How the rain falls and the stars shine

After the rain falls it smells of dirt and dust in the valleys of Nevada, of stone and of dead wood on the mountains.
In Germany, where I first noticed the different sents places can have, the air smelled sweetly of flowers nectar.
In Michigan, my home, though I love it so, has only smelled like dead and drowning worms to me in all but the most remote places that smell of dirt, pine, and a cool lake breeze.
I miss these places and their sents. Funny how much our memories can be triggered by them.

The stars shined brightest in Nevada, where when staying in Great Basin for three months and blessed with insomnia I could study them and their cycle with the moon. The full moon outshines the stars and illuminates the night. Creating a new monochromatic night of contrasting grey, black and white, a flashlight is not needed for nighttime exploration with the bats. As the moon wanes again, the stars come out to shine like nothing else to the new moon. They light up the sky that's finally theirs but leave the world in darkness. Reds and blues seen in the silver dance of the Milky Way stay only until the moon takes over again.

 ~~a tired wistful rambling of the mountains I now miss

Time for a New Job

     I loved working with animals at the wildlife clinic so much that I have decided to go into Zoology.
Wait a sec, the postman just got here with delivery from my community college, maybe it's that environmental associates I worked my butt off for? NOPE! It's a certificate in liberal arts that I didn't even ask for. I am getting tired of waiting for that decree. This was disappointing. Oh Well.
     Anyway, at the clinic, I loved doing intakes and figuring out the puzzle of what's wrong with this animal and doing the math to administer the proper amount of medication. So much so that I will endure more chemistry and biology classes in order to be able to work more with animals.

-Huh, apparently the certificate is also a Michigan Transfer Agreement thing...okay so I guess I did ask for that.-

      SO, I had been looking for a new job in my new world of animals. I'd been applying for veterinary assistant and kennel attendant jobs. I did find a wonderful job at an amazing animal shelter in the area that does everything they can to make sure the animals know they're loved until they find a new home. I get a daily pack of dogs that I am required to do certain activities with such as take them for walks, play with them outside and read to them in their kennels. They will know the tales of Harry Potter. I couldn't love the job and the people I work with more, even if things get a little crazy and I feel stressed, I can just sit in the kitten room or the fat cat room and get covered in floofs and relax.
      Classes have also started up again recently and I've been on kind of a Harry Potter kick lately and have been comparing my professors to those from the books based on teaching style. I have Binns for Pre-Calc, Lupin for German, and Russian McGonagall for my Biology class. Lots of homework out of classes is a little stressful but I am super excited to be looking into going to Northern Michigan University for Zoology, I have a tour scheduled in October. Even more exciting though, I found out that everything from my community college transfers (unlike The almighty University of Michigan cough cough). So I'm spending the next year taking more basic classes to get those out of the way. Whee.

UP Trip!

    Towards the end of July, I took a trip to the upper peninsula of Michigan to visit my friend Sidney who goes to Michigan Tech. The car ride drove me a bit crazy, I think I got a bit of cabin fever and I ran out of Audiobooks on the way back down. Also, I have Sprint lack-of-cell-service so I pretty much had no GPS, but that's okay because it's one of the signs that an adventure is about to start.
    On the way up I stopped at Canyon falls in the UP and it was really cool. I love rivers and waterfalls, I don't know, maybe it's a Michigan thing because we have a shit ton of them here.
     I got to Houghton and completely had no clue where her apartment was, I had no cell service, but what do ya know I pulled into the parking lot of the library. When in doubt, find the library as you can always steal the WiFi to message people with. This principle has never lead me astray.
     The next day we drove around the Keweenaw Peninsula (Island cough cough), and we also visited the Jam Pot to buy some jelly from some very cheerful monks. They lived in a monastery up the hill and they made a peaceful living by making and selling every kind of jelly, jam, marmalade, and fruit butter you could think of. They were even wearing dark mid evil robes.
     I was however saddened to learn a couple weeks later that there were some family friends having a camp out about two miles from the monks who were alumni of Michigan Tech had a huge pyrotechnics camp out. The main event was creating a giant volcano out of the earth, building a little village on the side and filling it with thermite. These are the guys I'm told who is responsible for several M-Tech school rules such as "no launching rockets off of the school roof." They also used to have a large bonfire with magnesium infused logs on the shore of Lake Superior. A cop came by and told them that they had to put it out and so they grabbed a log, threw it into the lake, and it kept burning. They said Sidney and I should join them next year.
     We had pasties for lunch and spent the weekend climbing on rocks on the lake shore, walking along beaches, playing on sandy playgrounds, and getting bitten up by bugs. Sidney also gave me a cool tour of the campus and I was astounded that they had 3-D printers in the library just for anyone to use! The tour gave me an idea though as I found out that two hours south was Northern Michigan University, one of the three colleges in Michigan that offer Zoology as a concentration for a biology major. On my trip back down, I stopped to poke around the campus in Marquette and really liked it. I stopped by the biology department and got flyers on the classes I need to take before heading back down.
       After the stress of two internships, (granted I quit the river survey one after June), It was a wonderful weekend of exploring with a friend I haven't seen in a while. I left feeling full of love and excitement for the potentials of the future.

