Dear Internal Crisis: Eat my dust.

Notice anything different?

Here's a clue

I've been feeling very dramatic lately, and decided I would allow The Blog to reflect my recent brooding.

I'm sure you're asking yourselves, what could a privileged, educated, and employed woman possibly brood about?

In short, I've been brooding about my life.  I believe the term is "quarter-life crisis," and I've diagnosed myself based on the following symptoms:

* Uncertain and wary of my own future,
* Feeling lost and unsure of what I want,
* Frustration that life has not turned out to be a bowl of cherries.

I also did some light perusing of the internet, and came across this article on the subject, and the last line certainly seems to ring true:

The researchers say that idealists who also want to achieve conventional success—marriage, children, corner office—seem to be the population most affected.

I would agree that I'm part of that popluation who'd like to leave the world a bit better and still enjoy being a part of human society, except replace "marriage, children, corner office" with "health insurance, acreage, and boyfriend willing to put up with me."

I don't suffer from dull routine, nor am I plagued by questions of career choice or what my passion is. I know all that already. I work as a naturalist and I write a blog about my time spent in nature, I'm pretty sure I've got my passion figured out.

But friends, there is a mighty big difference between knowing what you want to do, and being able to actually do it.

So what has happened to this idealist? A cold, hard, steel punch to the gut from reality.

Truth: I love my job. No joke. I live in one of the Most Beautiful Places I've Ever Seen, within walking distance of the upper Mississippi, surrounded by wooded bluffs that are noisy with the sounds of the wild. I wear a hat like Smokey the Bear and convince kids that basswood fibers would've been just as soft as the clothes they're wearing, and I have the tree cross-section (aka tree cookie) to prove it. I love the people I work with and I learn from them everyday. I love my family here, and wouldn't trade any of them for the world.

Truth: It will be nearly impossible to stay here.

That, dear friends, is a bitter pill to swallow, and I've spent the past week or so with it stuck in my throat. The first blow came with being told a simple observation: When I first worked at the monument, all those years ago, the number of employees hovered around 50. Today, it hovers around twenty. Realization of the significance of that number came like poison ivy, delayed and painful. There are no permanent Interp positions at the monument, save for the Chief's, and it is unlikely there ever will be. My season can be extended and stretched, the last hours rationed over a pay period or two, but by November or December, the sand will have run out and will stay empty until the hourglass is tipped over again next summer. And the story will be repeated into infinity. No health benefits, no yearly salary, and that means no bank in their right mind would back my venture into country-livin'.

There it is. The idealist thought she had worked it out, a meaningful career in a beautiful part of the world. But the "conventional success" proves elusive still. Yes, I would like to have my cake and eat it, too.

Preferably one that tastes as good as this one looks

Traditional QLCs arise from an internal source, a displeasure deep within one's mind and body. Mine arises from an external source, the reality of the economic times we live in. Nevertheless, we all converge into the same type of distress as we are faced with the same terrifying question:

What do I do?

That question is not one I've fully answered yet.  But here's what I've come up with so far:

Enjoy the hell out of it.

Of all the advice I've collected and gleaned from others, this seems to be the most common sentiment.  I've been told to "just ride it out," and to "be glad you're facing this now,"  and that I should "take the time to really reflect on what I want from life," because I wouldn't be feeling this way if there wasn't something missing.

Rather than sink into a depression going round and round with worries and fears, I've decided to find out exactly what the missing puzzle piece is, or at least what colors are on it or what shape it's in.  Because my "true passion" has been called into question, I'll be hitting the highways and byways near and far to re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about myself.  From career, to family, to lifestyle, to what I want out of the next ten years, and any miscellaneous insights I collect along the way.

First stop to be posted soon.  Until then, just hit this link.

A Woodland (Re)introduction

Well friends, last week I arrived in the Driftless after just under 11 hours in the car with the Kansas wind at my back.

Secret of surviving long-distance road-tripping: Always have the necessities close at hand, like your cell phone, chapstick, energy drink, beads from the previous weekends' Ke$ha-themed party, gas receipt to remind you that you're back in the real world, and tissues because you've been balling your eyes out for the past twenty miles.

I was a Drifter then, and I'm a Drifter still, and we all knew I would come back to these bluffs.  For the next six months, I'll be working at Effigy Mounds National Monument, and have once again have taken up residence in my cousin's basement. 

While I am glad to be back, and have for the most part fallen into old patterns and routines, I'm still in the transition period.  It's almost as though we all must reintroduce ourselves to one another.

You didn't think I was talking about people, did you?

