Following Tough Acts

One inescapable fact I've learned from my thusfar two-year education at Williams: there's always someone here who will stand up before you and give a presentation that puts yours to shame. What I'm trying to say is, words cannot describe my jealousy of Casey and Phil this summer. They took the initiative to go do something incredible with their break and at all levels it looks to be turning out just as awesome as it sounded when I first heard about it. Provided, of course, that they don't come to fisticuffs over Phil's sometime inability to be clean or Casey's all-the-time inability to be wrong. I'll be taking over/under bets on the number of times spontaneous brotherly scuffles break out, starting at 6 per month. Takers?

Meanwhile, I'm doing new things in old familiar places. I'm here in The Village Beautiful working for WOC and Williamstown Rural Lands, doing trail maintenance and clearing, sign making, bridge building, weed-whacking, and wood-hauling for span bridges and bog bridges alike. The days my coworker Steph and I have hiked this week have included 8-9 hours of hiking with a half-hour break for lunch, carrying industrial-sized shears, lunch, overlayers, and five liters of water. We clear anything we find, which may include anything from small branches to 3-foot diameter behemoth trees that have been falling in numbers due to the unbelievable storms we've had this early summer. I may not be traveling the country, but I'll have some sweet new running loops lined up for the team in the fall.

For those that don't know, this is what Williamstown looks like in the summertime. You jelly, brah?

Reunion week was a blur. Somewhere in my 96 hours of work that week I saw Joel Bradley '06, veteran of the ski team, who was coming back for his first reunion. Joel sold me my first pair of rollerskis when he was a senior in college. I also attribute part of my coming to Williams to him, because we once had a chat about the transition from Holderness to Williams, as he is also an '02 Holderness alum. I've worked at reunion for three years now, and it seems that every year I see more and more people that I remember. It makes me feel really...old. I can't believe I'm a Junior. I'm still not ready to admit that I was a sophomore this year. Every time an '11 told me that it goes by too fast, I took a deep breath and said, "that's too real. I already have that problem." I realized fairly early on in the JA application process that one of the deep-seated reasons I decided to apply to be a JA was somewhat selfishly to hold onto my Williams experience as much as possible by making it possible for my frosh to have their own great experiences and helping them through the ups and downs of freshman year. (I can hear Maddy nodding as I type this statement)

Fellow juniors, now is the time when we start to do things out of our comfort zone. We've found our comfort zone at Williams and we're slowly starting to break out of it. You guys are living in new places and surviving (??) on your own this summer, and I'm doing something I otherwise wouldn't (trail work) and taking on a responsibility with a 99% chance of making me cry and a 100% chance of making me smile during 2011-2012 (being a JA of Mills 2!!). Now, junior year, is our time to give presentations that will make others' jaws drop. Get out there and enjoy Truckee.

Meanwhile Kalle, Hannah, Patty and I are looking forward to an eventful summer of training here on the 'ol campus. And maybe my dreams of leaving for an epic summer adventure will be fulfilled next year. Until then though, I have so much to look forward to it makes my head spin. Here's to this summer. Kinda like tax returns, whatever you put in now will come back to you during late winter 2012. I'll be around here till August, getting an unhealthy amount of farmers tan and trying to dodge the disasters of Lyme Disease. Look forward to more blog posts.

Postscript challenge: find the breathing creature in this photo.