Virginia Life

it's been a long time since this blog has seen any attention. and so i timidly approach it. so much has happened since i last wrote. i met many people and got to know at least seven folks. it's strange trying to figure out time. there never seems to be enough or perhaps there's way too much. lately, i feel as if there is a shortage of time. my first crew has come and gone and i look back and think, all we had was time. where did it go? it's not fair that time should move so fast as you grow older; you're not equipped to keep up.

my writing is wild, i feel it. i can barely get a grip on it. it wants to run, run, run, until it's burned itself up into ether. i cannot harness this language.

it will take some time to calm myself down into the bed of a story. after all it feels as if i've just woken up. and so, where should i take you? should i recount time? i spent a month camped out on a forest service road named Pocahontas. we named our place camp Taiwan on a night of bleary-eyed sleep deprivation. we felt we were in another place altogether, half-magical, half-far, far, far off. the beaten path was laid down into this place well before our arrival. we were second rate settlers, though i doubt that Pocahontas was the first. the road meanders for about 3 miles, gravel and dust that illuminates sun rays which are otherwise much too shy to reveal themselves. the heart of camp Taiwan was open and large as it needed to be to direct the coursing of a curiously crafted collective. we strung up a tarp in this center area and deemed it a kitchen. bulky Rubbermaid tubs stuffed with food and supplies squatted under the plastic shelter like big league catchers. the propane stove sat on the earth like a primitive robot and our cardboard boxes full of miscellaneous materials tried their best to look classy in the corner. my co-leader and i sat in the back of our shiny red Ford SUV rental and looked at the home we created. our little red wagon was hitched to a star and all we could do was hold our breath and hope we wouldn't fall out of the sky.

the kids arrived at the airport on time. we split the group such that i took the first 3 kids to arrive and we hung out in the college town of Blacksburg. my co-leader took the other 3 kids and met us later.

it had been a little while since high school and i wasn't sure what to say. i was sure lots had changed since my time amongst the upper echelon of teen years. the girl from France sat up front. i studied french in high school but i was in no way prepared to speak french. forget it. i turned on the radio. country music. forget it. the drive was a blur and i looped and loped and lost myself in these brand new creatures. they were silent, a moment. i felt myself sweating. perhaps i'm not fit to handle such fragile beings. we talked in the way that one does when moving your face around and making sounds is nothing more than an attempt to achieve comfort. i couldn't explain to you what was said. i don't think i made much sense of it. i might as well have been speaking french.

i got cold feet that night. i felt like throwing down my apron and kicking off my cute little house slippers and running full tilt for the hills. no way, no how, was i going to make it out of this alive. perhaps i dreamed right through my teenage years and now that i was faced with real, breathing adolescence, i had no bearings. i felt lost.

work. can be a saving grace. i awoke the next morning in my tent, somehow resisting the urge to take flight in the night. things look different in the morning light. the kids rubbed their eager but shy little eyes and looked at me, looked into me. the look of a teenager can be empowering. i felt in that morning, sitting around the big bag of granola, that they needed me and i knew full well that everything is a balance, a give and take, high tide, low tide, ebb and flow, wax and wane, and therefore just as they had made a plea to me, i was making one to them. we needed each other and furthermore we agreed that we wanted to need each other. in their silence i heard the truest words. this was going to be something special.

we hiked up the trail and i felt instantly better. i told them about rock work and trail design. this was familiar ground, this had the sturdy sound of the known, this was teaching. i saw, in part, why i had come all the way to Virginia. we were going to change each other's lives. it was a scary thought and i ruminated on it a while as we advanced further and further into the woods.