Sweatbands at the ready...on my mark

Serious times, serious measures.  When I think about how I plan to spend the month of June, I always imagine one of those montages from an 80's film in which the lead is doing aerobic exercises in a a sleeveless sweatshirt cut off at the midriff.  I've already been practicing my fist pumps and, believe me, I plan to layout my day better than they do in Bottle Rocket.

It's been a lovely summer so far:
Mondo amounts of cookouts and we even broke out the s'mores last night. I got a little bit exaggeraty when I went ingredient shopping. We picked up cinnamon Graham crackers, Butterfinger and Crunch bars for our Frankensteinian fare but S'mores a l'ancienne make me feel like I'm ten and that summer camp is just as relevant as Ghost Busters the Video Game.

I ain't afraid a'no roast

The Road Trip to West Virginia was memorable. I only drove for about two and a half hours, and only that long because of road work and Memorial day weekend traffic. I don't know how all you blooded veterans do it--I had to stretch for like five minutes when we finally switched. But You would have been proud of how I wore my false annoyance of stop-and-go traffic as I chewed my gum and tapped my steering wheel. We even made a mixtape:




Visiting Seb's sister, (she who shall not be named), at the Mountain Institute in the Monongahela National Forest has been a goal of mine since she started working there back in 2006. She and I are so similar and always have so much fun ganging up on Sebastien together. He and I slept in the main Yert on the top of Spruce Knob with only a wood stove, our sleeping bags and every piece of clothing we brought to keep us warm. His sister slept in a down jacket and four seasons bag in her small unheated Yert, on the pound. It snowed on the mountain the day before we got there...suffice to say, I left my shorts at home.
The staff members we partied with on Friday night are totally the type of people that are missing from my life. I like to smell like campfires and dress in layers! These people get that.

 (she who shall not be named)  was so proud to take us up to the boulder field, where Seb and her went looking for hand-holds on rocks. She has so many stories to tell about her life as a wilderness guide. She loves the part of herself that has become West Virginian and I was happy to walk behind them both as Sebastien posed the kind of questions she was excited to answer. I didn't feel left out or anything--honestly, it was nice to see them connecting. It made me wonder if I could find some way to peak into my own siblings' lives and let them share with me what matters most to them.

We went caving too. Obvs, I didn't bring my camera for that. It was super cool though. A bit damp, really. We saw some bats, slid down rock faces and let our limbs be licked by cave slime. I was a little miffed because I haven't chaned the batteries on my headlamp since I bought it 6 summers ago and I was mostly walking blind. But the three of us really shared a moment at the reflecting pool and I committed the view to memory.

West Virginia has a lot of history and is a current battle ground for Energy Legislation where mountaintop removal and "clean coal" are concerned. But the slash and burn method put West Virginia on the environmental radar long before Brazil had a chance to clear cut.
In fact, Seb and I learned  that until the invention of the band saw and the Shad Locomotive, West Virgina was virgin forest with trees to rival the ancient Sequoias.  At peak logging in 1909 the 83 mills were each clearing 17 acres a day. Being that West Virginia is the source of the Potomac Water shed, this had serious repercussions downstream; ergo, DC was occasionally and dramatically flooded.
Although West Virginia is firmly in the South in terms of geography and culture, WV was never a slave-holding state.  Interestingly enough, the  Sinks of Gandy  cave we went in was used intermittently by both sides of the civil war as a hospital.

I hope all of my short vacations are this educational, but I did have an exceptional guide. ;)
Sebastien and I just got word that we'll be flying to San Francisco for our state side staging point with the Peace Corps at the end of June. Neither of us has ever been to SF but we know tons of people in Cali so I'm hoping we'll have a some time to hang out and see some friends. We'll also be stopping in Tokyo and Bangkok.

Somebody hand me my hammer pants....

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