Water Buffalo

An exciting update! several things have happened that have resulted in an exciting plan:

I went looking for a way to visit the hill tribes and didn’t find any remotely good options. Then by chance I ran into a guy I met on the bus who told me the owner of his hostel is from a hill tribe, and would be wiling to take us to visit his family for an overnight. What! No tourists in sight and an actual connection to a family!

We rented motor bikes and went with a friend of the hostel owner (who is named Tony); for two hours we drove up curvy roads into the mountains. It got colder and colder as we went, but it was the most beautiful drive.. the mountains had the technicolor look of photos from 90s guidebooks–I don’t know what was going on with them but it was so crisp and colorful. And tropical mountains? There were pine trees right in with palm trees, and sparkling brown rivers with yellow flowers along the edges..the sun got hot in the middle of the day, and that night it got down in the forties. So extreme.

We made it to Tony’s family, and sat and watched them bring water buffalo across the rice fields for the afternoon, not having a clue what was going on. In the evening we sat around the fire eating fish, and watched their flashlights bob around the field as the caught grasshoppers that were sleeping in the grasses. They came back and threw them in the fire, and then we all ate them together! They were good!

The next day was spent with the weavers, and I got so excited about being let into this group of women that I took a risk and asked if I could come back and stay for two weeks. They said yes! And they even said they would teach me to weave. The goal is to be able to spend a lot of time with the women, so learning to weave myself is the perfect way to arrange for a lot of hang out time, and also full time experience of life there. I will also help in the rice fields during the day.

 

When I got back from the village, two bad things happened – my visa expired so I had to go to Chiang Mai and back to renew it; and as soon as I returned the next day, I stepped out of the bus and vomited endlessly in the street due to food poisoning from the meat at the hill tribe.(sorry for the graphic, but it was so terrible I have to honor it). I made it back to the hostel and have been in bed for four days, only just now feeling normal again.

But I talked to Tony today and he arranged for me to leave tomorrow morning and stay for any amount of time between one and four weeks. I may want to move on and find another similar situation in Laos after one week, or I might love it and stay a month! Oh my god!! I am terrified, mainly because there is no english at all, and not even thai – they speak Karen.

(A mini word on the hill tribe: the Karen tribe is spread out through SE Asia and live almost entirely off of the land – their houses are bamboo, they use water buffalo to harvest the rice, and hand weave much of their clothing. My sense is that they resist assimilation beyond the necessary, and this tribe is outside of the tourist scene entirely).

I feel lucky to have this arrangement.
Ok! So I am off tomorrow. This will be the most intense immersion I have done yet and I am terrified but also so excited. There is no wifi so I won’t have any way of being in contact, but send some good thoughts my way, especially if Christmas nears and I am still out there!
With love and nervousness, and some loose cricket legs still in my teeth,
Annie

An attempt at the rice field

Lanterns

Hello!

Last time I wrote I was in Ban Rai, preparing to leave. Since then I have been on the move through three small cities. Contrary to what I had planned, because I was offered a ride out of ban rai, I went to the old capital and spent a few days there exploring the ruins.

( outfit)

In my goal to reach the hill tribes, when I heard there is a night train to Chiang Mai, the city surrounded by hill tribes, I bought a ticket and was soon rumbling through the night up the length of Thailand! The only ticket available was first class, so I had my own little room and meals brought to me. In the morning I watched the sun rise over huge mountains as we curved along ridges. It was the most amazing transportation I have done yet. I highly recommend night trains! I felt like a little box hurling toward chiang mai, not knowing what to expect.

When I got to Chiang Mai, I was surprised to find that hundreds of westerners were poring into the city. I had arrived in time to see Loy Kratang, the festival of lights! Tents lined the hallways of my hostel it was so crowded. The night of the festival I started walking towards the center of the city, and saw a string of lights start into the air. Then to my total disbelief, the string increased, and soon there were hunrdreds of lights lifting off into the sky, all over the city! Hundreds, and then thousands! Thousands of paper lanterns were lit continously, and sent floating.. anyone could buy a lantern and send it up. I was smooshed around in the mob for a while, and ended up with an old lady by the side of the river, putting candles in the water. Not exactly a party, but a truly amazing night.

