Dear Blog,

It's been a while, and I'm sorry. The truth is, the Research Adventure that originally inspired your inception has drawn to a close, and it's been difficult finding time to write lately. That doesn't mean, however, that I have been lacking for things to relate. Quite to the contrary, my friend.

Over the course of the past few weeks I've reconnected with old friends, white water kayaked, and rode my bicycle 80 miles to the coast on a whim. I was humbled in a sweat lodge where my whole body cried and sat for over 24 hours in a two person tent with five people during a deluge. My mom taught me the secret to pie crust, the Pacific screamed and sung all at once directly into my ear, and I galloped a little horse like lightning across the central Oregon desert. I had a bizarre moment of communion with a salt-water shrimp in my step-mom's aquarium.

Yes, I could have easily doubled your content, but my experiences of late seem to repel language like a slick mallard back. My mentality was uncharacteristically visceral, and I cruised through Oregon with a happiness that flowed too fast for second guessing.

But then the other night I was sitting a steep roof with some friends and all of the Questions came pounding down like Midwestern hail. The contrast dial spun upward once more and I grabbed the rough shingles beneath me for fear of falling into the sky.

Is the secret to happiness just passing through a philosophical phase during your lifetime but then settling down into something more visceral? Should happiness even be the goal? Am I trapped in my thoughts? ...how do I escape? Why isn't everybody dancing?

I don't have any answers, Blog, and I'm not sure that one manner of existing is inherently better than another, but I think that this re-entry into Thought is timely given my impending return to academia. Contemplating papers and readings a week ago was as if my task were to aerate the north pasture with a pencil, but now I'm sincerely excited to play with some question marks. Oh, I'm nervous as hell (Carleton has been known to break my poor little feet, both literally and metaphorically), but I have a deep-seeded conviction that everything's going to turn out all right.

OK, Blog, I have to go stuff my suitcases for the for my 42 hour train ride eastward on the Empire Builder (colonizing backwards?). Please don't feel bad if I don't write as much as I have in the past--school has a way of vacuuming away every conceivable spare second. I'll try to keep you informed, though, because if life has taught me anything, it's that the notions of "travel" and "adventure" can be applied to literally every circumstance.

laughing,

Caitlin