Morning Light

Apparently I have this morning off as well. Its well after sunup and I'm finally just getting warm. The moonrise last night and the sunrise this morning lit the horizon on fire. I caught the tail end of the show this morning from my shelter, while trying to convince myself to get up.

I'm sitting maybe 200 yards from the kitchen, down an outcropping behind some junipers, just sort of gazing out over the desert below. The bass line of a couple of far off jets is throbbing in time, and I keep imagining I hear church bells, in this my wild cathedral. The sky is so big in so many directions, it's hard not to be a bit overwhelmed. I find myself wanting to touch everything around me, to drink in and taste the desert.

Today we transition Cassie to the West. We are headed down into Squaw to Little Easy tonight. Then comes the dreaded accountability group, where all are given amnesty and a chance to confess to their sins in front of everyone. There has been a lot of conflict brewing and a lot of strange happenings, a lot of which I imagine, or at least I hope will come out tonight.

I want to be able to process these first few days in the field so badly. In some ways I think maybe it just hasn't affected me as profoundly as I was expecting. Yet. Or maybe I just haven't found the words, yet. I've felt comfortable and familiar with all the hard skills and campcraft. But at the same time all the more frusterated, because I know hard skills can be so much on the surface, albeit thinly veiled. I would like to get into things deeper here, but I don't quite know how yet. I'm concentrating on building rapport with the students, which is pyschobabble for getting to know them and hopefully gaining their trust. I feel like I'm pretty good at making relatively quick and strong connections but I want so bad to go further. It has been a bit awkward, really having no idea what my role is, or what expectations exist for me. In the future I hope to be able to be more up front with myself and with the staff team I'm in about asking and taking on responsibility. Its almost a strange limbo, being new here. Its being real live staff, but not really because for the most part I'm only observing and being another set of eyes, and chiming in when I feel like I can. I can imagine being more than this, which is new. A lot of times, particularly the more difficult moments I have the same instincts and want to say the same things as the senior staff end up saying. Its affirming to know that my responses are pretty on target, though I'm not confident enough yet to throw them in.