It kind of looked like the city had been picked up and shook so that all the light bulbs dislodged and floated away – only right side up!
The other night of the festival I happened to be in the crowd looking at this lantern display when a huge gong wrang and in walked a line of monks. They sat down and meditated in so much light it was hard to even see them, or take a picture.

I wanted to find a hill tribe village, and when I told two people at my hostel about my mission, we decided to rent motorbikes and go to find the village together. This resulted in an entire day of flying along the abandoned mountain roads through the forrest on motor bikes. For hour we went higher and higher and around huge curves in the road. It was so fun! We reached the village and my companions watched in surprise as the women dressed me up in the clothes i was looking at. Then I had to pay them. Interesting.

Now I am in Pai where I heard I can access hill tribes via hikes. But my experience will no doubt be touristy, and short. I have defintely had enough touristness, and think I will find many tourists around all of Thailand if I stay, so my plan after the hill tribe visit is to cross over to Loas by boat!! I would like to find a place to stay for a while again.

My long term plan – I am thinking about going to India after Laos, but I have to wait for my tourist mayhem mind to clear in order to decide that.

These past two weeks have been an onslaught– of lights, hippy clothes, hot streets and motorbikes. All an electric wire surging me with energy and excitement, or else all a surfboard. Now I am exhausted and ready for my slow boat ride to Laos and sanity.

It feels weird to witness things like that festival, and then to just to keep going. I guess I better just get used to that! But for some reason I am not. Everything is still so sharp, so intense, each day. I make friends at the hostels, we separate, and then stumble across each other in the next place. All is new and a blur. I am a flying squirrel, a floating lantern!

Feeling so grateful this thanksgiving for all the love and support I have at home,

With love,

Annie

 

Floating and falling down temples

 

“Just as a snake sheds its skin we must shed our past over and over again” Buddha   I wonder if it is normal for this to happen on the daily level

Excellent book:
Tracks, by Louise Erdrich

Into Jungle

This has been the most insane and amazing week yet!!! It has been such an intense transition that I have been focused entirely on figuring it out, and have just recently started to see clearly. After thirteen hours on the plane overnight, I arrived in Bangkok in the morning, immediately got in a taxi and two busses, and made it out to Ban Rai in the evening.

That first day made the deepest impression.
Out the window I could see the bus was taking me farther and farther out — the towns getting smaller and farther apart. It is was sunset and the landscape looked like it was steaming. I realized, getting on that bus, that though I was prepared for a limited english, I was now in an area where there was no english, none, not one word. A bunch of school girls looked alarmed when I got off the bus, in Ban Rai, huge backpack on, and looking around the busy street for my hotel which was nowhere in sight. They flocked around me, asking questions in Thai. Some older women joined in and we all went in search of my hotel, with only its name as communication. I arrived after a ride on the back of a motorbike with my huge backpack on, threatening to pull me off the back. This was the end of over 48 hours of travel! (Had to spend the night on Copenhagen on a layover). That motorbike ride in the evening, finally in Ban Rai, was the beginning of a glorious culture shock.

At first I was entirely focused on figuring out survival (food? communication?!) On the first full day I discovered a bike that was set out for me, and have been able to go for a bike ride nearly every day this week! I soon met the owner of the hotel who spoke a little English! Thank god! She helped me find my way around, and said I could accompany her on her daily bike ride. So there I was, second day in Thailand, speed biking for two hours straight through a wildlife reserve, with huge cliffs covered in jungle on either side. We arrived at an incredible temple, my back nearly broken in half from the too-small bike. I couldn’t believe where I was.

Lek, (the owner), took me to a weaving center next, where the women, immigrants from Laos, went crazy dressing me up and taking pictures. I have returned to the center three times to get to know the women a little better and join in on the easier tasks. It was so amazing to work with them, even just a little. My job was to separate the seeds from the cotton on this bamboo press.

One inch of weaving takes two weeks to do!!

A few days ago Lek took me to the hugest statue of a Buddha I have, and probably will ever, see. She prayed inside for a long time, and I joined, a little confused and in awe at the splendor inside. There were plush rugs and many glittering Buddhas and flowers.

After that first bike ride to the temple, I biked back on my own, and discovered caves in the cliffs! Three Buddha statues sat in the biggest cave, and a very rickety bed and tea pot. I was moving to leave when a monk appeared on the path. He said he was Chinese and had traveled all the way from China to this spot because it was his favorite for meditation. What! And that he was going to spend the night there. That was the fourth day, and when I realized I really love it here.