Intakes

     People can be crazy sometimes. Honestly, I don't think it really matters what profession you're in; if you deal with people, you deal with crazy. Often growing up we hear the phrase, "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say it." At the clinic this phrase can be adapted to, "If you are shocked into silence by what the hell someone just said, remaining silent with a pained smile is still okay." Most importantly because you must remember that everyone comes into the clinic with good intentions. For example, there was one woman who, bringing in a baby opossum, told me that last night to feed it before bringing it to us she fed it human breast milk. Then she showed me a video of the opossum lapping it from a syringe. I smiled weakly and had her fill out the intake form. Later when the assistant came in and looked at the paperwork she asked me, "I'm sorry does this for say she fed it human breast milk?" I stared at her with all seriousness, replying yes and she walked away muttering under her breath.

     Another notable intake was a juvenile opossum from a very elderly couple who had found it orphaned and had raised it like a pet. The man came in with it on his arm and told us the story of how his wife and he had become attached to the now very tame and friendly opossum. They felt bad taking him for the wild and were debating turning her in when 'a sign from the universe came.' This sign happened when the three of them (man, wife, opossum) were chilling on their porch and the opossum bolted across, caught a frog, ripped off its head and ate it. Fun fact: opossums are omnivores with thumbs just like us. They can also swim. We then told them that the opossum would be fine with us and if she was too friendly to release back into the wild that she would join our educational program opossums in the zoo. The man then wanted to go take his pet opossum on his arm on a tour of the zoo and we told him that would be a bad idea.

      

      Apparently, over the phone, a lot of people make huge species identification mistakes. For example, one person called in saying they found a bald eagle chick when it was really a tuxedo colored pidgin. A few times a year we get people calling saying they found injured golden eagles when in fact they have been either a red-tailed hawk or a chicken. So when I was there for the next golden eagle call, my supervisor rolled his eyes and said, "Just make sure it's not a duck."

      Overall, Most people come in caring very deeply for these animals that they have found and leave it in our care. I don't mean to seem condescending in this post, usually, it really is a great pick me up to know just how much some people are concerned for something so small.

Nevada- Salt Lake City

Flashback Friday!

(Again, I am aware that Salt Lake City is in Utah, not Nevada, "Nevada" is just the term I use to label all my adventures while I was living out of my car out west, and I was primarily in Nevada)

      I want to say that this was some time around the beginning of August, I want to say it was my first six-day break I got after our first week of the Johnson Lake Cabins Job. I went out there and met up with Dylan and one of her crewmates that she was taking to the airport there. (side note: There were two others from my crew at Salt Lake City at the time too, we met up with them twice, but they were kinda jerks so we didn't bother the rest of the time.)We found some BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land to stay on, a peninsula in the Great Salt Lake, one over from Antelope Island, where we did not stay as we were poor. (Pro tip: If you need a free campsite out west get on freecampsites.net and look for anything that's owned by BLM. Those are government-owned public lands and are completely free and legal to stay on. just don't start a fire or some other stupid shit.) We slept on a very comfy sand dune, and the sky was so clear and full of stars that we could easily see several shooting stars and watch satellites make their way across the sky each night we spent there.

