I Saw Ben Gross

Today I went on a field trip out and about in Berkeley, walking in the warm midday sunshine to the Goodwill for overalls to take back to camp and then on to the Cheeseboard to buy a challah for Shabbat dinner. Ducking into Village Grounds on Shattuck for a quick afternoon pick-me-up in the form of an iced latte, I was completely stunned to look up from paying and randomly see Ben Gross standing in the street talking on the phone.

Ben Gross is part of Matt's posse, one of the many people I met back in the dot-com millionaire days when we first moved to San Francisco in August 1999. Ben, Alan with the constant stream of Eurotrash girlfriends, the three guys with the exact same first name who all lived together at Casa Dave down in Mountain View, the ever-vague and constantly-pallid Luke, my oldest friend Jonathan who invited me up from Morgan Hill to a movie screening in an abandoned military hangar on Moffitt Air Force Base and later to a barbecue at the house he owns in San Jose, Mark and Elliot from the San Francisco office of Internet start-up #4 which was the company whose crash and burn sent us to Europe for five weeks in the summer of 2002, and of course the absolutely legendary Jim Browne who denies his conspiracy theorist identity and would hate with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns the fact that I have published his first and last name together on the Internet...they are all part of that crew and there were not many girls, not at the beginning anyway, only three of us to start with: Jen, Jillian, and me and for some reason Ben Gross and I had a now-long-forgotten disagreement which led to me teasing him on every eVite for the next eight years that I would only come to whatever SOMA-loft party it was "...if Ben Gross is going to be there."

Finally last fall while having brunch with everyone at Matt's house Ben asked me what it was that started us off on our adversarial path, what we've been un-fighting about for so long. I could not even remember and I told him as much. He could not remember either. Since then it has been much more comfortable between us and he has been giving me nice hugs at brunches and birthday parties. So when I saw him outside the cafe I paid for my drink and ran out into the street, hoping to say hello now that we actually get along but finally walking away in frustration once I realized he was nowhere to be found. Just as I was sending Matt SMS to ask for Ben's phone number, Ben himself re-emerged from the cafe where he had gone inside to look for me just as I had come out to look for him. We spent the next forty-five minutes talking about everything from Skype to Amsterdam and in the end I was the lucky recipient of one of the now-legendary Ben Gross hugs before we parted ways.

Small Bay Area world...

There's No Place Like San Francisco

Today Rebecca and I rode the BART to the city so she could do wedding errands and I could freshen up my summer wardrobe by purchasing fifteen new versions of my favorite tank top at H&M. It was the first time I'd been to the city since leaving six weeks ago and after we went to try on her dress at the very grown-up gallery on Maiden Lane, my heart sunk more than just a little bit when we made our way back into the Metro station and I saw that the next N-Judah outbound was only six minutes away.

Do I really not live here anymore?

My mood lifted once we got home and Mark suggested we go out and have a fun dinner as a special treat. Sushi at Chaya followed by the two of us going on a wild goose chase for Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, all of us together curled up in the living room wearing pajamas to watch Best in Show...I was a little homesick, or more accurately pastsick, for my old apartment at 1000 Judah and my usual job at Brandeis and my truest of friends who are here at sea level while I am up in the mountains, but it turned out to be nothing a little ice cream couldn't cure.

Going Home

A series of incredible events just fell into place, the combination of which means I am leaving in about an hour and a half to go back to Berkeley for almost five days. I can't wait to see what this rush packing job looks like, seriously...

The break between this session of camp and the next does not start until Friday at 2 p.m. but my time off begins Wednesday night at six so I've been trying--unsuccessfully until today--to find a ride back to the Bay Area with anyone who's leaving camp early. This morning I heard of someone who's actually going late late tonight and after talking with the director at dinner, my arrangements to take an extra day off unpaid and leave for the East Bay with Jackie are all set.