Around the fifth day I started to feel sick from the food. This commenced major difficulties eating, and sleeping as well. On top of the language barrier, I was struggling. Amazingly, I soon met Jeed, an 18 year old girl, who has boundless energy for hanging out with me. Yes! Google translate became a great game (awesome) and when she learned i was sick she took me around on her pink motorbike to get food and cold drinks, commencing a whole new conception of what it is like to live here. (Strangely, it is beginning to remind a bit of Peterborough. A jungly, mute version).

Ack! There is so much to tell!! Hopefully my pictures can speak for me. I know about twenty words and phrases in Thai now, and my body is getting better every day. The jet lag is horrendous. I am headed out in two days to go north – I love the landscape here and am looking to head to a village in the mountains outside of Mae Sot, where the Karen people (a large and spread out tribe) live. (I have a contact who works with them, not just going cold turkey). I’m still working on the plan.

To be honest, I am still just focused hanging in there. And at the same time, I am totally having the time of my life!

With love and deep gratitude to be able to reach home,
Annie

Paris

Hello everybody!!

I miss you all!

Here I am in Paris preparing to leave for Thailand on Wednesday!!! This feels like a very big leap, a pivotal point in my year. I am leaving Europe for nine more months of travel! The language barrier is about to become my constant companion.  But also warmth, and beautiful patterns. I am so excited I can’t even believe it; but also completely terrified. I have been making plans for these nine months to come and this is what I have figured out:

I am going to Thailand and India – in Thailand to a remote village called Ban Rai, where I will be working with dyers and weavers, and in northern India an extremely remote place called Ladakh. Ladakh is a really exciting plan because, according to the contacts who are helping me, by the end of my time there I will be able to live with the nomads in the northern part of the region. This is insanely exciting! They still make and wear their traditional clothing… but I am above all excited to experience that lifestyle. I have been trying to find a location like this for months. The only problem is that it is so far north that I can’t go until the end of the year. So I have a big chunk of time before that. The plan is southern India and then Japan before Ladakh, but I would also love to go to Australia or Namibia in my year, both of which would be incredible for a project in textiles in remote communities. I will have to see how long I want to stay in Thailand, but I am determined to make it to one of these places.

So it’s looking like I have some extremely remote places in store! AAAAA!! I am both nervous and thrilled at the prospect. At the moment, I would say I am pretty nervous.

I’m settling into traveling on my own; it’s been three months, and I am starting to lift off into some other rhythm. I miss home, and feel crazy a lot, like I am adjusting to some itchy new blood temperature. Paris has been wonderful, a good soul-meal before the unknown, but also cooollld and not the friendliest, and completely on my own – and many youth hostels. I can’t wait to soon root down somewhere warm.

The day after tomorrow I will be on a plane and then a bus –  twenty four hours total- to get out to my community in Thailand!! oh my god. I miss home so much at this prospect, but know that something incredible is waiting for me if I can push through all that travel. I will post again soon after I get settled there, I am so happy to be able to connect to home.

Paris to Thailand, what a change is about to take place! Thailand here I come!

Wish me luck!!

With love,

Annie

Here are a bunch of pictures from my time flying around Paris. I stayed in youth hostels and lurked in the metro, and ate huge amounts of bread. I took the train to see cathedrals outside of Paris multiple times on day trips. Reims was the best, and saw me surprised to walk in on a mass. I saw some excellent art museums, of course, and an often misty Eiffel tower sat nearby at all times. Goodbye to Paris, you bread-eater, you beautifully adorned metro stop, thank you for so many gorgeous and old things all together!

sheep farming

This is my last night at the sheep farm. This has been an incredible two weeks! The combination of the simplicity and the intensity of the work moved me quickly into this strange dream world of many hours in the barn and cold mornings in the fog. I’m genuinely sad to be leaving — It’s off to London in the morning!!!

Mostly my job has been to medicate the sheep, while they have their butts shaved (heh heh). I had to ram this huge syringe down their throats, which was freaky at first, but it didn’t hurt them, and soon I grew to really like being surrounded by them. I would have a hundred sheep surrounding me in the pen at any given moment of the day! So many!!! This dense concentration for hours produced this hum of animal innocence, a distillation of some kind, that I swear put me in a trance. Sounds weird but I always felt revived at the end of the day.

