Good MOOrning all!
It's a chilly morning here in Hell's Gate Canyon! I'm all bundled up in long johns and down and rain gear and boots. The soil here is soft and almost clay-like from the rain, and riddled with fist- to melon-sized chipped rocks. The shrubby ground-cover smells a bit to me like a mix of grapefruit zest and sage, and the beige canyon slope below us is shadowed and outlined by tall, bushy spruce trees. The mountains farther out, shaded blue, are tipped a powdered-sugar dusting.
Yesterday was the first official day of Semester in the West after a few days of orientation at the Johnson Wilderness Center in Walla Walla, WA. After much packing and bundling and a mild overload of information, we hit the road yesterday and drove out here in our 3 suburbans and the trailer. Phil, the program director, suggested we can almost see Idaho to the East from this vantage point in Oregon. We arrived in camp a bit late and set up tents in the rain (in the 30s last night), which was all the more fun in a frigid sort of way as we giggled through the cold. This morning, we can see robin's-egg-blue skies lifting in from the West over the Wallowa Mtns, and are quietly hopeful for swimming-hole weather.
In a few minutes we'll all gather together for our first real discussion on "THE WEST." We've been gifted some beautiful readings on the history and environmental culture of the West and what it means to live in and love a place. I am daunted, but entirely and almost excessively excited to dig into our discussions and our texts. I feel like there is some great thundercloud of "Issues in the West" looming behind my shoulder, and I'm waiting for it to pour. I'm a little anxious to spend a semester in desert country; I don't think I've ever been in such an arid climate. But I hope to approach each landscape and each person we meet with humility and reverence. I hope to learn from the desert to listen.
SITW is a funny program in that it's similar to a study-abroad program, yet it's very close to home. Yesterday, on the drive, I was read from "A Sense of Place" by Wallace Stegner,
"Indifferent to, or contemptuous of, or afraid to commit ourselves to, our physical and social surroundings, always hopeful of something better, hooked on change, a lot of us have never stayed in one place long enough to learn it, or have learned it only to leave it."
I think one of the objectives of this semester is to introduce us to the beauty and complexities of the local world we live in, to discover awe and respect for the land and people of the American West. Or, I spose I hope that's what we're shooting for.
Anyways, my fingers are starting to protest my typing. I love you all very much, and hope to hear of your adventures this semester! I'll do my best to keep you posted as we go. Communication this semester will be mainly by email, some phone, and we have 3 mail pickups over the course of the semester (our first pick up is Sep 15, I'd happily send you the address). I hope the (real or metaphorical) sun is shining in your pockets of the world this morning!
With much joy and loads of love,
madelyn
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