From an air-conditioned office...

The days are long and the heat and humidity are high: it's summertime in the southeastern US. My day job is in Pittsboro, NC (a small environmental haven & research triangle bedroom community) on a 2-acre organic vegetable farm. I wish that I could say that the last 6 weeks of the internship have been totally wonderful and meditative, but mostly I am still orienting/realigning my magnets and recharging my batteries from an enervating final two years of college. In my non-existant spare time, I am working on woodblock printing (farmer portraits), volunteering once a week in Raleigh with Kate Dixon (executive director of the Friends of the MST), running on trails, swimming in ponds, having heated philosophical discussions with my housemates, and cooking fresh & healthy food. I leave the Triangle area in a few weeks for a 4-month position at an environmental education center south of Brevard, North Carolina. A las Montanas!

I am ITCHING for more mobile adventures (wool-sweater itching, not poison-ivy itching), and look forward to getting back to the Mountains to Sea Trail to complete it. I hope to finish it by the end of 2008, but funds and life sometimes get in the way, and I am kind of ready to admit... that backpacking is not enough to keep me satisfied ALL of the time. The News & Observer of Raleigh, NC is in the middle of publishing a 4-part series on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, that you should check out (http://www.newsobserver.com/trailblazing/)