Where has m been?

November 2014 to August 2016:

Prescott, Arizona

March 2012 to October 2014:

Lowell, Massachusetts

After a brief tenure in Alaska, I have moved to Massachusetts. I know, I found it surprising, too, after having lived in the Pacific Northwest for years and then moving even further north from there.

Since graduating from high school, I have been making figure eights around the globe for more than a decade, vowing never to move back to the Northeast. Perhaps, it is a strange kind of karma that has brought me back to the state of my childhood. I must have unfinished business to attend to. I certainly have plenty of dried flowers to take down from the ceiling of my childhood bedroom.

I remember years ago reading a favorite David Gessner book, Sick of nature, and connecting strongly with the chapter where he describes moving to new places and connecting with each new landscape until it felt like home. I now have places around the world that feel like home. I also have beloved friends who I miss, human and avian alike. My cherished Izzy is likely prowling the fields around the Ewing farm in Gustavus as I type. I feel such a profound sadness having given him up, though I know that he is living it up in Alaska and getting more love than I could give him with so many critters competing for my attention.

There is pain and heartache each time I uproot myself from one place, however shallow the roots, to migrate to another. Yet, the warmth I have felt in being welcomed to new communities continues to remind me that I can find home and a sense of place everywhere my feet and wings may take me.

I have grappled with whether or not to change the title of my blog to something new, particularly as I have left my home in Alaska. Somehow, the name still seems to fit. Alaska-the people, place, and my experiences there-speaks strongly to who I am and who I have become over the past couple of years. I may be on a nomadic path, and perhaps the name of the blog is less important than what I learn along the way.

Thanks to everyone at Lowell National Historical Park and in the Lowell community who has helped me in this strange and exciting transition from the wilds of Gustavus, Alaska to the urban wildness of Lowell, Massachusetts!

And a special thanks to everyone who reads my blog for traveling with me on this wild journey!

 

July 2013:

New England

I have uprooted myself multiple times since I first created this blog in June 2010. Today, I am an interpretive park ranger at Lowell National Historical Park. I have earned a doctorate in Sustainability Education.

I am a storyteller, a songwriter, and a musician.

I am an artist and member of the Arts League of Lowell.

I am taking the beginning steps to work as a composing guide using the Story-to-Song method full-time. This is a method that lifts songs from spoken stories, and there are many stories to be shared, all of them valuable and meaningful.

I am thankful for each and every one of you who has been following my journey these past few years. I hope you will continue to read and comment.

 

June 2010 to January 2012:

Southeast Alaska

Recently uprooted from the upper Skagit Valley and North Cascades Mountains of Washington State, I have relocated to the wilderness of Southeast Alaska. I am a PhD student in the Sustainability Education program at Prescott College and work as the Education Specialist for Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. I currently live in park housing, tucked away in Bartlett Cove. This fall, I will join the community of Gustavus. I am an avid birder and spend as much time attempting to link myself with the natural world as possible. This blog is an effort to record my experience connecting and rooting myself in a new place.