The other night, I lay wide awake in my bed, "haunted" by images of my own "sun-drenched elsewhere." From my bed, I was gazing out over Yosemite Valley - the majestic rock faces, the cascading waterfalls, the endlessness - and feeling the sweat and summer sun on my face. Now I can't stop turning the scene over and over in my mind...
Eberhardt's quote scares the shit out of me. Because I feel the exact same way. It sounds crazy and I can't explain it...but this has me imagining an alternate life for myself. One in which I am not a nurse in a hospital. Rather, I am living and working in that beautiful "sun-drenched elsewhere." Perhaps I am trying to preserve it. What if that made me happier? What if I decided to help Mother Nature rather than mothers-to-be? Would that make me a coward or a bad person?
I feel incredibly torn and weird and idiotic but I can't ignore all of these what if's and why not's circling around in my head.
So on a very unusual whim that night, without thinking anything through at all, I applied to summer jobs in all of these places:
- Mount Rainier National Park - Washington
- Isle Royale National Park - Michigan
- Voyageurs National Park - Minnesota
- Mesa Verde National Park - Colorado
- Yellowstone National Park - Wyoming
- Acadia National Park - Maine
- Ace Adventure Center - West Virginia
- Basin Harbor Club - Vermont
- Iroquois Hotel and The Island House - Mackinac Island
- Yosemite National Park - California
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.
So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover."
