Fit for Adventure

I joined the league of extraordinary outdoor enthusiasts.  You know them as Chaco wearers. I've purchased a lot of things in my life but none of them have ever felt quite like this.  After work today I put on my Chacos  so I could walk to the shuttle bus for the Storytelling Festival and by the time I had gotten two steps into the driveway (my first official steps since the purchase) I felt a kindred connection with my fellow Chaco-wearers. I know what you wear doesn't indicate how cool you are, but my cool status definitely went up four notches today.  Today, with my green (garden) Z2 Vibram Unaweep size 8 Chacos that came in a brown made-from-recycled-material box with the slogan "Fit for Adventure" simply bannered on the front, I became more of the person I am: a recreation graduate with sandals -a more important symbol of success than a diploma- as proof.

I got to the shuttle bus for the Storytelling Festival and ended sitting next to a man probably in his late fifties with a balding top, grey hair, and blue button up shirt.  He looked like a high school teacher who had just finished grading a few tests.  Biology, probably.  He has lived in the are for the past 25 years and no, this is not his first Storytelling Festival experience, but it has definitely been a while.  I replied with a whimsical "I'm a dedicated goer...for the past three years anyway," in just the tone you would expect from a Chaco wearer: rustic location, recycled/eco-friendly fixtures, perky-"have a nice stay, what a pleasure to meet you" desk service, and guided spelunking departing every half-hour, and napkin poetry readings on Wednesdays. (As I am now a Chaco-wearer, I better get used to sounding like a hole-in-the-wall backpacking hostel.)

The man asked me, "Are you a storyteller?"

I turned my head from him, looked out the window to the seasonal vegetable stand on the street corner, and turned back to his bespectacled eyes. "Yes.  Aren't we all storytellers." 

He sort of muttered a reply and nodded while shrugging his shoulders.

"If you keep a journal, you're a storyteller," I said.

Yesterday, in the juvenile detention center where I work, we had the Young Women volunteer group come in.  This consists of a few middle-aged ladies who come in once a week to meet with the juveniles and have some activity.  Sometimes they do Zumba or have activities related to job skills like negotiation and interviewing.  Once we had lessons in make-up.  Yesterday we had an activity for journal writing.  The volunteer leading this activity was a decade and a half younger than the average for the leaders.  She brought her collection of journals spanning from the time she was eight years old to the time she was in college.  She read a few entries and the girls on the unit ate it all up.  It made me wish - as diligent as I am about journal writing now - that I had been a dedicated writer in elementary school because the things you care about at that age are comical years later.  

The volunteers handed a journal to each girl, let them decorate it, and then had a journal writing activity.  It consisted of the volunteer saying the beginning of a sentence and the girls completing the sentence in their journals.  I played as well.

1. If I could eat anything right now, it would be.....a fruit smoothie with a heavy raspberry overtone.
2. If I could be anywhere right now I'd be.....at my family reunion spot, East Canyon, in the swimming pool and getting pruney.
3. When I was younger I used to love....Mother Theresa and dolphins.
4. Someone I love very much is......out of reach.
5. Today, I feel........productive.
6. People would describe me as........loud.
7. I think I'm good at .........teaching, connecting with youth
8. One day I would like to.....Bike Canada to Mexico.  It will happen. Mark my words.
9. In ten years, I hope that I am.....still connected to my inner-self and not think I'm cooler than I am.
10. My dream is to one day........

I left that last one blank.  I think the struggle was to narrow it down to a singular dream. I have a lot of dreams.  Many are already accomplished, most require power beyond my own or money more than is wise to spend at the moment. The running theme I find in all my dream-listing casual conversations is that I just want adventures.  I want to have adventures that are hard. I want adventures that are funny. I want adventures that are memorable. I want stories; like the stories retold in Kid History films that are just good stories to tell (albeit more adorable when told by children under seven.) I want to have crazy adventures so I can tell stories about them later or so that other people tell stories about them when they gather at the dinner table. "You just won't believe what I saw today.  I was in the elevator when there were two hooligans on pogo sticks..." I love being the topic of table conversations.

I started writing this post with the intent to make some point about how you have to have adventures to tell great stories.  But after the first day of this year's Timpanogos Storytelling Festival I already know that's not true in the least.  Stories weave throughout the mundane and idle events of our lives and - because they are woven over time - are more than any novel you could ever create.  

• We were all too afraid to pick up the cat. So we carried her on the couch cushion like a thrown.
• We had the perfect couch.  One day it was gone and replaced by a new couch. I led my siblings in the boycott against that new couch. That was twelve years ago.  We siblings still sit on the floor.
• That green, transformer box in the backyard.
• In the winters my brother would turn off the heater and crack his window open because he likes it cold.  His room was a steady fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit.  He just about died when the season turned to summer. 
• Grandpa always wore his cowboy boots.  He could be lounging in the house wearing sweats or going to church in a suit. But he always had cowboy boots on. Those boots aren't really known for good traction.
• We made forts in the family room and constructed them out of every available towel and blanket in the house.  
• My uncle tried his hand at beekeeping. 

Some stories have no ending or moral. Some aren't even that funny and especially not to people outside the family. Others are a sort of motif: making appearances at family gatherings and always received with chuckles. 

My Chacos at the Storytelling Festival.  Taken by my friend.

When I look at my life in terms of stories, foiled plots, and character development, I realize just how much my life is already is an adventure. I don't need adventures to be a storyteller.  I have adventures because I am a storyteller.