Yep, I moved to Boulder

I finally did what my high school self promised to every relative or random person who asked what I was planning for college: I moved to Boulder, CO.

Why now? Why go to college in Tennessee for three years and then blow it all my senior year by transferring schools and losing so many credits? It was a pretty bad choice if you base it solely off the desire to graduate in a reasonable time. But that's not the only influential factor.

I always wanted to be an Environmental Scientist or a Park Ranger. I had zero interest in being a Civil Engineer, which is where UT stuck me with the promise that I would complete the "Environmental Track" and I would be so incredibly happy and make lots of friends to play frisbee with on campus.

 Nobody really understands anything about college when they're a senior in high school. I didn't either. It was easy to go to UT with their promise that they totally had an Environmental Engineering option for undergrad. My parents kept encouraging me to actually look into the programs and the classes and see what I would be taking, but I was a senior in high school; I had better things to do, like hang out at the gym every day and not climb outside ever.

It turns out that once you get to college freshmen year, you still don't understand college at all. So I plodded along in gen eds for two semesters, then some gen ed engineering classes, then some civil classes. And I suddenly realized that I really really really hated civil engineering. Standing on a steep hill in the snow for an hour and a half during my geomatics surveying lab is what prompted my raging desire to get out of civil engineering school. I met with advisors and anyone at UT who would listen and everyone told me what my high school self could have figured out if I'd only tried: UT only has a graduate program for Environmental Engineering. I HAD to get a Civil Engineering degree first, and I would not do that.

So I applied to the school of Environmental Engineering at the university of my sixteen year old dreams in December of 2013. And they lost my application. So I sent it again in April. Then they accepted me in June, for June of that year. How wonderful. After I signed a year lease in Knoxville starting August 2014, and a three month lease in Boone for the summer. So I deferred admission for a year and lived in my various promised apartments. I spent that time in Knoxville getting super psyched on Soil Science, only to discover after spending two semesters studying soil that Boulder does not have a Soil Science program and that I should go to CSU if I wanted to be an Environmental Engineer Soil Scientist. No. Not transferring again.

Now I'm in Boulder, taking classes at the school of my dreams, explaining to people why a 21 year-old, fourth-year engineering student is in freshmen machine shop and repeating physics 1.

Graduation estimate: December 2017

But the Flatirons are beautiful from my bed :)
Also I can drink beer at all the amazing Colorado Breweries around me. I had this crazy earl grey infused wheat beer a few nights ago from FATE brewing that was so good.

Joes is only 7 hours away, rather than across the country

Day Day lookin Fresh

June in RMNP

Andrew Puffin dat Stone

Look really awkward and not psyched about hiking down

People in Boulder say they love being outside, but they really just enjoy squishing caterpillars in front of kids 