Over last session break, on July 5th, I was rearended on the freeway while driving a car I was borrowing for part of the summer while its owner was out of the country. Only yesterday was the authorization finally given for me for me to begin the repair process as part of the insurance claim so I need to be in town during the business day/week to make that happen. For that reason, and also because I am filthy in the way only an actual bathtub can cure plus have overwhelming amounts of errands to run and am really very friendsick for my three closest pals left behind in the Bay Area, I am totally psyched to be getting out of here. Rebecca, get my bedroom ready--Aubrie, clear your playdate calendar--Batshir, save me a seat at Saturday morning services. I am coming home :)

Tisha B'Av Is No Fun

Tomorrow night at camp we will be observing the Jewish un-holiday of Tisha B'Av, the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av. This is a day on or around which anywhere from six to countless (depending on the source you consult) horrific events in Jewish history took place, including but not limited to:

*the destruction of the First Temple
*the destruction of the Second Temple
*the Spanish Inquisition and resulting Jewish exile
*the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
*the start of the second intifadah
*the Lebanon war

Just when Shabbat was over and I thought I would have a moment to catch my breath I realized that this observance will be taking place and that I will need to plan and execute a 90-minute, age-appropriate, engaging program on this overwhelmingly devastating topic. That's my project for today. Very appropriately, the weather here in Yosemite is not the standard mid-July hot and sunny but rather is cold, humid, and overcast. Even the sky has a heavy heart today it seems...

A Different Kind of Teaching

Today at Shabbat morning services in ha makom shalom, the place of peace which serves as our outdoor amphitheatre and sanctuary, I did a very different kind of teaching for the first time in my life. Instead of revealing the secrets of the numerator and its downstairs neighbor the denominator, instead of presenting the finer points of the Nifty Fifty, I stood up in front of more than 300 people including our camp's Board of Directors who are here for the weekend visiting and I taught from the Torah.

I had campers and adults alike come up to do a role play (only one of whom was a plant and the rest of whom were actual uncoached volunteers), I spoke in English and in Hebrew, I connected the lives and events and experiences of Moses and the Israelites to those of us in modern times, in this community. I was wholeheartedly confident and I was nauseatingly terrified. I am actually not even totally sure, despite my diligently-prepared notecards and numerous rehearsals everywhere from the shower to the breakfast line, what I said but I do know that afterwards someone came up to me and offered the following feedback:

"Thank you for your teaching this morning-I love the ways you make Judaism make sense to me. I usually hate the Jewish parts of camp but this summer and I know now that before none of it ever was anything I could understand or relate to. This year I am shocked by how much I like all of it and I think a big part of it is what and how you teach because for the first time I can see how this is really more than the strict, boring religion that was shoved down my throat as a kid. Now I can see that Judaism is really a living thing, and I am part of it and it is part of me."

Not that learning about the numerator and denominator isn't important, but wow. I am sure this person's perceptions are much more the result of their own insight and openness than of my teaching but hearing that anything I did facilitated a new and different understanding such as this one is both motivating and humbling.

Cairns At The River

Today I walked with Deborah down the steep hill behind my camp house all the way to the river, across the swaying floating bridge, and north off of camp property to a small sandy beach. There next to the water, piled atop the rocky granite boulders that jut forth from the dusty earth everywhere at camp, were countless cairns. Piles of rocks, one after another--small and large stones, short and tall piles, wobbly and stable testaments to those who had come to build them, to dip their toes or their whole selves in the flow of the Tuolumne, and had left these markers of trails and paths and lives as their legacy before departing.

I photographed every one I could find, wide angle and tightly zoomed in, with lush backgrounds of branches leaves trees water and with just the rock on which they were perched to show them off. They reminded me of the surprise cairns Sarah and I were delighted to find hidden away beneath the base of the bridge at Esalen, just below the side that leads from the round meditation room to the art barn, the ones by which we had a stranger take our picture--one of a set of pictures from Pesach, Santa Barbara, and Big Sur that I never saw after they were developed.

While Deborah played in the river and told me stories I slipped and slid back and forth on the "slick as snot on linoleum" rocks, trying to maintain my three points of contact at all time which is hard with a handful of stones. Finding just the right ones I constructed my own cairn balanced on the jagged edge of one half of a pair of boulders, once all the same rock but now split in two with an empty inch of air down the middle, sheared apart by the movement of the earth centuries ago.

As we hiked back up the hill, the one that no matter how many times I climb it always takes my breath away in its steepness, I thought about this new cairn and the others from my past that have shown me my way and brought me to this place...shehechiyanu, v kimanu, v higiyanu, l'hazman hazeh. Why is it so much easier to see where cairns have brought you than where they are taking you? That is part of what defines them I suppose.

