Over the border

I wrote about how we had tried to hop the river and see the sites when Joe came to visit me while doing fieldwork. It was going to be quite a headache, so we opted against it. Well, we made good on our decision to try again and spent spring break on a whirlwind tour of some select spots. It was a fabulous way to meet in the middle (as it were) and for me to take a break from being professor...for a whole week!



It was absolutely stunning. We relaxed lakeside, nestled into volcanoes. We traversed a volcano and visited nearby villages. We kept the local breweries in business. We stumbled around cobblestone streets (no relation to beer consumption). We stared at ancient sites while being serenaded by howler monkeys. We hammocked. We snorkeled the reef with sharks, stingrays, turtles and colorful fish. And I still have sand in my shoes and the smell of sunscreen in all of my clothes.

Lago Atitlan

In Antigua

Shadows in Antigua

Arch with volcano shadow - Antigua

Tikal

Tikal

Main Plaza in Tikal

No subir

My Star Wars shot!

Incoming storm, Belize

Pelican

Hammocking

Brilliant seating

Coozies in Caye Caulker

Sunset, last night in Belize

Sunrise en route to Airport

We ate a lot of plantains and tortillas and I drank or ate my way through my weight in tropical fruit. Oh pineapple juice! The rest of our trip can be viewed on the trip photo site (link to right).

My nose is back against the grindstone and I am counting the days (25, lest you wonder) until I am on a plane home.

While keeping my Spanish fresh

This horrible truth.

This is a thing...

Classes for the Potterphile

Relevance

I spent the last three months attempting to find something relevant to discuss here. But to be honest it felt either contrived or whiny. I think I pushed my nose a bit too close to the grindstone in trying to prepare for what felt akin to an
unattainable future. I worried and I wrote and I applied for jobs and I taught and stupidly I fussed over whether my students liked my classes.

I'd love to say that the first semester as professor allowed for the glorious unburdening of my grad school stress and inferiority complex, but it might have actually heightened it as I stretched my fingertips into the unknown.

Here I am in the new year. I've had the opportunity to breathe and relax and just be. Just be at home. Just be out in the snow. Just be on the trail. Just be looking for the bottom of the glass (excellent, beer, wine and whiskey). Just be lost in a book. Just be with Joe. Calm. Refresh. Renewal.

At home on the Metolius

Part of this is due to the fact that I have been snatched up for a tenure-track position at the earliest possible time in the job season--a feat I would never have thought to accomplish. I am thrilled and terrified. Mostly thrilled. And also terrified.

The academic life is one of those places you go that you have great autonomy as compared with other careers--excepting the fact that you are tied to a University. And that the best department for you, the best fit academically may not be in the location best-suited to your soul. I tried to avoid applying for positions anywhere that I thought would feel as though we'd been dragged to the inner-circles of hell. But we are ending up, for the foreseeable future (tenure track!) on the wrong coast.

It will be my fourth cross-country move as an adult, my ninth overall. Each trip offers something different, although this one will include three travel averse kitties, so it'll be more of a race I suppose. We have a lot of decisions to make (terrifying) and I will get to start working on my tenure file in earnest (thrilling).

Otherwise, in the last few months I have tried to not adopt the usual hobbit/hermit/hibernating version of myself.

Visit to the Shenandoah

In Philly

We've taken advantage of the fact that I'm making a proper wage to minimize the distance between us, meeting in Denver at the GABF in October and spending Thanksgiving in Maine. I have also had a couple of visitors which has been great...and this popped up on my route to the metro which also gave me a nice warm fuzzy:

Bringing Oregon to Virginia!

I also tried to remember some of the things I like out of the city in the fall--apple picking, cider, hiking amongst deciduous trees. Although I can't remember ever having a concession stand of this sort at a trail head before...

 

Shenandoah

I head back east this coming weekend for what will be another exciting term. I've planned some rigorous classes, which are sure to make me unpopular with most students ; )

It smells different here...