The last of the spring wildflowers are blooming, like the Wild Geranium above, and I spent a long time up on the hillsides of the monument getting reaquainted with the oft-overlooked blooms:

Wild Geranium

Virginia Waterleaf

Red Columbine

Wild Blue Phlox or Wild Sweet William

May Apple

Blue-eyed grass, one of my favorites! Often mistaken for grass, it's a member
 of the Iris family.



 Rue Anemone peeking out from the shade

Perhaps I'm being misleading.  There are not fields of colorful blossoms waiting to greet visitors. When you walk along the trails, this is what you're really seeing:

A sea of green.  But those are May Apples in the lower right-hand corner, and there are clumps of
Blue-eyed grass along the trails that small dogs might be eye-level with.

Not all spring woodland wildflowers are dainty and pretty.  Others are straight-up weird.

Like the Jack-in-the-Pulpit, which seem to grow to a monstrous size at Effigy Mounds.

Weirdo #2: Pussytoes, with its dense white flowers.  This is going to seed on one side.

All of the wildflowers were growing along the trail up to Fire Point, the most popular lookout point in the monument.  It doesn't take a naturalist to figure out why people find it breathtaking.

Fire Point, May 10

Wildflowers and vistas aren't the only curiousities out and about.  The Eastern Tent Caterpillars have found their way to this area, and they can be found crawling on every surface, whether it be the ironwood railings, the building, or various people. 

The caterpillars have an interesting life cycle.  Everything starts out as a black and slimy egg mass, which then hatches into dozens of caterpillars who then communally spin a "tent" for themselves in the branches.  They will come out of their little abode to feed on yummy leaves, and then will return home to snuggle up with their brothers and sisters.  Yup, social caterpillars.  They can easily defoliate an entire tree, and maybe some of its neighbors, too, but the whole event occurs so early in the year that the trees usually grow new leaves by mid-summer.  The tent caterpillars then transform into ordinary brown moths, and since moths aren't known for staying the same place, they will flitter about on the wind and be carried to a new patch of forest to lay their eggs.  So the big increases in population, "invasions" if you will, are a naturally occurring phenomenon.

They're cool little things, but it is disconcerting to stand quiet in the forest and actually hear the sound of all of them munching and pooping.  It sounds like a gentle rain.  A gentle rain of digestion.

I also have big, important news!  Remember in this post I let loose the secret I had never actually seen a Cerulean Warbler, the bird I would go on and on about whenever the word "conservation" was brought up?

As of May 10, 2012, I can say this with full confidence: They do exist.  And they are just as awesome as I had imagined them.
Sorry, no photo was possible as the long-awaited viewing was through binoculars and the tiny bird liked to hope around the tree branches and hide behind leaves.

The Hard Goodbye

This Saturday morning, I'll leave once again for the Driftless, that distant place in northeastern Iowa and southwestern Wisconsin where tall bluffs covered in forests rise up from the upper Mississippi.  I'll be working the usual gigs: naturalist, interpretive park ranger, and data entry for some of the birding surveys.  As excited as I am, I know it means saying a hard goodbye.

 Especially to Tiger-Puppy and his owner.

From Kansas to Wisconsin to Missouri to Wisconsin to Missouri then back to Wisconsin and finally back to Kansas, over and over dozens of times, I once thought of myself as very good at saying goodbye.  I said it so often, so easily, always expecting to return.

My head knows that it's time to head down that dusty trail again, to get on with life, for real this time.  When I imagine all the things I'll be getting to do over the next six months, I start getting really amped.  The lay-at-night-awake-but-in-a-good way excited.  But then I'll be riding broomstick-horses with my oldest nephew around the yard, trying so hard to memorize every detail and burn it into my heart's memory, and the inevitable bloom of sad wistfulness will rise in my chest. 





It's not the leaving that I'm sad about.  It's the fact that time won't stop while I'm gone.  I know I will always come back to Kansas, but things will never be the same.  My nephews will grow up whether I want them to or not, my parents will take trips and buy a new car and keep remodeling the house, my sister's family will spend their first summer in their new house. Slowly, but surely, we will change.  I know that for the rest of my life, I will look back on the past six months and wish with all my heart that I could go back.  This, this right here, is what I will want to return to, because even with the struggles and the bad days and the waiting for better days, these are the good times.

When things start feeling too bittersweet, I start imagining what the day will be like when I come for a visit again.  I will marvel at how much my nephews have grown, I will tell my friends and family stories of the Driftless, I will cook again in the kitchen with my mother, and I will lazily stretch out on my sister's couch and listen to my sister's tales of being an elementary teacher. 

That will be a good day.