30 hours=1 day

Every week at camp, I get one 30-hour period of time off. In the second session I did not use my time off until the very end when I added the 30 hours to the weekend-long session break and was able to spend almost four whole days in Berkeley with Rebecca, Mark, Aubrie, Wes, and Sofia. Except for the sinus infection and being rear-ended on the freeway while driving someone else's car it was a great weekend...

Now it is the middle of third session and for my first day off I went with my two housemates, Jessica the social worker and Sharon the nurse, to camp in Tuolumne Meadows with a group of Sharon's friends. We got to the campsite long after dark but pitched our tent with ease and exhausted, I went to sleep after meeting everyone and a round of camping-style bedtime snacks while the rest of the group stayed up telling stories. The temperature, according to my alarm clock thermometer, was 23 degrees Fahrenheit and I drifted off to sleep I felt mildly victorious in my choice, despite the jeers and teasing of my friends, to bring my 20 degree bag to camp for the summer instead of something lighter.

The next morning after a lot of very slow breakfast preparation we set out across the meadow to the base of Lembert Dome, elevation 9,450 feet, and spent the next hours hiking to the summit and then as a reward afterwards lying around on the shores of Dog Lake. We made our way back down but not before meeting a couple on their way to the top, ages 79 and 80, who regaled us with tales of hikes they've made throughout the Western Hemisphere including one in Canada eight years ago which began with them being dropped off on a mountainside by a helicopter.

A dinner of barbecued Korean beef and grilled fresh sweet corn later, plus two rounds of s'mores prepared by yours truly, we packed everything back into Sharon's Honda and drove home to camp and our little house on the hill by the river. I realize compared to other people's outdoor exploits this 30-hour day off was mostly unimpressive but for someone who had only ever camped one other night in her entire 33-year life I was pretty proud of myself.

All Work And No Play Makes Sarah A Dull Girl

My job here at camp for the summer is very challenging and requires boundless creativity. It is similar, in those two ways at least, to teaching Third Grade now that I actually think about it. I am the Jewish Program Director, which means I am in charge of creating a camp-wide learning theme for each Shabbat based on that week's Torah portion and then preparing each unit of about fifty campers to lead their own Kabbalat Shabbat (Friday night) service based on that theme and their own interpretations of various traditional blessings, prayers, and related texts.

In addition, I also design and teach programs related to the week's theme in various subject areas (Arts and Crafts, the Garden) to individual bunks of about twelve campers.

Plus I tell bedtime stories a few nights a week—Jewish folktales at the fire circle with milk and cookies or sometimes s'mores.

And I take groups of girls and women to the mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath, in the Tuolumne River a few times each week.

Really, none of this takes much time at all as you can imagine so I have plenty of free time to a) chill out b) enjoy camp c) do my own thing d) tie up loose ends of the life I am leaving behind for now e) plan my next great post-camp adventure e) all of the above…

Or, not so much.

For the first time since I arrived four weeks ago, I walked down to the Tuolumne River yesterday to do an art project. We hear the sound of the river every night from our camp house once the roar of the day has ended and the quiet of the evening has fallen, so I was very excited to actually see the river itself. I felt brave and slid right into the cool rushing water but as soon as I felt the school of rainbow trout swim past my legs I jumped, reminded in a very real way that everything around me here is alive. After catching my breath I spread out my materials, a large unbleached cotton bedsheet and a fistful of rubber bands, on one of the large flat mid-river grain-grinding stones left behind by the Miwok who long ago used to live in this area and set out to find the rest of my supplies.

Two hours and three dozen smooth river stones later, I had transformed my formerly-flat sheet into a huge heavy wrinkled tapestry. Laying out the stones on top of the fabric I had bound them into place, the outlines of the rocks mirrored by the shapes of the rubber bands, and was now ready for the tie-dye station at an upcoming Staff Night in Arts and Crafts. Climbing back up the hill from the riverbank to my camp house, I felt a sense of accomplishment at not only having done a very hands-on nature-based art project for the first time since the Baker Beach Seder at Pesach but also at having actually taken time off for myself. Amazing how hard it can be but how good it can feel. I think that might be one of the lessons I am meant to learn this year: how to spend time doing what I want to do. Hmm.