My favorite activity was herding the sheep in this little white van. We go CRUISING over the hills chasing the sheep, as though the van were a sheep dog. I’m holding on for dear life as the farmer yells at the sheep out the window.

I don’t have any pictures of me with the sheep because I couldn’t bring my phone up to the pen, but here’s me with my friend and commander in chief, Trevor.

Most of the time it was just us working as a team, which meant I was helpful, and I liked that he seemed to completely accept my newness to it. A lot of the time we didn’t talk, but I felt like we got to know each other anyway, which was so unexpected and wonderful.

Here’s me going into my caravan in my work outfit, with my ‘lad’ hair. I love this caravan and would take it with me if I could! This cat likes to run into it every time I open the door, which would be cute if it didn’t have worms.

I’m constantly planning my year out, and have my time in Asia pretty glued in. Now I am figuring out what’s going before it, if anything. Of course this entails making a lot of decisions about the whole the year. Soon I will get it and I can’t wait to share it with you all! (For those a little confused, my fellowship is about experience not research, so the goal is to get inside the craft, not to study the craft, if that makes sense. I don’t have to write or present anything, which is why I have such creative license to orchestrate my plan).
Thanks for being there, and I hope everything is going well!
Annie
Icelandic proverb:

“All sheep’s thigh bone joints should be dug into the earth, and these words uttered over them: defend me as well from the mouth of hell, as I defend you from the mouth of dogs.” Nice.

And of course:

https://youtu.be/YC-MR84S1H8

‘Get yourselves organized down there!’

Sheep

Last night I arrived at my sheep farm! It’s in Wales, and the scenery is incredible. But even more incredible was my first day. I have to describe it before I lose sight of the insanity of it:

First thing in the morning, my seventy year old host (a man of almost no words and right out of the 1940s) gets on an ATV (!), then a sheep dog gets on, and I am signaled to somehow get on too. The next thing I know I am holding on for dear life as we power around a steep field, the atv and the sheepdog acting like two sheep dogs getting 80 sheep down from a pasture. We are zipping back and forth with the dog, both at full speed, and I almost fell off the back several times we were going so fast! It was so much fun!

We get the sheep into the barn and I have no idea what’s happening until — Apparently, since it is so muddy, huge clumps of mud and poop stick to the sheeps’ butts, and this makes maggots get into their fleece and chew their haunches. So me and a few guys who came over from a neighboring farm had to catch the sheep and hold them down while the farmer shaved their butts. The fleece was coming off in loose sheaves and maggots would explode out of a haunch right near my face. This is so the real deal! (Luckily it’s an organic farm so they are really humane).

After a few hours of this the boys left and it was up to me to catch the sheep and bring them to the farmer. And oh man is catching a sheep hard! You have to come up behind um, grab their fleece on the neck and whip your arm around the head to get them in a head lock, then get the sheep between your legs. At one point I had to wrestle a GIANT yew – I mean that thing was like a small pony! and it was like a test of my manhood or something because the farmer just watched seriously and then said well done, well done afterwards. Ha! The whole scene was incredibly serious and I had to learn really fast, which was so hard and stressful, but I had to laugh at times. We were sliding all over the place in the mud, wrestling sheep in a barn for hours in our overalls (more like giant onezees) and mud covered ‘wellies.’

By the end I had poop in my hair and on my face, but the farmer and me we made a good team, (silent) and I must have impressed him because he gave me the ATV to drive home by myself! I almost crashed the thing, but overalls and wellies and poop-face got to fly free over the fields after an amazing day.

Now I have completed boyhood. In a few days maybe I will forget that any of this stuff is beyond the ordinary, maggots and all, but I have to send it out while I still have some perspective and humor.

With love,
Annie

The caravan where I live (no heat, it’s actually an icebox, but cosy and my own)

The farmhouse from the top of the field

Me casually doing chores on the ATV

Scottish Toast

I have been living in the most surprising little piece of heaven imaginable! After a chunk of confusion, I stumbled upon a living experience that has given me such surprising clarity and real goodness.

When I got to Arran I camped myself on the beach (which was legal) and explored the island for five days. This time was wild and free, as cheesy as that sounds it really was! I saw the stone circles and explored the beach and woods, and got to wake up and go to sleep to the sound of waves outside my tent.

