Transportation of Choice

Dear Friends,

Minus 45 minutes until departure time. My transportation of choice, you ask? Amtrak! Yes, I am indeed speaking of the train/subway hybrid we Americans have come to love. I decided to take Amtrak for two reasons.

1) Airfare is way too expensive
2) Amtrak is slow.

You see, there is something we miss when we hop on a plane and one hour and some bad food later we find ourselves in Florida. For thousands of years humanity made it simply by feet and wheels. And I believe there is something lost when we steal from time while traveling. Say it with me... "processing".... What a beautiful concept that our fast paced society often neglects. I embrace slow travel because it gives us an opportunity to see what we are passing by, we are forced to acknowledge the great distances we are covering, and upon arrival to our destination there is a newfound appreciation based on where we were and where we are. I plan on doing the following things during the next 24 hours of my travels: reading, writing letters, sleeping, tweezing my eyebrows and hopefully experiencing some divine and spontaneous conversations with those around me.

When I arrive in Saranac Lake Tuesday evening, I will head straight to the staff house to spend the night. The next day I head to the "headquarters" (it's actually referred to as the office but 'headquarters' sounds more mysterious to me) where I will be ushered into a five day series of hiking and learning with the other field instructors in training. After that a two day in door training on good stuff like communication, vision, etc. So dear friends, I don't plan on being back until next Tuesday! After my training I will have a week off to rest and prepare for my first journey into the woods with the baby lambs (what I like to imagine the students as). I look forward to filling you in!

With much love, La Loba