My slow resurfacing…
I’m now officially back in Davis – for three days anyway.
Remember how I said Canada was intense and I couldn’t process it? This is kinda the same thing. Except that instead of being on the admin/delivery side, I was on the receiving end.
1. Beautiful, gorgeous, overwhelming vistas and scenes… I even got to see a bit of Yosemite yesterday and today as we drove over Tioga Pass.
2. Intense tension in some of the relationships – small cabins and misunderstandings don’t mix too well. Overall we all bonded pretty well, but there are some personal wounds among us that haven’t healed yet.
3. 8-mile hike yesterday, then 6 hours in the car. and 5 of those hiking miles were straight up a bloody cliff! Er, Bloody Canyon was the name of it, so I’m justified in calling it such. And women apparently aren’t built for climbing large steps – especially at altitude. I had to stop so many times on my way up the cliff. Partly I’m not in the best possible shape (although I don’t think I’m in particularly bad condition) – and the altitude didn’t help either. So my pulse was going so fast I could barely distinguish individual beats. I couldn’t catch my breath. And considering that we’d gone up ~1000 feet within less than a crows’flight mile, I don’t think I was doing too shabbily. Well, until I pulled something in my hip going up a bad step. Rawr. 3.5 miles, even of gradually downhill-sloping terrain and smooth trail, is NOT fun at the top of a windy mountain. Pretty, though. %^&$%#@ price of beauty.
4. I love my Significant Roommate. I missed her this week. I ended up having to substitute a journal and a book for her – and the book was not exactly a light one.
5. Remember the relationships issue in #2? Yeah, combine all that with the philosophical topic of death that had run through our conversations this week, and you’ve got some emotionally raw people.
6. I loved the geology prof that accompanied us this week. Grand, sweeping gestures, an excited tone of voice, and – thanks to both Prof Osleger and Nick – a vocabulary that I mostly understood. Although I was amused that the Geologist was the only one who didn’t partake in the wonders of Hot Creek.
7. I thought I was over the whole fear of heights thing, then we went up onto Mammoth Mountain. Which was fine, except that they had us scurrying about on the edges of the mountaintop. Granted, it’s ski slopes. And we weren’t on snow or skis, so a fall wouldn’t have been a real fall… but my fear was not of falling down. It was of falling out over the birds’eye view of the valleys or up into the gray-blueness. There were no barriers between me and the view. That scared me. I felt a physical fear response to a totally abstract idea.
8. Something strange… being far away from my family and friends made me hold them that much closer. So many of my stories turned into me reminiscing about last year’s trip with my dad or my wild times with Sandy. So many of my thoughts turned to them, or to Steven or Nick or Andrew or the rest of my group here. At some level there was closure to some things, but at another there were doors opened that I don’t know how to approach, let alone close. And it’s all so undefined.
9. I. Sincerely. Love. My. Shower. With. A. Fiery. Passion. – we woke up the first morning to find that a leak had decimated our water supply. We were thrilled to get it back on the third afternoon, but hot water was iffy the whole time. I’m off to shower now – more later.
The trip was amazing. I’m glad I went, although I suspect that it will take me quite a while to process it. Expect more tomorrow.
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