My feet are soaked!!

Currently, St. Louis is being showered by enormous drops of rain! The gutters are overflowing and swimming pools are being created in my own backyard (parking lot)! It's a gorgeous rainy day and, now that I'm seated in my room, I'm so thankful I ran most of my outdoor errands before the real weather party began.

Okay so here's the funny thing... my birthday was March 27 (Tuesday). Last weekend my sister, Sydney, flew in from Kentucky for a visit. She came bearing gifts-one I have still yet to see (ahem) and one in which was a super-light, hardcore, stylish, green raincoat. Since receiving the jacket, I have been carrying it everywhere in my little hand-bag. THE ONE DAY I run out of my room without my coat...oh yes...St. Louis weather laughs in my face and decides to send...not just sprinkles, but giant (as big as my fist) raindrops. All I have to say is thank goodness for my wonderful boss, Jen, who lent me her umbrella. Instead of getting completely drenched, only my flip-flop wearing feet enjoyed the pleasure of becoming wrinkled raisin skin.

So...I may be exaggerating a little about the weather today, simply because I regret not having my raincoat on hand at the perfect moment. I know I'll have plenty of time in the very near future to test out my coats abilities. In fact, I cannot wait to test it out! I love rain. Morning sprinkles, summer thunderstorms, splashing puddles, spring showers, frosty winter sleet...I heart it all. Today has become one of those thunderstorm days, which has kept me from taking a walk around the neighborhood, but it is lovely to watch and listen to. Of course when the four of us are out on our big journey we'll have to stop for storms and it's actually something I'm looking forward to. With all the running around at school and work right now, I imagine watching the sunset every evening, the sunrise most days and listening the the rain fall will not be a bother, but an uplifting experience to put up with for six months. I only pray that all will go well, because after all, we are at the mercy of the weather for this trip. Thank God for raincoats eh?

The Difference of Seven Years

It's definitely been a long time since I've done any serious hiking.

I figured, it's only been seven years since Scouts, how hard can it be? I was only 14 then, when my troop and I spent two weeks backpacking through the mountains of New Mexico. I'm 21 now. Surely I can handle it.

Let me tell you something. Seven years can make all the difference in the world.

Perhaps I was a bit overzealous in putting weight on my back. I loaded my pack up with a copy of The Iliad and the Oddyssey, a few of my mother's heavy Bible commentaries, towels, clothes, a sleeping bag, water, and so on. I never actually weighed how much I was carrying, but by the time we were walking home from church, a lot of other options of what we should call ourselves flashed across my mind: 8 Tired Feet, 8 Aching Feet, 8 Blistering Feet. 8 Sore Calves. 4 Really Really Thirsty and Tired People.

This is definitely going to be a much larger physcial challenge than I originally anticipated. But I suppose nothing worth having in life ever comes easy, right?

The one thing keeping me going right now is the overwhelming support we've been getting from...everywhere. Not too long ago we were contacted by a couple, Rick and Jane McKinney, from Our Heart ministries in Harrison, Ohio. The McKinneys walked across America last year as part of their ministry. Already they have offered us invaluable advice and support, not the least of which is offering to pray for us each day, and I'm really looking forward to getting to know them more as our walk continues. Abby Heft, a Webster PR student, is writing us a press release for the local St. Louis media and for the media in our hometowns. Our school newspaper has caught wind of our project and is running a story on us. A teen theater organization in Springfield is thinking of hosting a fundraiser for us.

But the best part of all is we met with our film professor and it seems like we're going to be able to work everything out with our school credits. He told us that our Film II project has come along very nicely, and we're almost done with it. All that's left is to finish up some sound work.

I guess all that's left for me worry about is money. I know that we're going to need money, and a lot of it. Where it's going to come from, how we're going to get it, is still to be determined. All I know is that if the rate of support we've already gotten continues to grow like I expect it will, we will have nothing to worry about at any step of the way.

I just need to learn to pack lighter, that's all.

the burn

For me, it starts in my shins.
Old shin splints flare up whenever I press them too hard. Suprisingly, never when I am dancing, only when the pounding of my feet on the pavement becomes soothing in its rhythm.
Then it's in my calves.
We learned in anatomy today all of the muscles in the calve. Mostly I feel it in my soleus and my gastrocnemius.
The tingling pushes me farther.
Depending on if I stretched or not I feel it behind the knee. A tightness and pulling as my knee bends and extends, each step advancing me.
My hamstrings start to itch from the friction of contracting and releasing. The heat warms me as I walk in the cool evening.
And if it makes it up into my stomach, deep into my stomach, I know I've made it.