So I've been back in the city for a little over a month and it is all at once a beautiful and terrifying place. I am trying to take advantage of being in this particular place (and having an income)--this has mostly taken the form of going to events, such as a soccer game and some food-related dinners at the museum. I realize I should have been taking pictures. I've spent a couple of evenings in the last few weeks partaking in glorious meals within the garden. It's nice and it gets me out. I'm trying very hard to not go hermit or in any way replicate the loneliness of the field. It's going moderately well.

Something about living here before makes it feel a little bit like putting on an old shoe everyday. I have adopted all of my old (bad) habits--jaywalking, left side of escalator protocol and etcetera. I used to get annoyed with the morning and evening rush in the underground, but now a more than a decade later, a new layer/source of irritation has emerged. Oh smartphones, how I love and hate thee. There is a very specific sort of crowd behavior that has conditioned people for the peak hours commute. The smartphone has disrupted that significantly. I find myself wanting to shake people, shouting into their faces "you're in a crowd! change the song/send the text/check twitter LATER! p.s. I hate you. Also you are either the epitome of rush-hour conformity or its downfall." But I don't, I just try to be all zen about it and navigate my way through what has become a maze-like space.

I have to say I'm enjoying the city more with a soundtrack. Grocery shopping and walking through campus feels lighter when I can drown it out with my own music. (I know, I know, but still...). I have also found that earbuds are a clever method of avoidance--I'm sorry were you trying to flag me down to answer some political survey? I'm pretending I can't hear you over the bass. The earbuds though brilliant for the auditory are no assistance for the olfactory. There are myriad smells in the city and I can't say I like them all that much. I am already imagining the gulps of air I will take when I step foot on the tarmac back in the high desert in the winter.

Oh yes, and then there is the whole being a professor thing. They call me Professor. It's taking some getting used to. But I like it. A lot. So far I am very impressed with the students and the school. Now that I can get around campus better--city block campus is both helpful and weird--I feel more confident. I've also found some shortcuts through campus which take me by such gems as this phone booth, through some creative landscaping (they were trimming the basil hedge yesterday:good smell), and through the square by the library where I superstitiously pass under the "professor's gate" every day. 

The parks, part 4

We went a bit out of our way south to see about some caves and some more "mountains." Due to poor timing we didn't actually descend into the caves. We had read that you could do a self-guided walk in the first major section, but that is apparently only true on very busy weekends, not weekday evenings. So we saw an exhibit of the caves, which was impressive and where we learned that it was called "mammoth" due to it being the longest cave system in the world, and that the end still has not been found. Cool. But no spelunking or photos.

Instead we had a lovely dinner where we received a recommendation for a short waterfalls hike on our way out of town the next day.

It was one of a few state parks that we ventured into on our trip--we mostly found these to be good (if fee driven) lunch spots. We didn't linger over the falls too much, even though I think Joe was ready to jump in at any moment--even our leisurely approach to the east didn't lessen the impact of being in high percentage humidity again.

Instead we headed towards the Great Smoky mtns. To be honest I was less interested in this park than many others because it seemed primarily focused on driving to restored homestead sites. And it was, but there were also bears. Bears.

Following the smokies, we did a bit of the Shenandoah, which was quite pretty, even outside of its fall glory. And then we descended into the city. I think the monuments in DC are considered national parks as well, but we didn't do any reminiscing at those.

The next day we used the vehicle to complete some errands that would have been otherwise cumbersome on foot and also revisited a couple of our favorite vineyards west of town.  And then we relinquished the vehicle and took to the metro to see how much we remembered of the museums and the mall.

Here I am again, in the city. I think I'm getting a handle on the whole urban commute again....

The parks, part 3

We did the Rockies in two parts. The first, driving the scenic byway through the park from one entrance to another as we made our way from UT. The second, through indulging in a short (but steep) hike to a lake.

