Life is life

 First, a brief update on the tail end of my ride...

Meeting up with my family on the last few days of my ride, in Greenfield Massachusettes, at my Grandmother's house, was fantastic, and my mom biked with me for the last few days on the way home. She was incredible, and wouldn't stop saying how surprised she was to be biking 30, then 50, then 65 mile days. We stopped at the Kroka Vermont semester graduation in Marlow, NH, on the way back, which was a perfect way to bring the ride to a close and reconnect with the people that inspired it in the first place. 

It has been four months and six days since I last wrote, roughly the same amount of time I was on tour for. It's a strange thing to think about, but the truth is, my life has been just as fulfilling in these last four months as it was during the time that I was biking. Though I've been doing the least unusual things I could possibly be doing, working during the summer, and now studying at the University of Vermont, I have come to appreciate the way in which many of the beautiful principles of human kindness exist everywhere, not only on rain drenched nights in Eastern Tennessee when the only camping option is swamp. 

And yes, the speech did eventually get written. 

Over the summer, I spent a lot of time with two little girls who live down the road from me. We went to horse camp with our neighbor Nancy some weeks, and other times we had the week to ourselves. We swam a lot, made fairy houses, and even spent a few nights out on the Green River Reservoir. The time I spent with them was an extremely valuable lesson for me in the enormous amount of energy it takes to be a parent (or at least a substitute parent) as well as complete joy. We had so much fun together, the girls' parents paid me well, so I was able to make a decent amount of money this summer between babysitting, gardening, house cleaning, and other odd jobs. 

I was also able to participate in most of the Village Harmony Session II touring camp, interning as a food coordinator in exchange for tuition, which was a complete joy. Village Harmony is a world music singing camp that I have done for seven summers now. It is such an important part of my life, and I have had the wonderful opportunity to work for the organization as a food coordinator/chef/odds and ends person the past two summers which has been a real gift because I would not have been able to afford to go either summer. 

Home sweet home...the beaver pond by our house. 

Between working as much as I possibly could, Village Harmony, and a brief trip to Acadia with my family at the tail end of the summer, my first days at the University of Vermont came up quickly. It has been an odd but relatively smooth transition into college, though being a part of an institution that is very much a corporation has been difficult. I am in the Rubenstein School for the Environment and Natural Resources which is fabulous, the mission of the school really resonates with me and I have a few particularly wonderful professors from the school. 

I am taking Natural History and Field Ecology, Race, Culture and the Environment, Accelerated Biology, Fundamentals of Calculus, The Pursuit of Knowledge, Music in Live Performance, and Orchestra, which is kind of a lot of classes to be taking. It means that I have to plan my time very carefully and spend most of my day doing schoolwork, which is a bummer when it is beautiful out and my bike is feeling lonely. Nevertheless, the coursework has been engaging and I am glad to be doing it. 

In short, I am glad to be where I am in my life right now, and I thought I ought to let y'all know since I have been silent since the end of my bike tour. 

Peace, love, and simple joy,

Sonya