Shock and Hope

It's a gorgeous day outside right now. Everything is blooming and it's a perfect 70 degrees with sunshine.

I actually have no recollection of the weather 17 years ago, except reading in retrospect that it was too windy for helicopters to fly in Blacksburg.

April 16th, 2007 was a Monday. I had graduated from Virginia Tech the spring before in 2006. In 2007 I was working on VT's campus in their corporate research center for a small pharmaceutical company start-up. That weekend, I had been at a family reunion in South Carolina. My mom had spent the night with me in my one-bedroom apartment (rent was $560 a month!) Sunday night and was driving home to Maryland on Monday morning. I was in meetings for the first hour or two of my day, and only when aimlessly checking CNN around 10:30 did I realize anything was wrong.

It's weird what your brain remembers during trauma. I remember the morning pretty well. We were on campus, so we were put on lock down. My phone was blowing up because everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, that I ever met, was calling to see if I was okay. This was before Facebook had that feature where you could mark yourself safe. I do not remember getting anything done at work. I don't remember when I left work.

I remember winding up in a bar with some friends. Not sure I could name exactly who. We ate some food and just stared at the continuous news coverage being filmed 200ft away from us. I remember having no idea how to go about figuring out if the hundreds of people I knew were okay or accounted for. Blacksburg is a college town. There was a possibility that anyone I knew could have been on campus.

I wound up at a friend's house at an impromptu church small group. One of my friends had lost a friend and was inconsolable. I wound up at another friend's house at almost midnight to check on them because they had also lost someone.

I wish people understood how something like a mass shooting affects an entire community. I did not personally know anyone that was killed or injured, but it seemed like everyone I know did. It affected me profoundly even though I didn't personally lose a friend. Everyone I know was in deep shock and grief. The entire community was under the scrutiny of the national and international media, their presence a reminder of just how bad this was. 

One of the main things I remember was the shock. How could something like this happen here? Honestly, I felt like the entire first year was our community processing that and trying to answer questions that have no answers. Only when we reached the first anniversary did it feel like we could  start to focus on healing.

I wonder today if I would feel the same shock if a place I loved was the scene of another mass shooting. I don't say that because I don't love where I live. I say it because mass shootings are now so common. 

I admit to having lost a lot of hope where gun violence is concerned. While the March for Our Lives in 2018 was a big step in the right direction, I really felt like we passed a point of no return with the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook. If murdered 6 year olds don't change things, than I really don't know what will.

That's not say I'm not supporting things like mental health awareness, and working with and supporting high school and college students, and gun control. But I guess I can't emotionally engage as much as I used to, even if I try to walk the walk. I am taking a bleeding control and Narcan class this week though- we'll see how that goes.

I hope that there will be change. I hope that people with profound mental illness get the help they need. I hope we can pass some common sense gun reforms. I hope gen Z, that has been through countless lockdown drills their entire lives, kicks ass and takes names when they get political power. I hope that we don't lose hope, and I include myself in that.

Every year I'm reminded that there are 32 Hokies I never got to meet. 32 people that aren't enjoying this beautiful weather we're having right now. So go enjoy the spring, hug your loved ones, and if you can, do an act of service for someone today. Our VT motto is Ut Prosim- That I May Serve. And today, we are all Hokies.

Adventures in Birding

 A medium adventure! My friend Carol and I went to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge for the day on Saturday (2/10/2024). Winter is one of my favorite seasons for birding for a few reasons. One, its not beastly hot outside :) Two, its much easier to see birds in the trees when there are no leaves. And three, its weird duck season. Where I am on the east coast, we get lots of interesting ducks that migrate here from Canada for the winter. 

Blackwater is about 2 hours away from us, so we got there about 10am. 

Thousands of snow geese flying over the water.

Unfortunately I didn't have my good camera with me (it's trying very hard to die, I need to replace it), so I just have some landscapes from my phone. 

We saw lots of eagles, tons of ducks, several great blue herons, 3 different types of woodpeckers, and a Great Horned Owl peeking out of its nest. Also thousands of tundra swans mixed with Canada geese.

Canvasback ducks, ring necked ducks, and American Wigeons in Cambridge, MD, about 15 minutes north of the refuge.

We stopped for a yummy dinner at Fisherman's Inn on Kent Island on the way home. Yum!

Small Adventures

 

It's been a beautiful few days here in the mid-Atlantic. I'm unsure of the long-term weather predictions of rodents from last week, but we had a lovely weekend of sunshine and almost 50 degrees. That's a small joy for the beginning of February, so Luna and I took a hike on the C&O canal towpath at Pennyfield Lock.

I can take selfies of just me, but I haven't figured out how to do one with Luna. So you get Luna staring at probably a squirrel. We both would have had a slightly better hike if the squirrels had not been running DIRECTLY ACROSS THE TOWPATH IN FRONT OF HER. Suicidal squirrels is a good band name. So is kamikaze squirrels, if Luna had been able to chase them and pull us both into the Potomac.

There's a beauty in the starkness of nature in the winter, in the shades of brown and gray. It's easier to see the birds, and it's just a good time to take a walk or hike and think your thoughts.

Here's to remembering that not all adventures need to be grand. There's plenty of beauty, wilderness and adventure within 30 minutes of home.

 

Do people even read blogs anymore? I guess that's TBD.

What’s saving my life right now? This is a prompt from Modern Mrs Darcy, a book blog/podcast I like.

I’m not sure anything is particularly lifesaving, in that nothing seems dire at the moment. Maybe what’s lifesaving is that I’m not trying to crush January. I’m not hibernating, but I am leaning into the cozy. I’ve read 7 books in the last 4 weeks, including two children's mysteries today. I’ve taken lots of naps. I’ve enjoyed walks in the snow. I’ve taken walks in the rain, but those are slightly less enjoyable. I’ve started listening to a new podcast. Work is going rather well, and it’s the less crazy time of year for my particular projects. I organized a section of my attic and hope to declutter another section soon. I’m enjoying not having to worry about my yard for a few months. It’s not that I don’t have goals and lists of things I want to do for the year, but this has just seemed a good time to be curled up with books and blankets. And honestly, that is actually on my to-do list- read. And lean into the seasons. There are some seasons for hiking, and others for snowmen and cozy reading. This is mostly a cozy time.

I realized I haven’t blogged much for a few reasons. One, I’m not constantly traveling and having random adventures like I was in Peace Corps. Suburbia just has a different vibe, you know? Also, I’m posting a lot of travel photos and such on Facebook, and it would almost seem like double posting to put them here also. Maybe. Maybe I’ll do some back blogging on my travels from the last few years. Also, the world has been shitty in a lot of ways the past several years, at least politically, and I wasn’t sure, still am not, how much I want to write about that. I think I want to write about my values more than the shitty stuff going on, but that may remain to be seen.

I’m guilty in paper journals of starting a new one constantly before finishing an old one. This leads to me having like 20 journals lying around that are a quarter to a third written in. I’m trying not to the same thing with blogs, since this is already the 3^rd one I’ve made in my life. I don’t see the need for a fourth, even if my voice and life is pretty different than when I left for Botswana 11 ½ years ago.

So we’ll see what this becomes. I am of the mind that I still want to post about adventures, be they overseas travels or new hiking spots. But I also believe that adventures can be new friendships or rekindling old ones, tackling things you’ve been meaning to do for months/years and experiencing the satisfaction of completely something, figuring out how to put actions to your values. Radical self acceptance may be the biggest adventure of all. So we’ll see where this goes.