It was dusk when we reached the southwestern entrance and we stopped alongside a series of parked cars and folks gawking at a meadow. They had spotted a sleeping moose. A camera wouldn't have done it justice, but it was beautiful to see a couple of ginormous antlers sticking out of the grass and the body heaving with sleeping breathing--it kind of reminded me of this movie scene (sans dino).

We didn't want to squander our light so we headed up the road, stopping to catch some grazing elk and then taking a quick (and cold) uphill journey to a viewpoint where we saw some marmosets hanging out.

You are being tracked

Some dudes

Marmoset

The road through the mountains

The best was the elk roadblock as we descended into the northeastern park entrance. Some of my favorite moments from the whole trip. I think it took a good 10 minutes to skirt out of there. Joe was driving at this point and he hung his head out the window to capture these fabulous shots--the next three are his favorite--just a buck chillin' across the road.

This one, however is my favorite.

We declined the elk burger in town that night (opting for buffalo instead) and enjoyed a proper beer.

The next morning we rose early and re-entered the park to hit a hiking trail. I love the national parks and I especially love that people from all over the world come to enjoy them, yet I never cease to be amazed at either (a) what is deemed a "hike" and/or (b) if a strenuous hike, what measures other folks have taken to be prepared. In this case we found ourselves amused by the cigarette and big gulp prep of a few folks at the trail head.

This was not a popular hike (at least from the direction we came from--likely due to the rapid and unforgiving elevation change in full sun), so we had the lake mostly to ourselves. Us and some dragonflies. oh yeah.

Then off we went for a long stretch of road, the end of which was filled with 'no vacancy.' So we covered a bit more ground and had severely diminished dinner choices.

The parks, part 2

This wasn't our longest day of driving, but it certainly had the most stops. This was also the day we finally steered into the rainstorm. The scenic route was lovely and we found ourselves wondering how certain places became demarcated as more beautiful than others...

Our endpoint for the evening was the entry point to Arches. Not for the last time on this trip would we find that hotel rooms were a hot commodity. I think we may have found the last place with vacancy as we rolled in that night.

After securing a room we had a look at the brewery in town. The alcohol laws in UT are about the most difficult to wrap your mind around of just about anywhere else in the US. We sampled some draft local brew to the tune of 3.2% I think (which wasn't a bad thing), but then were able to purchase bottles of different beer brewed by the same brewery and have them with dinner that were higher ABV. Funny stuff and unfortunately, nothing worth writing home about...

This was right after we almost drove into lightening. It was drizzly, but much like many afternoon storms, passed quickly. The rain served to change the color of the rock somewhat and we really enjoyed trying to take photos that made the bridges look closer to an illusion than a proper land form.

see if you can spot the natural bridge...

 

So, it was early the next morning that we set out into the park--hoping to avoid the worst of the crowds (insert laughter here). The arches are truly beautiful and I was excited that we could walk right up to them and climb around instead of having them roped off. It was a stunning environment, but we had to pick and choose where and how to spend our time, so after a glance at the more than full parking lot for the hike to the most famous arch, we opted for a viewpoint hike instead. We spent more time down in the 'windows' area, which I absolutely fell in love with.

After a few pictures Joe said I blended in with my summer tanned skin tone--this is my glamor shot...

Chameleon

see the speck? It's Joe.

We drove from here all the way through the Rocky Mtn park in one day--I can't say how glad I am that we arrived at the park entrance just before dusk. There was a ton of activity and even though it was overcast, we saw some absolutely beautiful rays as the sun was eclipsed by the mountains.

Blogs were too new (with the exception of the longstanding presence of Rooftop) for me to have one on our last cross country trip, but if I had, I would have posted pictures from our trip to Yellowstone and expressed the disappointment that we felt at hours and miles of biking the back country and not seeing much activity from the parks residents (I know, right, put on a show for the tourists...sigh... sorry).

It was quite another bit to go from 90 degrees and full sun type weather to 50 degrees or so in an alpine tundra environment.