I heard I should visit Holy Isle, a tiny island off of Arran. I took a mini ferry over to the island and discovered that the only thing there was a Buddhist monastery. I wanted to try meditation for a day so that I could get my interest in religion going for the year, and prepare me for what I want to do in Asia.
Thus commenced the best week I could never have forseen! I took on volunteering around the monastery in exchange for a chance to partake in the rituals and meditations.

Every day I wake up to an impeccably neat Scottish monastery. Tightly run and functioning entirely on its own on an island, the air is briny and the rugged seashore and cliffs feel distinctly Scottish.

I have made great friends with the women I help around the house, and can hardly understand them their accents are so strong.
I smile and laugh with them more than I thought possible with so many confusing emotions going on in me, these are really my true friends. I have eaten better than I knew a person was allowed to, and sounded that underwater deliciousness that hits me sometimes learning meditation.

At night I cozy down in the library; eastern philosophy always got me in school and reading the texts again feels like getting into a bath. So good. Being around it is getting me so excited for Indiaaaa!!!!!!A bunch of people here have been to India and there is lots of talk about when and where I should go. I am committing to six months in Asia !!!!!! And am trying to decide whether to hit South America first or just bomb headlong into Asia. I am sticking with my textiles plan, because it is such a good way to be in a place and connecting with people, and in Asia I think my two interests will come together there pretty awesomey. India!!
I feel this huge electric wave pushing me forward in my year, and I am killing to get out of Europe! November is my ejection point.

The vital thing I have learned here is that the things that happen around me while traveling, and the things I feel, are not the essential me. I am a whole apart… this may sound really obvious, but so many new things come at me in a day, and new countries! that feeling my wholeness distinctly is so vital and important. Especially as I accept how independent this year is. oh my god!!!!!!!!! It’s insane! It is terrifying and electric and like a roller coaster in my belly.

Sorry this was a long post — I want to do them more frequently so they won’t be so long…these days I crave the feeling of connection to home, as I simultaneously pulse forward with uncontrollable speed.
I like this:
“A real seeker loves the world so much, he loves the reflection so much, that he wants to see the original; to see the full moon in the sky.” Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Something I heard that I liked:
How do you make God laugh?
Tell Him your plans

With much love,
Annie

this book is the greatest

On trains

Hello! I havn’t posted for a while! I have been in Cambridge getting my plans together at cousin Amanda’s sanctuary appartment. I took a train up to Edinburgh and stayed there for a little while in joyful surprise… i don’t know why that city isn’t more famous in the US for its awesomeness! I went to the Edinburgh castle and lurked in thrift stores and used book stores: the capital of the world for crusty tombs of clothes and books. Then I headed to Glasgow where I am now, on my way to the Aran islands. The train up to Edinburgh had me drooling at the gorgeous scenery. Big houses dropped down on hills with the sun coming through on every other green field.. seven hours on the train and totally worth it.

Sunday I launch my island adventure! I am going to Aran island, then Iona, and then Skye on a loop back to Glasgow. Then I head down to Wales where I will stay put for a while, and then utimately head on to France!

I am going to work at a sheep farm on the Isle of Skye, through WWOOF if I can work that out. On the way Aran and Iona have several key treasures.. Aran is where they cleared all people off the isand to make way for sheep, and has the origins of the Aran patterns, and Iona has the abbey where Christianity made its very beginings in the Britsh Isles. But Wales is where the work begins and I can finally get into the making aspect of the year. Time to make stuff!!!! My artistdom is a little rusty, and connecting with different ways of being creative around the world is what I originally hoped would restart this in me. I am working my way towards that with high hopes…

I also can’t quite seem to cut the philosophy thread I had going at Bard .. I have always wanted to have time to travel through and imbibe the different philosophies of the world, so my goal is to expose myself as much as possible to them as I do my project, and maybe even morph myself a little with them as I go along. Iona’s abbey is pretty exciting to me, as well as the stone cirlces that sit near to it. What kind of philosophies were brought here and what influence did they make? This will defintey be something I keep track of all year, and especially can’t wait to get to the Buddhism and Hinduism of Asia.

More later after my island adventure!

I miss all of you and am awkwardly settling into the idea that this really is a year by myself. Oof. wow. It’s getting hard!! But I gotta just keep going! it’s insane, its really insane. And I don’t really know how to do so much of what I am doing. It’s a really steep learning curve– hostels, train stations, being sick, eating on the go, always planning the next step…but amazing. Moving from one place to the next on a quick decision kind of feels like flying!

