated with our new home.

In the space of an afternoon I have been...

...ambushed and spontaneously taught by 40 jugglers, left to spend as much time as I see fit in a cavernous, couch-filled goldmine containing every graphic novel I've wanted to read for the last six years, shoved into the no-man's-land space created between three simultaneous dance parties (all with separate pounding stereos playing different music, mind you) and told to dance, involved in a physics-based discussion about pie warfare with more that ten people at the same time, and passed by a swooping group of what can only be described as Viking marauders -- on bicycles -- wielding LARP-based foam weaponry.

However, the more I hear from returning students, the more I am astonished and thrilled to hear that this is nothing out of the ordinary.

To clarify: this happens all year long.

In short: I am here, and very, very happy about it.

Waxing Lyrical

There is, shockingly, working wireless on the brig today and therefore, as I have, also shockingly, been given a whole day off, you're all being treated to an update.

The only difficulty at this point is that everything of relevance to my life now relates to tall ship sailing and tall ship sailors -- who, as it has already been pointed out by someone famous and witty (Twain, perhaps?), are the loveliest of persons, but atrociously prone to jargon*. This makes everything I now want to talk about just about unintelligible to practically everyone. So I'll try to do it right and not leave you all thinking me either a) mad or b) one baggy short of a wrinkle.

Sailing aplenty has occurred, as have multitudinous Ed Programs, docksides, and midnight adventures. After joining the vessel in Crescent City, I resettled myself aboard for the long haul (Although I am, for the moment, living in the main hold -- normally reserved for the more transient crew members) and got back into the rhythm of life on the drink. It is, in a word, fulfilling.

Apart from being more fun than a barrel of monkey's fists, it's deeply satisfying in ways I can barely explain. Working tirelessly, keeping the vessel I love in shape for the sake of astounding all the small minds who cross her decks, collapsing into bed after stand-down with my muscles ready to drop from my bones with weariness, feeling the sun I've absorbed into my skin making my pillow glow, eating heartily and singing loudly -- being filled with so much gratitude that it makes me swell with happiness every minute of every day.

These are the ingredients of a perfect life.

After a three day diversion to Eureka to pick up on any school groups we missed due to the aforementioned snafu, we're back in Crescent City -- reunited with the Hawaiian Chieftain (our companion vessel) and taking the extra day before the weekend madness to tackle various maintenance projects. Monday sees us on our way to Coos Bay, OR and beyond up the Columbia river, but in the meantime, we're doing a substantial amount of Battle Sails through Saturday and Sunday. This means exhaustion aplenty, so expect very little from me until next week at least. I figured I should just let you all know that I'm still alive, covered in pine tar, and loving every minute of it.

Fair winds and following seas...

*Although apparently, there is help.

Wee Things

Well, that's it. I'm out of the woods. Exams finished, classes as good as done, sun shining, next flight looming. Life resuming. Actually, it took less than the actual exam to shake me out of my state of stress. Heading home to study yesterday, I found myself wading hip-deep through a sea of children who had just been released from the primary school across the street. I was preoccupied with trying to remember just when the temporal correlation of verbs in the infinitive combined with "que" should be applied to the subjunctive versus the indicative -- obviously -- so it took me a couple minutes to get the message, but when it came through at last I started smiling a lot.

Still existing in the worry-free world of prepubescence, these children had no concept of homework or finals or waking up, dazed and dulled, after falling asleep on one's textbook the night before. They weren't in the least bit worried about bruised knees or getting underfoot or smiling the wrong way. They knew kung fu and ballroom dancing, practiced with wild abandon, held hands, shrieked, raced, swarmed, clung to their parents, and whispered secrets to each other with hands cupped around mouths -- just the way it's meant to be done. Halfway up the street I ground to a halt, unable to walk further, though the tide of enthusiam kept flowing around me.

At that age, I was getting up three hours before school started simply because there weren't enough hours in the day for all the imagined worlds I wanted to inhabit. I think I had homework -- I must've at some point -- but I posessed the ability to switch distinctly between work time and play time. School finished at 3:15, I worked until 4:15, y ya está. Terminado. Rest of the day free for hiking to swimming holes or making playdough or playing ocelots. (Don't get me started on ocelots.) Naming potato bugs also took up a large portion of the weekly schedule. And digging mudholes. And building fortresses. It's been way too long since I've built a fortress.

That being said, I also remember sitting under the oak trees at age 10, munching peant butter-filled pretzels and wondering who I'd be when I was big and grown-up like the kids in the high school across the field. I have dreams about sitting next to that grubby, blonde, tomboy girl with her bare feet and big imagination, telling her "In the future, you sail a tall ship. Basically, it's like the termite-riddled playstructure from 1st grade, except it's 35 meters long and the cannons work."

I know she doesn't believe me. Just like she doesn't believe me when I tell her that she'll spend seven months falling in love with huge swaths of the world with nothing more than a bag and a book to her name. I'm a little jealous, because she gets to ride her bicycle home and play frisbee with her father and spend the night covered in glitter, asleep on the matress she's dragged onto the lawn, but on the other hand, I haven't got it so bad myself these days.

It's just good to remember that the simple things are still going strong. If you'd like, spend the next two minutes thinking about really big sunflowers and being read to before falling alseep. Then we can have something in common -- if only for a little while.