Early season Lower Chaos

First day back in it

I wrote this post March 16th and never published it. I don't remember why I chose not to, but I like it.

~~~

Today was such a good day.  So much love to Andrew, Carson, Jeph, Trey, and Ryan for sharing this beautiful day with me at Blowing Rock.  Climbing for the first time since surgery in September was really exciting and scary, I'm so lucky to have such caring friends beside me.  The long recovery process was totally worth every ache and pain to get to play on the 5.10 wall in the sun.

Six months ago, I had major shoulder surgery.  When the doctor told me that a six month recovery is a hopeful timeline, I had no idea how to handle everything.  The entire bouldering season was gone.  Snatched from under my nose.  I had so many Southeast projects to do before moving to Colorado this summer, and I had to train to climb out west.  I had to just give all that up and accept what I couldn't change.  I was really upset about missing out on the southeastern winter when Andrew pointed out that March isn't super warm in Boone.  After realizing that I might be able to catch the last of the cold weather, I entered my recovery process with a vengeance.  I focused on healthy eating, hydrating, and obsessively did my physical therapy workouts.  And it all paid off.  Today was an amazing end to my recovery and a beginning to so much more work.

Looking back on how afraid I was, it's amazing how far I've come and how much I've accomplished.  It doesn't seem like much to someone else, but I'm so psyched to be climbing on jugs again.  I'm about as strong a climber as I was four years ago, but I don't care at all.  All I need is dry weather, friends, and the amazing Boone rock.

Good friends <3

Blowing Rock sunset

Psyched to be back in the receiving weird stares game!

Yesterday morning my physical therapist cleared me to do hangboard workouts!!! (no more than twice a week and with weight taken off)

So that's exciting.  Really exciting.  I was so nervous I wanted to throw up on the way to the gym.  I lingered before going to the gym in hopes that someone would want to go with me so they could help me figure out my system for taking weight off, but no one was free, so I set off alone.

I kept my hand over my heart to keep it in my chest as I walked into the gym,

and I couldn't control my breathing well enough to be normal.

I ended up just looking really sick, and I felt so lightheaded and dizzy.

I could barely drive to the gym because my head was so full of fuzzy things rolling around,

and when I finally got there I had to sit in the car to collect myself and not throw up.

I could barely see as I walked to the desk to fill out a waiver for 2015.  My eyes were so unfocused.

I was like Cindy waiting for dinner

I couldn't even plan my hangboard session out before I went because every time 

I thought about dipping my hands in chalk, blowing, and touching holds

I wanted to puke from excitement and nervousness. 

There was a river running through my brain that rushed

too quickly to follow

and thinking about anything made me dizzier.

I hyperventilated for a while unpacking my bag 

really slowly, hand still over my heart.

I couldn't bring myself to do anything except fumble with my carabiners and cord, tying unsuccessful eight knots.

Everything felt so surreal and didn't make any sense to my rushing head, and my eyes still didn't see.

Nothing seemed real as I clumsily unrolled my chalk pot,

dropped it, and picked it up again.

The moment of clarity finally came 

as I blew chalk off my hands and looked up

My first hangboard session was kinda terrible and made me remember that being high maintenance sucks.  Rigging up a pulley system in a crowded gym is a bad decision, and I will definitely be doing it again on Monday.  I didn't do a real workout because I was freaking out so much beforehand and was still kinda dizzy.  I just warmed up and held holds and tried not to cry from happiness.  I did repeaters on slopers and one arm lockoffs on my good arm.  And I told random people over and over again that this was a system to take weight off me because my physical therapist told me to, and no I don't need help; yes, please leave me alone.  

I was there for a total of an hour maybe, and around 30 minutes of that was spent setting up or talking to curious people.  But I wasn't sore the next day and my shoulder felt fine!  I'm so excited to begin the process of getting back into climbing.  I've worked to heal my shoulder for the past four months and I can hardly believe that it's time to start transitioning into climbing again.  This went by a lot faster than I thought it would before surgery.  I know that I'm far from finished with this and I'm just now getting into the really hard part, but I'm ready.  I'm so ready to listen to my body and work hard to keep my healing in balance to make a full recovery.  I'm not going to let being too psyched get in the way of becoming totally healed.  I'm enjoying right now, and the experience of starting fresh.

"{ }"

Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed.

- Marcus Aurelius

Trippy Short Story Time

My last blog post was lacking.  Andrew said that it was really good until it suddenly ended, which is how I felt writing it.  I'm a terrible writer almost all the time; sometimes a beautiful moment strikes and I write something that I like, and that happened in the woody when I started writing that last post.  But the bubble burst before I was finished articulating my thoughts, and instead of try really hard to get that mood back I gave up and posted half a post.  I also LOVE compound-complex sentences ~ which may be why I love reading The Hobbit!

I figured why not share something embarrassing from high school?  My last post sucked, so maybe nobody will read this.  Or maybe this will draw whoever reads my blog back in…

I wrote this confusing, half-formed story full of lyrics in a creative writing class the last semester of my senior year of high school, and I have no idea what it's about, maybe you know:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Conor Made me Write This

“Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere

