{"id":1089,"date":"2021-12-20T09:00:46","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T14:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/?page_id=1089"},"modified":"2021-12-22T10:34:42","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T15:34:42","slug":"the-gentle-awe-of-lands-unknown-and-roads-untraveled","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/2021-writing\/the-gentle-awe-of-lands-unknown-and-roads-untraveled\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gentle Awe of Lands Unknown and Roads Untraveled"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><meta charset=\"utf-8\">By Ashlee Harden | Conservation Biology | Class of 2023<br><strong>Education Abroad Program<\/strong>: Global Field Program &#8211; Baja, Summer 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cStill around the corner, there may wait, a new road, or a secret gate\u201d &#8211; J.R.R Tolkien<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This quote from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien sums up the powerful feelings conjured by the roads we traveled, and the life renewed in what I thought was a simple excursion to fulfill my master\u2019s degree requirement.&nbsp; How wrong I was!&nbsp; The call of places unknown has always been a part of me, a wanderlust and a bird of passage, eagerly looking around the corner for my next travel adventure.&nbsp; To far flung places I have traveled before, changing me for the better with each step I took away from the everyday life of a mother, wife, and a teacher.&nbsp; But, I had no idea what Baja had in store for me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is hard to explain Baja to any fellow human who had not been there.&nbsp; How do you explain the intense peacefulness of waking up on the beach, the cool breezes and soft waves, gently jostling you awake, the almost painful beauty of the sun rising over the distant, desert mountains, creating shades of pink, orange, and purple in the morning sky?&nbsp; How do you tell of the hot days of constant sweat rolling down your back while you laugh with new friends, no one caring in the slightest about what was happening in the rest of the world at that moment?&nbsp; It was just Baja, we were just Baja.&nbsp; It was whale sharks, blue-footed boobies, and hermit crabs.&nbsp; It was the people who sat beside you there in that moment that mattered.&nbsp; The shared love of the peace of that place, and the awe of the ecology in which we now lived.&nbsp; It was the music and smell of cooking dancing out of the kitchen,&nbsp; the cold, soothing ocean water, the laughter of the Adventureros playing in the surf, and conversations had by people who had not known each other a few days ago, but now seemed like family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How does the story go when you explain to someone who wasn\u2019t there what it was like to climb up into a desert canyon in the early morning hours, with the family who had lived there for generations?&nbsp; To listen to the lovely stories of lives, laughter, and shared memories that still echo in the ruins of the old ranch among the valley of the birds.&nbsp; These memories, which inspired the \u201cEl Canto de la Tierra\u201d, placed now the song of the Earth inside the soul of each person who was there, to live there forever whether we are to step back on that soil one day or not.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How too does one explain what it is like to jump, unknowing, into the deep, blue sea?&nbsp; To swim with majestic whale sharks, inquisitive dolphins, wary sea lions, and swarming rays?&nbsp; How do I make someone feel the excitement of seeing a scorpion glowing green in the night?&nbsp; How, dear friends, do I relate how it felt to lay on a cot, in the pitch black desert night, listening with relish, to the sounds of the tiny bats chirping overhead against the backdrop of the milky way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I fear that story can never really be told. It belongs now to those of us who were lucky enough to find each other there in that place, in that moment of time.&nbsp; I\u2019ve brought back with me an insatiable passion for ecology, now focused through a different lens.&nbsp; I reflect back on the love of land by the people who lived there and their deep desire to showcase how much they loved their homeland, and how they will spend their lives working to protect it, in every way a place needs protecting.&nbsp; Each night, as I try to shake off the long list of things I have yet to do, the worries yet to be absolved, the goals yet to be fulfilled, I close my eyes and think of Baja.&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I stood then, in quiet awe of how lucky I was to experience this place, meet these people, and travel these roads.&nbsp; I look now over the horizon to the next adventure, the next road yet untraveled, the gate yet unopened.&nbsp; To embrace my natural need for wanderlust, and to do that in service of saving this beautiful place in the universe we call home.&nbsp; Our bodies may have not been born in Baja, but a piece of our souls were born to Baja that summer.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Into the sea, love<br>Desert time held still and calm&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>Once again I will go<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ashlee Harden | Conservation Biology | Class of 2023Education Abroad Program: Global Field Program &#8211; Baja, Summer 2020 \u201cStill around the corner, there may wait, a new road, or a secret gate\u201d &#8211; J.R.R Tolkien This quote from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien sums up the powerful feelings conjured by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":571,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1089","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1089\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/international-education-week-contest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}