Our Neck of the Woods

So, life update::: Matt and I are working for Avid4Adventure (an outdoor educational summer adventure day camp) in Boulder, Colorado.

and we are living in the National Forest outside of Boulder in our tent.

I've always dreamed of living in a tent for a season

and it's working out great
livin' the dream, trying to live a good story.


so, here are some of our sights so far:::

Elk grazing in an Aspen meadow

mother and cub looking both ways before crossing the road

crossing the road about 20 yards in front of us



big momma

From Brokenness to No Regrets

ok, this is a bit of a heavier topic, but it's life and sometimes we need to talk about the harder things (and i juxtapose it with a happier poem of life and love). I ran across this first poem on the movie Into the Wild, and in Anne Lammot's book, Bird by Bird.

This poem must be close to the hearts and minds of children from broken families. The thought process goes like this: i can't imagine how my parents were ever in love or how they got together, but I'm glad they did because otherwise i wouldn't be here.


I Go Back to May, 1936 (by Sharon Olds)

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

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Excerpt from Everything is Illuminated, (completely fascinating work of genius)

"The Book of Recurrent Dreams"
The dream of falling in love, marriage, death, love. This dream seems as if it lasts for hours, although it always takes place in the five minutes between my returning from the field and being woken for dinner. I dream of when I met my wife, fifty years ago, and it's exactly as it happened. I dream of our marriage, and I can even see my father's tear of pride. It's all there, just as it was. But then I dream of my own death, which I have heard is impossible to do, but you must believe me. I dream of my wife telling me on my deathbed that she loves me, and even though she thinks I can't hear her, I can, and she says she wouldn't have changed anything. It feels like a moment I've lived a thousand times before, as if everything is familiar, right up to the moment of my death, that it will happen again an infinite number of times, that we will meet, marry, have our children, succeed in the ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all exactly the same, always unable to change a thing. I am again at the bottom of an unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my eyes close for death, as they have and will a thousand times, I awake.


~~~ this is a more beautiful perspective of what it could be like to look back on marriage after decades of together-ness and this of course is what I desire

i have to mention this...

We had an RV for a week, it was only a week, but it sure was jam-packed with stress and anxiety, cleaning, re-upholstering and planning and dreaming, a little bit of excitement but mostly over-shadowed by the threat of a possible break down. Anyways, here are the photos of the RV we had for a week:

We were planning on living in the RV this summer, but we didn't have the time to get it ready engine-wise to drive to Colorado... so we had to pass it on.

our dear little Minnie Winnie, that was ours for a week

the dining area before reupholstering

After reupholstering and our first and last romantic dinner in the driveway of my mother's house. The marathon-sowing-weekend was a little frustrating for an amateur seamstress but a lot of fun at the same time

we could've been so happy in here

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oh, well, for now we're traveling in the Subaru back to Denver, we're in Durango today and there just happened to be a lovely street festival - I've only been here twice and each time we were greeted by a sunny eco-chic festival with locally brewed beers and good eats. oh, how i love your Durango ways. and we found lovely camping outside of Pagosa Springs.


downtown Durango


oh how i have missed the Rocky Mountains.
thanks for the American flag camping chairs, Aunt Beryl.

Central American Travels.

This part is hard for me to write.

because change is hard,
change is good and a sign of life,
but i am so easily adaptable and attachable
that i didn't want to leave Guatemala.
i mean in a lot of ways i knew our time was "up"
but it's never easy to turn that corner
stomach turning with the aching of things gone by
and the uncertainty of things ahead.
but we turned the corner,
we boarded a chicken bus and we left Guatemala.

sample chicken bus.

this sums up a lot of our travels, overheating and lying in front of the fan all over Central America.

a lady in San Salvador, El Salvador preparing for a days work, these short colorful aprons were common

horse and cart in Grenada, Nicaragua, the oldest Colonial town in Central America

no, not the ocean, this is Lake Nicaragua on the Island of Ometepe. we chose Playa Santo Domingo, there was a crazy thick layer of bugs constantly swarming until the evening breezes swept them away and then i understood. This island is made up of two large volcanoes and a connecting ithmus and incredible sand beaches and warm fresh water waves.

the highlight experience for me in our travels:: staying at "the monkey hut" on Lago Apoyo, a crater lake inside of a giant volcano (right outside of Grenada, Nicaragua), the water was impressively warm and calm. i just adore floating in an inner tube, which we got to do a lot of.


this is funny, i didn't even realize what i was standing in front of but Matt did, haha, my hands are on my hips because i was hot and tired and my chacos were falling apart and giving me blisters

this was our beach of choice and our only Costa Rican beach experience: Playa Samara on the Nicoya Penninsula

welcome to the jungle, kind of the closest i've ever been. after too much heat at the beach we headed for the highlands of Costa Rica::: Monteverde Nat'l Reserve, a

here we are hiking through the Nat'l Reserve with two great Swiss guys we met at our hostel. the bridge allowed us to look down over the top of the canopy of the cloud forest.

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i could upload a photo of the colorful furry tarantulas we saw if you wanted, but then i would be too frightened to check my own sight.

Family Time!

Matt's parents and my brother CAME TO VISIT!!

man, oh man, there is nothing like being with family in a foreign land! i'm telling you - i cannot get enough family time. all that stuff about in-laws being annoying or something does not apply to my life -- i absolutely love Mark and D.J. -- and i can't even begin to tell you the depth of my love for my brother, what an incredible guy! I didn't want our time with them to end. maybe heaven will be a lot like that - like an old family get together.

Here we are exploring some of the ruins of the Spanish-colonial city of Antigua. a must see on any trip to Central America. Antigua is full of luscious, verdant gardens hidden in lovely European stucco courtyards. Nothing is casual in Antigua - only absolutely extraordinarily old and beautiful.

Mark and DJ treated us to a super charming colonial-style hotel. matt and i just almost didn't want to leave our room it was that nice.

My brother actually traveled to Lake Atitlan in a chicken bus (pictured above) by himself with hardly any Spanish and it worked - we found him. he was the only gringo on every bus he took and everything seemed to go very smoothly. way to be efficient and user-friendly, Guatemala.

here we are at our fav restaurant in Panajachel on the Lake. everything is wonderfully whole grain, with great meat substitutes and everything is hecho a mano (made by hand). and don't even get me started on the tropical/botanical-garden ambience with celtic or classical music playing in the background. i absolutely love this place.

We also celebrated Matt's 26th birthday together which was SUPER SPECIAL!!

We also got to visit CASA DEL MUNDO, a hotel right across the lake, which if you're ever on Lake Atitlan I would now totally recommend. A completely whimsically tropical, paradisical setting.

hammock = pure bliss


with a labyrinth of beautiful, Italian-villa style dun decks.

and because the owner of the hotel is friends with the couple we are volunteering with, we got to kayak for free!

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THANK YOU, FAMILY (and those who weren't able to come) = you mean the world to us. your love, generosity and kindness for us and others inspires us to no end! If i could bottle of that time we had together i would - all those warm feelings of togetherness and belonging and freedom and awareness = completely priceless = i love you!