IKAYAK

Kayaking has been my new challenge lately. I have no trouble white-water rafting or canoeing, but I have always struggled in this sport. I have done a few day trips on rivers in Fl and Ga. I hope to do one in the next year in Tn. I feel lazy sometimes because it is a sitting down sport. I forget that every time I come off the river, I am still covered in sweat and swamp muck with bruises and scratches, and it is never as easy getting the boat out of the water as it was putting it in.

Barefoot Lady

So this is home for me; sandy toes.

I am truly a southerner when it comes to shoes and my lack-there-of in most places. Every beach I visit, I take the same picture and add to the collection of sand in the floorboard of my car. 

Besides barefoot beach days, or walks down a gravel drive to get the mail, I am also a sort of 'barefoot' runner. I recently ran a 5k in my vibrams and it was amazing. I'll never run in tennis shoes again. It was my FIRST 5k and a pretty amazing experience. For not being much of a runner (I'm more of a walker), I did really well. Now onto a half marathon!!! 

 

(nearly wiping out on one of the obstacles) 

Sweet Georgia Air

Sometimes I feel like people don't get me, and by sometimes, I mean all the time (sorry I am always this cliche'). I was sitting on my patio this evening enjoying the fall air and the smell of fireplaces in the night sky. It reminded me one of the reasons I moved up here. I live just outside of the mountains here in the south. It is the most incredible thing to experience the seasons. We didn't have that kind of thing by the beach growing up. Today I had been working in the theatre at the school with the lighting designer. I noticed how very minuscule details made a big difference in the emotion and feeling of a scene. I've studied music my whole life and understand the concept as applying to that, but with lighting it is challenging me to really use my eyes to determine and create beauty, when that never has been my strong suit. In music you hear it, and you feel it. My body responds to it. I dance, I sing, and I get chills. When I am somewhere in nature truly beautiful, for me, it's still not my eyes that capture it the best. Sound always hits me first. The silence of the woods, the trickle of a mountain stream, the roar of the ocean. Then the feel of it. Cold mountain air. It is crisp and you can physically feel how clean it is. Or, the stickiness of the sea breeze. The feel of the salt and sand sticking to your skin as the sun warms you, and in contrast the cool sand during the morning and night hours. Lastly, I can smell the beauty. The smell of ocean water brings me home. My favorite smell, though, is that of North eastern Georgia in the fall. That mountain air gets me every time. All of these senses have always outweighed sight. Sight can be captured in a photo, but no one would ever understand the beauty of the moment without having been there to hear it, feel it, and smell it. How do you compare the beauty of an autumn leaf to the feeling of rushing down a waterfall as if it were a slide? I have found it incredibly hard to really capture the color and texture and shading with light. I have a new respect for the people that do it for a living.

Welcome!

This is my new directions blog. I recently was on the fast track career path to be a Disney Imagineer, but after a less than magical experience in the college program, I've chosen to switch lanes. Besides my prior Disney obsession, I am a nerd first and foremost. I am bored when the people who surround me do not challenge me intellectually, and when my life falls into a routine. Unfortunately as of late, it has. I go to school for audio engineering and I am minoring in theatre tech. I love the outdoors. The vacations that I brag about the most involve being outside and working for something rewarding may it be a 10 mile kayak to see a spring and some sizable alligators, off-shore fishing, climbing a mountain, or exploring random trails to find a massive waterfall at the end. My bucket-list for adventures is always growing. Once I complete something, I look for the next step up; one challenge after the next. 'To infinity, and beyond!'