Much love and more than a litte homesickness,

Annie

Here are some pics!

Cambridge dreams

Edinburgh

The Westfjords

I spent the last week in the Westfjords, the most remote region of Iceland. Apparently only three percent of Iceland’s tourists make it up there because the terrain is so impossible. I went with an interest in the towns… I have never seen communities so untouched. The Westfjords are very close to the edge of the arctic circle, and yet towns still function nestled im this absolutely insane landscape.

For a few days I was in a fishing town of only 700 people called Bildulaur, talking to people – women – about why they carry on their traditions of knitting, and what they were. This seemed an odd question to them; there had been litte to no disturbance in their lifestyle for hundreds of years. Amazing. Every day all of the fishermen would eat at the one cafe for lunch. So everyday it was me and a townsworth of fishermen in this tiny room eating stew and drinking coke. i loved it.

I continued even farther north, and settled in a beautiful fjord near a popularly visited waterfall, so that I would have a way out. I loved that set of days most of all. I climbed up the side of the waterfall to the top ring of the fjord and was able to travel around its edge, seeing all the waterfalls. The water comes straight from the glaciers so you can drink from it directly. I hiked all day and knit myself some socks in the traditional Icelandic style. In such a barren landscape it really does feel vital to make something and this is something I wanted to experience for myself.

I concluded while I was up there that Iceland produces an undeniable freedom. Despite heather and moss, there are no trees or plants in Iceland, and no animals! sheep and horses, but no wild animals. This creates a timelessness, since there is no circle of life and death that you can percieve. The stillness of the landscape, combined with the fact that when night comes darkness does not, produced in me this amazing feeling that I was an exception to time altogether. Being in that world alone everyday stretched me out and challlenged me in every way. I was forced to be rid of so many of so many things, because I didn’t even have the regualrity of day and night or the familiarity of trees and plants to hold on to. It was absolutely amazing. And that whole communities live without these things…without a community myself I felt neary like a wild animal by the end of it.

Yesterday I flew into Dublin Ireland and will be here a few days gathering my plans for my next move. On the bus into Dublin I couldn’t stop  smiling… after being in a place where there are no trees, no variety in the metal architecture, and almost no sunshine, the romantic brick dilapidation of Dublin in August brightened me right up and turned me human again. Moving down from the arctic circle, I feel like I am slowly and deliberately entering the world again. And I am so happy to be entering it!

Here is a picture of a picture of the town I was in. Such insane landscape!!!

My campsite

my Icelandic socks

on the ferry down

Goodbye to Iceland! to a tent cocoon lit up inside from a 1 am sun, to layers of coats and an icy wind on my face, to the greatest concentration of purity I will likely ever experience in my life.

I willl miss you

Volcanoes

I have been camping solo in Iceand for the last six days! I have been moving up the west coast to find someone they call the Snaefellsnes wool woman. It has taken me longer than I thought to find her, but  am finally camped near her farm, next to a horse barn that has internet.

These five days have been the most intense camping I think I have ever done. It took me a while in Reykjavik to make sure I had all the right gear for the wind. I have been ‘wildcamping,’ which allows me total freedom choosing where to sleep, which I love.

I came expecting natural beauty, but what I have seen, and spent the night with, is unike anything I have ever seen before. It is a raw, prehistoric beauty that humbles me to the very core. I can’t try to relate to it, but rather feel like the respect I pay it is in my effort to take care of myself alone in it. Somehow that creates a kind of stubborn comradery between us.

It was a surprising relief when I arrived at the sheep and horse barns, since the presense of animals, on the edge of shockingy steep mountains, softens me again. Today I helped brush the horses and bring them to their respective fields, and learned that these are a few domestic horses out of hundreds of wild horses in the mountains I am camped on. I like knowing they are there.

I am tired from walking and feel extremely isolated, but also feel that some balance in me is deepy right.

I havn’t had to use my headlamp all week, and can set up my tent at two in the morning; It is the blue hour for twelve hours straight; Apparently I am near where Journey to the Center of the Earth begins. I love that

more to come! With shock and deep admiration,

Annie

me wrestling with my tent

People traveling by took this picture of me