Blogs

I finally bought the tickets. In July I am going on a semi-irregular pilgrimage -- two pilgrimages strung together into one, actually.

First I'm going to Illinois, to Ingersoll Scout Reservation -- home. Sometime in the midst of whatever camp staff reunion activities they have planned, I'm going to steal away to Beaver Bend, that 90-degree crook in the Cedar Creek. I'll sit on the rocks. I'll scuff at the ground, imagining a fire ring constructed with rocks we dragged up from the bank. I'll climb the goat path to the Artesian Well. And so on.

I live in two worlds at work. One is good, one is bad. I created them both. They move in different orbits. Despite my education in orbital mechanics, I don't know how to predict their paths nor do I know how move them.

The first, my native world, is the bad one. It is a land of belching fumaroles and badlands -- a discontented place. This is me at work.

The second is peaceful, positive. Here is where I feel at home but do not reside. This is me at work, but not at work -- meaning, the things I do that are not defined as part of my job.