      After Dylan dropped off her crewmate at the airport, we spent the weekend exploring the city and eating at Dell Taco and Dunkin Doughnuts. Because we for once were in civilization. If you fellow easterners are wondering what a Dell Taco is, it is the glory that would be if Taco Bell actually tried. They are a fast food taco place that's actually good, had fresh guacamole and salsa, with actual beans and meat that isn't the mystery ground up grease that Taco Bell has.

      Dylan and I quickly became friends over the weekend that started with a $5 concert by I don't remember, at the something-or-other-park. The music was OK, not really my type, but it was nice to just relax in the soft grass. By another very nice park that looked like it was between the state legislative and judiciary buildings there was this huge fancy fountain. The picture to the right refers too this when it says "No bathing in fountain allowed." How was this such a problem outside two massive state government buildings that they had to put it on the sign? People are weird.

Look how happy this guy is!

       We also had great fun exploring the Universities massive natural history museum, all with real fossils dug up right there in Utah. I really just mostly remember the fossils from it cause that's always one of the really cool parts of a history museum that everybody loves. Another exhibit that I really enjoyed was on the top floor was a circular room with pictures, artifacts and at least a hundred stories of Native Americans that had been local to the southwest. There was also a video with stories of current Native American culture. The view from the roof of the museum was also amazing. The university was on a high hill on the outside edge of Salt Lake City, from there you could see the whole city. OH, and there was a temporary exhibit set up that was all about shared DNA and genetics, that was also really cool, and the lobby ad banner for it was all like, "Did you know you're 40% banana?"

"Eeeeyyy"

       We also visited the Universities botanical Gardens that day, they were absolutely lovely and we almost walked in on a wedding going on in the rose garden. There was a nice kid's garden too that Dylan and I had fun playing in, and trails that went up into the mountains from the gardens. We didn't follow those very far as I did not trust myself to be able to go on a successful hike there with no shade, limited water, and in 95ish degree heat. We ate our Dell Taco lunch in a pretty patio area there and I don't know how I only have one picture from the whole garden. It's not even that great a photo, so I'm just gonna throw in a dinosaur here from the Natural History Museum.

      In the evenings we retreated to the BLM land peninsula and reassured each other that no, neither of us are in fact crazy, she missed trees too, and she also had to deal with some frustrating crew mates. Dylan was from Chicago originally, and we bonded over how different everything was out west compared to the ideas and lifestyles we were used too. (i.e. the only two radio stations available on the road between Great Basin and Ely was a conservative talk radio with and insane host and religious country music. I can't stand country music.) We also had similar views on watching the world, and that how animals interact with you has meaning.

      One morning I woke up on the dune and saw some odd dark clouds low over the salt lake from the direction of Antelope Island. Bridget and I thought, "huh, that's some weird fog." It wasn't until we saw the news story at the Dunkin doughnuts that we stopped at for breakfast that we were informed Antelope Island had a forest fire that had been going on for ten hours. The previous night we had debated going there to camp, as it might be nicer and more interesting, but had decided against it as we were cheap college students and it would have cost money. It was a little freaky knowing that the fire would have started only an hour after we would have fallen asleep. 

       That day we visited the Leonardo Museum, so called after Leonardo Da Vinci. They had various sections of the museum dedicated to art, illusion, science, and humanitarianism. They had a conservation of water section,and a kids area that had a programming video game that Dylan tried out. I believe her reaction was along the lines of "Why is this so hard, I can't figure it out, this is meant for kids?" They were also working on building an aeronautics portion of the museum at the time. there were also these floaty feathery things hanging all up the staircases, and we finally found the display, explaining it we found that they were artificially created single cell organism robots that were able to process and lightly respond to changes in their environment. I have no clue how it worked.

      I left Salt Lake City having made an invaluable friend. I have no idea how I would have gotten through the summer without having her to tell me that I'm not crazy. For that trip on, I visited her in Ely as often as I could, both of us needing the newfound friendship to help us rant and regain sanity over tacos.

