The fort doesn't need holding down, these NRA members can hold it just fine.

When Dorothea said those famous words in the 1939 movie that changed the world, I don't think she was talking as a college student both going to school and living in her hometown over the summer. Still, I've more than managed to entertain myself this summer despite the same-old same-old of Williamstown, the place I've lived for the past 21 years. I've gotten my hands into a very diverse collection of things this summer, from building bridges and hiking 10 miles a day while blazing trails and clearing nettles the size of my fingers; to seeing incredible musicians like Amos Lee, Earth Wind and Fire, James Taylor, M. Ward and Paul McCartney play live at shows and music festivals; to discovering new trail runs for the team to use in the fall and getting caught on exposed ridges in severe thunderstorms; all the way across the spectrum to developing my own fully functional weather website hosted from an old Apple computer and a new Oregon Scientific weatherstation located in my bedroom.
(Yes. You can now check the weather in Williamstown with just a click. I've embraced my nerdiness. I even have a webcam. All hail the king of the internet.)
Actually it's a little scary, since now all I have to do to become a Giant Dweeb is to move back in with my parents after college. Too real.

The completion of the Roaring Brook Bridge, a proud moment for an amateur carpenter.


This one time early in June I was on a run out on Stone Hill. I was feeling pretty good about myself, I probably had on some gaudy sleeveless tank top and felt like I was drawing plentiful stares from young campusgoing women, which probably gave me just enough confidence to make some questionable route decisions. I was almost all the way out to Scott Hill road when I decided it would be kind of fun to bushwhack east down the hill to get to rt. 43 quicker. So I blatantly ignored some "Posted" banners and some bright orange "Private Property" signs and made my way down through cornfields, thinly forested areas, and grassy clearings towards the road. It was in one such large innocent grassy clearing that I had an encounter with some locals. Let me explain. Halfway through the field I looked up from my blissful endorphin high to see an electric fence about a hundred-fifty yards off. Some cute sheep are grazing in the enclosure, and I look back down so as not to break my ankle in any holes. A couple seconds later I look up again to check on the sheep, and I think oh that's funny, I didn't notice any sheep outside the fence when I looked last. I looked back down again, but realized at that moment that maybe there hadn't been any sheep outside the pen when I first saw them. I looked back up and suddenly there are like 50 white woolly sheep bearing down on me at a pace I couldn't quite understand. In the heat of the moment I made probably one of the worst snap judgements in my lifetime, spotting a huge patch of thorn bushes and thinking to myself, "sheep don't like thorn bushes, right?" for reasons I can't even fathom, and jumping feet-first into the thickest part I could see. My adrenaline was high so I didn't really feel anything at first. A couple of dumbstruck seconds went by I looked back to see an entire flock of 50-or-so sheep just standing there looking at me in disbelief as if to say, "Well aren't you a dumbass." That was when the realization of how irrational I'd just been set in, and with that came the pain. I still have the scars to prove it.

It's been that kind of summer. Another weird bushwhacking experience happened today that actually reminded me a little of the stupid sheep encounter. I ran up the '98 trail to the AT and over to Pine Cobble, and I was going to come down the trail like a normal person, when inspiration struck me and I decided it would be awesome to run down a trail I'd hiked in a freshman year GEOS class looking at boulders that had been displaced by glaciers. Most of the way down was either animal path or bushwhacking, which was really fun. I got a little bit lost in thought, however, and when I thought I was going back towards the Pine Cobble Trail, I was actually headed nearly 90º east of where I wanted to go. I had an "uh-oh" realization when I encountered an ATV road, and I knew there were none of those on the Pine Cobble I knew. I knew exactly where I was when I hit a section of powerlines crossing from Williamstown into North Adams. I was probably two miles from my house, and I'd gone in a very wrong direction. I decided to continue downwards because I thought the road would be faster. A few minutes later I was standing in between two families' back yards who, given the equipment sitting there (two pickups per family, each equipped with loaded gun rack) and the stickers on their cars (Remington, NRA, and Guns America), I knew had the means to protect their property much more than I had the means to protect myself. I tried to make it into the woods between the two houses but encountered some type of...I don't even know what...there were lots of broken/mutilated life-sized baby dolls and other creepy shit along with knives, broken bottles, and shotgun shells. There I was, in the middle of Blackinton gun country, wearing a dorky looking fanny pack full of water, with no phone, imagining all the scenarios in which my trespassing ass would be shot at or turned into a life-sized baby doll, and I was just standing there. After a minute of standing and pondering the scene muttering "well this is creepy," I decided to just GTFO and make a break for the road. And I'm still in one piece. Beat that, Truckee.

I really look forward to when you guys come back in a couple weeks. I think this year is going to be incredibly exciting and I can't wait to watch it happen. Till then I'll be holding down the fort back here in Billsville. There's no place like home, right?