What's In A Name?

In August, 2006, while cleaning my classroom in preparation for the upcoming start of the new school year,I found a very retro set of sight-word flashcards left over from an old reading curriculum, long since abandoned in favor of my contemporary techniques for literacy instruction. The cards were about six by eight inches, laminated, and printed in classic Zaner-Bloser ball-and-stick font, one word to a page.

Shortly after being unearthed, these word cards became the medium for a creative but perhaps ultimately overwhelming art project that I gave as a gift to a new friend. In the months that followed, as the school year went on, I would pull out one or a few as necessary to make succinct points about various things to my family, my friends, and my loved ones—almost always to express adoration and affection, but on rare occasion to share sorrow or frustration. This form of communication taught me a lot about the power of a single word, a handful of syllables, to express a complex message.

Just about six weeks ago now, while cleaning my classroom and packing up all my personal materials accumulated within those four walls over the past five years, I found my box of word cards once again. Flipping through, I looked for some unique combination that could communicate the essence of what feels like this new chapter in my life. I found the three I wanted almost instantly and left them, as I had many other notes cards letters pictures gifts and special treats over the course of the year, in the mailbox of that same friend to whom I had given the first word card art project. She had already checked out of school for the summer, left her classroom to rest from all the teaching it had hosted and learning it had harbored over the past months, and so I knew she would not find my message until she comes back this August to prepare for the beginning of another new and promising year.

By the time she finds this last collection of cards, once she reads the three-word message I left behind as my note-passing legacy, I will truly be

gone

away

somewhere

One Month Later

Today is Sunday, July 15, 2007 and I am at Camp Tawonga, seven miles outside of Yosemite National Park in northern California. During the past month I have finally slept for the first time in four years and I have become dirtier than ever before in my life. My skin is brown and my hair is long, my diet is vegetarian and I am older than almost everyone else with whom I work by at least ten years. My days are full of sage-scented air and my nights are marked by star-strewn skies.

While I am making every effort to adapt to this new environment, I still have a long way to go.

They say you can take the girl out of the city but you can't take the city out of the girl, and so far that has proven true...for as much as I've adapted, I still long for take-out sushi from Ebisu and the opportunity to walk eight blocks to Crossroads when I need a little recycled-clothing pick-me-up. But I have also learned the names of native plants and countless constellations, I have spent hours studying Torah in preparation for teaching it to others. I have worn strangers' swimsuits dug out of the Lost and Found, I have eaten food that has fallen off my plate into the dirt and none of those are things I'd have even considered trying before a month ago today.

This year is off to a good brave adventurous honest start.

One Girl, One Year, One World: The Backstory

Six weeks ago I made the decision to completely transform the life I had made for myself. After twelve years of full-time classroom teaching, two rounds of graduate school, and six years in Third Grade I applied for and was granted a year-long sabbatical from my school. I signed away the title of my decade-old Saturn to a towing-company employee named Walter underneath a freeway overpass one Friday night, I moved out of the stylish well-priced apartment in my cute San Francisco neighborhood, I put everything I own into storage with the exception of two duffels filled with playclothes and sunscreen shoved into the back of a borrowed Subaru, I spent time everywhere from coffee shops to sushi bars to the American terminal at SFO saying farewell to my dearest friends, and I am off to travel the world.

Ever since I met Zack and heard his stories of years overseas I knew I would do it; I just never knew when or with whom. Should I have gone earlier, should I have waited longer? Should I take someone with me, should I go alone? I wrestled with all these questions and finally realized Amanda was right when she taught me that each of us does things when we are ready. Sitting in the car on May 31st outside the Merced branch of the San Francisco public library as day turned to evening and the fog swirled around us, Aubrie’s fresh new mall haircut representing victory and with a few Mrs. Field’s cookies in my belly to fuel my decision-making process, I knew I was ready to go and here now a month and a half later I find myself in the mountains of Yosemite. It is the first stop along the path of a year-long journey, my home for now and a baby step away from my life the past eight years in San Francisco. I will be here for two months, and after that? It is, as Aeli says, not yet clear, but I am sure something will happen, I am confident my next destination will present itself, and I plan to keep you posted along the way.