Underneath my being is a road that disappeared

Late at night I hear the trees, they’re singing with the dead, overhead…”

The trees spun past him in a never-ending conga line as the leaves pulled Dave into the underbrush with them.  All the colors of autumn danced around his foggy head, and the dirt found his calloused hands before his sight disappeared completely. 

           

When he opened his eyes he was alone.  No more sighing moss or sleeping logs.  He was drowning in powder.  The desert was melting out from the heat of his heart, and the emptiness of the arctic was collapsing his lungs.  He’d never been in a place so white; the cleanliness of nature was awe-inspiring.  He didn’t belong in the pristine wonderland he’d somehow woken up in.  Dave watched the ocean rise and fall three feet below his cheek in time with the rushing sound of waves somewhere to his left. 

He peeled his cheek off the pack ice and tried to stand up.  Stars popped in front of his eyes and his knees cracked.  When his feet were finally under him, Dave started walking. 

He walked for miles and for years.  His footprints in the snow disappeared as soon as he lifted his other foot.  He watched polar bears drown and baby seals get eaten.  He watched arctic foxes steal across the permafrost and birds flap and squawk in vein twenty yards away as their nests were raided and their eggs dropped. 

He watched the "sunrise and the sunset; there is no way to escape".  He watched the circle of time and space and light and air swirl around him as he walked.  He lost his mind in the darkness of winter searching for the golden band of horizon that should have been to the east.  Whenever he closed his eyes green wisps of smoke burned his eyelids open again and he kept walking.  He forgot he was alive.

“Fare thee well, fare thee well, I love you more than words can tell,

Listen to the river sing sweet songs, to rock my soul.”

The vines brushed his arms and cheeks as he kept walking.  Each pond in the Amazon has more species of fish in its crystal depths than the entire Pacific Ocean.  Dave wandered through the maze of one tree’s roots forever.  The world was upside down.  The sky was full of life and the ground was lonely.  Dave’s eyes glinted off bright frogs and dark cats; he touched mushrooms that looked like clouds.  Monkeys swung above him and crocodiles followed him along the second longest river in the world.  Dave breathed in scents no one had ever smelled before; he stumbled across the cure for cancer, but passed it by.  It rained in circles from the trees themselves, and leaves tickled his head. 

Every second, earthmovers and loggers slashed one and a half acres closer to Dave, stealing the nutrients of an entire world and leaving the ground barren, scared, and lifeless.

Dave’s eyelashes were still sticky when he woke up.  His hands were outstretched, digging into the earth.  When he stood up leaves fell out of his hair.  He looked at me in amazement and said, “Have you ever felt the world around you?"

My breath caught in my throat and my hands tingled.  I wanted to open my eyes but they were already open.  I didn’t want anything anymore; everything was here, and nothing was here.  I could feel the river of sound pouring over my ears and into my soul, filling my feet with heavy perfection.  My hair was blowing over my cheeks and around my shoulders as though birds were carrying me away.  The grass kept me with the earth as my mind and body flew away with the notes.

                        "Did she make you cry

                        make you break down

                        shatter your illusions of love

                        is it over now- do you know how

                        to pick up the pieces and go home"

Deep thoughts inspired by Andrew's woody session music choice

Kyle Rhoads photo, Jeph Verner crushing

What sticks out in my mind as the most beautiful thing I've ever done is Sherman Photo Roof.  That one move out to the ear, after matching through those starting crimp moves, dropping down into the secret undercling, and moving my feet out onto Nose Candy.  That move is so beautiful.  Everything has to be tight and perfect.  It's still in my head from last January as the rest of the day, the end beta, where I put my feet to start, how to send felt, has all faded.  That one move is what haunts my daydreams and is somehow etched into my eyelids, so so beautiful.

Kyle Rhoads photo

Thanksgiving

As I approach week …11(?) post surgery, I'm freaking out because I'm not nearly as healed as I thought I would be.  And I'm not nearly as wise as I assumed I would become from all the time spent being injured, cooped up, and miserable.  Every time I open my computer I look at 8a and am so proud of my friends for crushing as hard as they do every day, but sad to not be able to trudge through rhodos carrying a pad full of snacks and yell them up boulders.  I'm getting used to not climbing, but I'm not getting used to how much I miss my Boone family, some of which don't even live in Boone right now.  I love seeing everyone on the weekends I drive up, but it's not enough.  I miss living in the most amazing town over the summer.  Maybe it had something to do with having no job and no school and spending my days training and laughing with everyone about how greazy it was out at Grandmother.  And the surprise visits from Meria and Drexel or Juliet were always so fun!  I can't wait to see everyone in December at Rocktown, where it all began (I <3 Trey Worley).

The physical therapy milestones I'm supposed to have met for week 12 (two weeks from now, aka right after the end of final exams):
~full active range of motion
~full rotator cuff strength

What I have accomplished:
~nothing.

I had planned to do so well that I'd beat all the milestones and miraculously heal in time to train and climb v10 over Christmas (lolz).  How time gets away from you when you keep telling yourself that you'll start tomorrow…

On the bright side, I got to visit my Cecil family over thanksgiving!  I'm so thankful for my wonderful family, everyone cares so much about each other and it's just so great to be around them, even for a short time.  I love them all so much, family family and friend family.