The Intangible Riches of Making an Impact

This morning was the super blue blood moon, the first and last time I will lay my eyes on such a rare astronomical event. I have never been one to feel deeply synced with the cycles of the moon, but as I sit down to write my first ever blog at the start of the new year, I have a feeling 2018 is going to be a year of many firsts and lasts. My last first week of college after 8 years! My last days living in the beautiful Humboldt County! My first time applying and interviewing for permanent jobs, and possibly the last time I will feel strapped down to working seasonal jobs for the Park Service due to college semesters. This is first time I feel limitless to the places and opportunities I can travel to in this world.

Now, I say this lightly, because as many of you may know, I have been fortunate to travel cross country and work for the National Park Service (NPS) as a trail crew leader in Maine due to the benefits of working seasonally while in college. For the past seven years I have always felt like college is almost a side job to my already jump-started career with the NPS, and every semester I question whether I even need a Bachelor's degree with my foot already in the door with a federal agency. However it is through my studies of the sciences and social injustices of the environment that I have become an agent of change as I read and wrote about everything from the chemical imbalances in the atmosphere, land, and water that have resulted in anthropogenic climate change, to the lack of accessibility and diversity of People of Color on public lands. I have and will continue to use this knowledge to grow more compassionate and become a more active global citizen.
Many of us pursue college with the desire to make a difference in our own lives and possibly the lives of others. Throughout the summers working as a trail maintenance crew leader for 15-18 year old Youth Conservation Corps members, I have been fulfilled with feeling that I am making that little bit of a difference in their lives. By introducing teens to the outdoors, and showing them the dying art of what it means to work with your hands and embrace the amount of layers of sweat and dirt caked onto your face, and learn what it means to work as a team--reliant on keeping each other safe, some of the many wonders of the outdoors that brings people with a common bond together.

You push each other beyond your limits. You press on, despite fatigue and fear. You conquer together, and you share an experience that sets you free. And as a female leader, I am proud to be a Jill of some trades and share it with other girls who are standing where I once was, wondering what in the hell I was getting myself into, but I knew standing there face to face with a fiery chainsaw, that my life would begin to unfold in proportion to the courage I had to get dirty and make an impact.
And so from here, along with all of the other many seniors holding their trembling heads high, about to receive their degrees with a sense of hope and wonder of what impact they will make, I will continue to persist, with the "desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing that boulder up the mountain," and quite literally sometimes!

 Acadia National Park, Maine 2015

Zinn, Howard. “The Optimism of Uncertainty.” The Impossible Will Take a Little While, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb, Basic Books, 2004, pp. 84.