Taking it One Step at a Time: Long Trail 2011

How to describe myself… I can do it in three words: teacher, farmer, and backpacker.

This past fall marked 10 years that I have been teaching college level introductory biology. Honestly, it doesn’t feel like it’s been quite that long. I never saw myself as a teacher during my younger years. I always thought I’d be a field technician of some sort. I was forced into teaching during graduate school and I LOVE IT! It felt natural and rewarding. I think everyone should be as passionately interested as I am in biology from the food you eat to the climate you live in.

Having an intimate relationship with the food that I eat was developed from birth. My parents were farmers, my parents’ parents were farmers, and so on. Simple concepts, such as, the joy and satisfaction of knowing exactly where my food came from, the labor that went into it, and the sacrifices made for meat instill a sense of appreciation for farming. I am a farmer. Even after I left my childhood farm, I continued to find ways to farm. In college, I worked at a cow dairy farm and in graduate school I worked at a goat dairy farm. Recently, I have had the opportunity to raise chickens and garden. I currently have herbs growing in windowsill containers. It’s in my blood…

…so is backpacking! My father carried me on his back through the Great Smoky Mountains before I could even walk. He taught me everything I know about backpacking in a time when external frame packs were the norm and base weights were well over double digits. He is also responsible for the obsession I have for the Appalachian Trail. I was fortunate to hike this entire trail in 2009. He followed along with me through my online trail journals. He passed unexpectedly in 2012, but his passion for the outdoors is still alive within me. I will continue to backpack. Backpacking, especially over long distances, provides me with a ruler to measure “life” and puts things in perspective. I now approach life like I do with backpacking: I take each day one step at a time.