"Floaty feathery things hanging form the ceiling"

Sing It All Away

      Last Thursday I attended the most fun and amazing concert I have ever been to, the main feature being Walk Off The Earth. They are one of my all-time favorite bands, they do covers as well as amazing original songs. The first one that I heard was 'Gang of Rhythm,' from their YouTube music video that I've posted to the right. All of their music just makes me want to get up, sing and dance to the good vibes- and that's exactly what everyone at the concert was done.

     I went with my friend Dylan (whom I met in Nevada at that redneck bathtub boat racing festival at cave lake state park), who was less familiar with the band and was blown away by their use of forks in a coffee mug as an instrument. It sounds crazy, but it works. And it's brilliant. She also greatly enjoyed the massive amount of ukuleles on stage, there must have been at least seven- those things were flying everywhere. There was also a stone bunny with an eyepatch and at least 10 kazoos distributed around the stage. They didn't use the stone bunny as an instrument, it was just decor on stage. I feel the need to point this out mostly because with this band you never know.
      All of the members were obviously having a great time. Sarah, the female singer of the group looked at least seven months pregnant and was giving full energy, jumping on and off of platforms, and having a blast with the rest of them. It was pretty badass, and I bet that baby is gonna be born ready to rock out.
       Beard Guy, the always expressionless, stoic guy in the band was still as entertaining as in the music videos, staring you down while playing some fun instrument. In another of my favorite videos, he breaks plates on the beat and that works too. I thought the best instrument he had on tap at the concert was this giant, absolutely brilliant didgeridoo. At one point, beard guy came on stage, face inscrutable as ever, and raised his arms and lowered them with the volume of the crowd. When he got us silent a few girls from the back of the concert hall screamed, "we love you beard guy!" at this, his neutral facade faded for a brief quirk of a laugh at the corner of his mouth. If you saw more music videos you'd understand more why this was amusing. or maybe I'm just to easily amused. That could be it too.
        Overall it was an amazing concert, with wonderful feel-good energy. I am so glad about how busy my life has been that I was able to go and enjoy myself, singing and dancing to music that has been such a big part of relaxing me and improving my mood everywhere I go. These are the songs that you roll down your windows to in the summer, singing along at the top of your voice and forgetting all your worries.

Germany - Kletterwald

Flashback Friday!

      Kletterwald translates to 'Climbing Forest', and it is exactly, or maybe more than it sounds like. Essentially you are 20-30ft up in the air, (sometimes more) and there are platforms on each tree. Between the platforms are a variety of obstacles that you traverse while on a zip line. The obstacles can be anything from zip lines, Tarzan swings, tight ropes, rolling logs, vaulting a gap to riding in a bucket, bridging a gap with a  trapeze swing, climbing over suspended picnic tables and walls.

       It is a hell of a lot of fun if you find a place with easy to use equipment, and that isn't expensive. The courses in Germany had us on a zip line above our heads the whole time so we didn't have far to fall, others that I've been on have the two clip system that you have to clip into and out of each course on the line and it's just a pain in the butt. Yet another instance of Germany being better at something than America: first of all, in Germany, it's about 11 Euros for three hours of tomfoolery at these places, in America, it's about $80 for three hours because of insurance and some stuff like that. Also, American treetop courses I've been on seem to be a lot more focused on strength level whereas in Germany, while the obstacles do require strength, also have a focus on coordination and problem-solving. I liked this much better for the same reason I enjoy Assassin's Creed, you don't always have to be strong if you're smart about what you're given. Sometimes the right leverage or strategy
is all you need.

    I went to this climbing forest on both trips, though I only have pictures from when I was 16, as that's when Emma's mom had to drive us there so we had her to take pictures.
     I did briefly get stuck on the pole vaulting obstacle as I underestimated how much force I needed to get across. I wound up stuck hovering in the middle for a bit.
    It was one of those thrilling activities that you never knew how much it took out of you until you felt the exhaustion wash over you afterward, and the feel-good, I-accomplished-something-soreness the next day.