We've been walking places, getting up our stamina, testing the water. Seeing what problems we encounter and what we need. We haven't yet walked all together, I've been out of town and our school schedules are a little complicated.
But each of us still walks when we can (see jonathan's previous entry). Walking feels good on my body. To be moving all the time. Sometimes I don't walk with a destination in mind, just where my heart leads me. I like to look around and see how the world changes, and how this moment in time is completely special. Never again the same people, the same clouds, the same flowers, the same air being in that same place at the same time. I'm romanced with the world around me.

We walk...

So we've been back to school now. I for one have no desire to continue studying at the present moment and if I had a ticket in my hand or had gotten around to changing the oil in my car over break, I would be on my way to Oregon getting this thing underway. Matt found out over break that the two of us still need to get a tent, other wise we will be making lean-tos across America. While that sounds really exciting I'd much rather enjoy the comfort of a regular tent. So I've been jumping around on-line to figure out our best options. I think I'm going to call Lauren's mother to see what she has learnt in her endevours.
We walked home from church Sunday. 3.79 miles from church to school and we did it in an hour and a half. Matt had walked to church that morning and Lauren and I joined him on the way back. Funny enough I had to get a ride back to pick up my car but it was good practice none the less. We plan on making a regular thing of it, since Katelyn was out of town last week. We are loading up our packs to get used to carrying the load. Poor Matt went overboard I think and was in pain the following day.
I'm signing off. Hope all are well. We are looking into getting a bank account and then a PayPal account so people can donate money via PayPal or check. Ok I'm done. Love, peace

Springtime for Webster

Well, Spring Break has come and gone, and of course for us the word "break" was a relative term.

The greatest thing so far has been the change in the weather. Last week, for the first time in a really long time, I was able to wear shorts and a T-shirt outside. I really love warm weather. Winter I don't handle as well - I can tell you I'm not particularly looking forward to the latter half of our trek, when things will turn colder.

We all had things we worked to accomplish over break, and besides my personal stuff (finish reading Catch-22, start some comic books, catch up on some writing, clean my room, etc.) I spent the greater part of the week at school continuing to edit my and Lauren's Film II project. It's a short, 5-minute flick we both wrote and shot together last semester (with the amazing Jonathan on sound), and this semester we're editing it as part of a post-production class.

Working on our Film II has been both a blessing and a curse. It has definitely been a learning process, and like all learning processes, you learn both things you got right and things you wish to heck you had done a lot differently. I think it's safe to say that we are finally getting our film to a place that we both like, but the hardest part has been trying to maintain focus on this smaller project while also trying to get everything together for our next, much larger project.

It's been a good exercise in patience and taking things one step at a time. Our film teachers have repeatedly told us to focus on our Film II before we worry too much about our senior overview, and at first it was frustrating because I didn't understand why. Now I see that there's a certain order to the way things have been set before us, and certain tasks that need attention here and now before we can let our minds be completely in the walk, in the future.

Impatience; it's one of my worst struggles. It's not easy to not be worried about the walk all the time. It's a constant battle every day for me to focus on other things, like being a good RA and doing homework, things that I know are important and things I don't want to wish away too fast because I'm so impatient for the future to get here. Because then I worry, when it does come, am I only going to be worrying about what's going to come after that?

It's like that guy in that Sunscreen song says: "Don't worry about the future, or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum." I've never been very good at algebra, and I'm not a big gum chewer, but I understand the point he's making. It reminds me of the part of the Bible where Jesus tells us to calm down and let tomorrow worry about itself, because today has enough trouble of its own.

Ahhh, how true that is. Tomorrow (or later today rather) Lauren and I are screening the cut of our film before the entire class, and it's the last one we get before we unveil our finished product at the end of semester. Hopefully, it'll be good enough that our teachers will see how much work we've done on it and they'll be ready to help us get going on pre-production for our documentary, which we need to start soon.

As of now, the semester ends in eight weeks. The walk begins two weeks after that. One day at a time, everyone, one day at a time...