The Great Pacific Northwest and YOU!

It just dawned on me last night. I'm leaving. Soon. Real soon. So soon that in 24 days, at approximately 5 p.m. I will hop into my Tacoma, truck packed, grandma in the front seat (We'll be dropping her off at my aunt's house in Central Cali) my dad sitting shot gun, and me driving, probably merging onto the 8 west then taking the 5 north all the way up. In two days, my dad and I will have arrived in the parking lot of a hotel in Mt. Vernon, Wa; my new home for the next 16 weeks.

About one year ago, I was doing the same thing. Except I was leaving for Washington, D.C. instead of the STATE. And instead of driving I was packing two large brown boxes and two large suitcases full of clothes, shoes, books, and anything else I would need for four months.

As I look back on where I was a year ago and as well as who I was, I am baffled at the fact that I will be going up 2,000+ miles north. In a sense, if I hadn't have gone to D.C., I wouldn't be packing up my room, deciding on what books to put in storage and what books to bring (I always do this since I think I will have time to read or reread books I own, HA!)If I didn't go to D.C. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today, but I wonder what I would be doing.

I would probably be graduating from PLNU this spring with all my other friends. I probably would be adding another internship to the list of internships I have, either with the UT or with some magazine (since print is dying off...) I probably would be going back to school for another degree since I would probably get tired of working for a magazine and want to venture into a major that I tried to do while at PLNU but was talked into and negotiated to stay with journalism. I probably would stay in San Diego for a while. I would be surfing everyday, staying in a climate where it's 70 degrees year round, no snow, little rain.

But I'm not.

I'm glad.

I think D.C. was the catalyst in the journey I'm on right now. Sure I suffered four months of cold weather, lack of foliage, NO surf. But I think it helped me and has shaped me and directed me into who I am as I type out this blog. Sure I'm over journalism as a career. But I am going into a field where journalistic qualities (reporting, interviewing, observing) are very important to my job, to my career. I find protecting giant redwoods, endangered tortoises, and sensitive rivers to be the reason why I wake up every morning. I want this to be here for myself and others to enjoy, to future generations to enjoy. Sure writing about it is pretty important, but I have found myself drawn to the actual enforcing part of the process than then final leg of writing about it. I'm a doer.

As I start academy on January 4th, and as I sit next to my future partners and protectors of such a sacred resource, I will quietly think to myself of where I have been, where I'm going to be and where I might have been if it was not for D.C. I will ponder on where I will be more...

Zion, Yosemite, Grand Canyon....can't complain about those being my new office and home.