Day 92

First a story: We were hiking back to the trailhead, where our car was parked, when we met him. We slowly came to a stop as we approached each other.

"Is the journey far?" he asked in a slight German accent. His translation had taken a rather metaphysical quality.

"No," I said with an embarrassed grin. We had camped at a spot just out of sight of our parked car in the wide desert valley. We had gorged ourselves on sleep and food.

He wore sneakers and drank from reused plastic water bottles. According to the dust that permeated his bandana he had been out for a few days, but his beard said that he had been out longer. His sun spectacles seemed as if they were a permanent fixture his face.

He wished us well and continued on his way.

For the duration of the trip, and the drive back home, the mythos surrounding The German grew only larger. In a flight of fancy, we ascertained that he was composed not of matter, but was rather a light emanation generated by string resonance, and that he thought in harmonics rather than words. Conclusions: 1. The German was a manifestation of the vibrating life force imbued in all living creatures. 2. We had completed our vision quest. 3. The German had been our spirit guide.

Now another story: Today I received the first two of a total of five hours of training. Tomorrow morning I receive the rest as I am hastily pressed into service. It makes me feel very Red Army.

After that, I get my license to kill... invasive, non-native plant species, as a part of the Strawberry Creek Restoration Program, under the auspices of our illustrious leader, Tim Pine (I wish I were named after a conifer). Our trainings had no shortage of war metaphors, the most colorful of which drew on the fact that our poorly-funded program relies on networks of independent cells (of which I will soon be a leader), leading to a comparison with al-Qaeda. That got some laughs. And then he continued to plow on.

As long as I'm planting seeds and not bombs.

Day 54

So, I've been doing some planning. Nothing much, just my usual feverish bout of shuffling through course requirement sheets and the like. I'd say this happens every semester or so. I spend two hours thinking I'm recharting the course of my life, only to change it about three months later.

Well, on this current tack, I've got some goodies lined up for myself. For example, one of the classes I plan on taking is simply titled "Trees." Then there's "Wildland Fire Science," which involves a field trip for a proscribed burn. But right now, I'm pretty stoked at the prospect of going abroad. It seems to be all the rage these days, and I sure as heck don't want to be left out of the fun (my brand new passport is just itching to get its first stamp). Specifically, I really want to go to the island of Moorea in French Polynesia, which oddly enough has a UC Berkeley field research station there. Basically, the deal's like this: I go to French Polynesia, my school gives me units.

The decision was not a hard one to make.

But before any of that fun stuff happens, it seems like there's still a formidable amount of drudgery left to slog through. I still have a good deal of weeder courses left: classes engineered to destroy the human soul. The current gameplan involves me staying in Berkeley over the summer to learn all that there is to learn about organic chemistry. Carbon is such a wacky element.

Day 50

Today I decided that I want to thru-hike the JMT Sobo (translation: I want to walk from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney, non-stop).

It's something I've wanted to do since I was 13; I promised myself that I'd hike the whole John Muir Trail as I stood on Half Dome, looking over the Yosemite Valley. I think it only hit me today that I've finally accumulated the skills, equipment, and independence to do so in the six and a half years that have since elapsed.