In college,
there was an unspoken rule that the summer after your junior year
was intended for an
internship
. You were supposed to find an internship
in the working world related to your studies and future occupation.
Being an English major with no real direction as far as occupation,
I decided to do something I enjoyed recreationally and maybe give
something back to the community. I felt the outdoors and scouts had
given me the most enjoyable experiences in this thing called life
and I would try to return the favor. In the career center at Penn
State I found an award winning internship program with the City of
Tacoma, Wa park service. The program took inner city
underprivledged kids from Tacoma out into the wilds of Washington
for outdoor adventures. At the very least it gave the kids a little
different perspective on what was out there.
Overall it
was kind of cool. I got to drive cross country twice (out there,
then back). I got to see and experience lots of cool things in
Washington state. And I met a few cool people. It also kind of
sucked. Seattle doesn't really have a bad part of town. Instead the
entire city of Tacoma is the bad part of Seattle(hyperdermic needles
washed up on my doorstep when it rained hard). The management I
worked for at the park service was a mess. Also my girlfriend of
four years (pam) was left back on the east coast worrying about me
the whole time.
Anyway I got to kayak, mt. bike, white water
raft, hike and camp all over the north west of Washington.
Here I
am at one of my trips to Mt. St. Helens. Mt. St. Helens is an
incredible place. I highly recommend going there to everyone. Words
simply cannot describe the scale of nature
there.
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This is from one of the white
water rafting trips I did. The girl on the far left is Jess.
She was an intern from
the northern mid-west (Wisconsin,
Minisota, etc). She was pretty cool and fun to work with. The girls
in the
foreground are some of the kids. We're all wearing
wetsuits because the river water is all sourced from
glaciers.
.
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My truck saw a lot of use that
summer. We had bike trailers, kayak trailers and general gear
trailers to
haul around on our various trips. Here it's parked
at the house I stayed at. I became a part-time bike
mechanic for
the park service that summer. They had twentyfive or so mt. bikes
that needed constant
maintenance. After every trip I'd haul them
to my place and get them all back in working
order.
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Sometimes we did trips of our
own. Here Jess, her roommate and I took some of the kayaks to
Olympia,
Wa for a little kayak adventure of our
own.
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Northwest Washington is full
of volcanoes. I think this is Mt. Adams, but could be
Ranier, Baker or even
the backside of St.
Helens.
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This is definitely the front
side of Mt. St. Helens. In the center of the crater you can see a
tiny plume of
steam
spewing.
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Another cool thing about that
summer was my childhood friend Dan ended up out there too. I
think his
original intention was to catch a fishing/crabbing
outfit headed to Alaska, but he didn't quite make it.
After
staying at the YMCA in Seatle for a few weeks, we got
together and he stayed with me for a little while.
Tired of
being a freeloader, Dan finally got a job as a landscaper and got an
apartment in Puyallop, Wa
(sort of southeast of Tacoma). On the
weekends we'd get together and do various outdoor trips. Here is
Dan on Mt. Ranier as we hiked to Camp Muir at 10,000 ft. Notice
he's not wearing sunglasses? Dan
actually sunburnt his eyes not wearing his
sunglasses. They were red and dry for a week. It was nearly
twnety minutes
before he could open them the next
morning.
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Here's the front of
Dan's efficiency apartment. He had the window on the bottom left. It
was one room with
a kitchenette along one wall. There was
an old couch in the house I was staying it, that Dan borrowed
as a
place to sit and sleep while he was in Puyallop. There
was a nice park in front of his place that we used to
play
hacky sack in. It was a nice way to wind down after a terrible
day at
work.
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