Things better left unsaid....until after you are already here....

After my internship with Invisible Children I was offered a job as the Office Assistant for a Christian Camp and Retreat Facility in Northern California. It was an offer that was too good to refuse. I had already fallen in love with the people and the place. Back to California it was...

My mom and I drove across America together. 12 states in 4 days (South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California). Remarkable uneventful and fight free. Mom drove on mountain roads near Lake Tahoe and thereafter made a vow never to drive in California again (thanks Mom!). We traded off driving in the big cities. Of course all the big California cities were after Tahoe so guess who got to drive those. Driving in California is like driving in rush hour traffic in Atlanta....all the time. We don't want to talk about rush hour.

So anyway that was last week, now I am a resident of Boulder Creek, California. Boulder Creek is a small town in the Santa Cruz mountains between Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Now when I say small town, I don't mean Aiken, South Carolina small town. I mean like SMALL town. (I can't even think of one small enough that people would have heard of.) Today I drove past the city limit sign and it said the population was 4084. Now I should clarify, I don't actually live in the town of Boulder Creek I live about 5 miles further up the mountain in Big Basic Redwood State Park. Before I insert any further sarcasm, I should state that I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. For those of you who have been to PBC imagine getting to be surrouned by that kind of beauty all year long. It's so beautiful it is almost overwhelming. That being said there are some hidden shall we say hazards that my fellow staff members (neighbors and friends) failed to mention. Here is what I have learned so far...

1. It is quiet....like really quiet...like something big and scary is following you in the dark quiet. The other day I decided to go "hiking" (aka for a walk on a trail inside camp property). I got out of visual contact with camp buildings and started to realize how quiet it was. Then it seemed to quiet. And then I started remembering a comment someone made about sensing a mountain lion. And then I started to convince myself that it was unnaturally quiet. An image flashed in my mind of a big, scary mountain lion emerging out of the forest to eat me. At this point i decided I had had enough exercise for the day.

2. There is no cable tv.
(I have come to realize that Netflix may actually be man's greatest invention.)

3. The nearest real grocery store is 30 minutes away. (There is a community market that is about 10 minutes away, but it only sells organic found, which turns out translates to "ridiculously expensive."

4. The nearest book store is 40 minutes away (this alone might kill me. I'll be accepting amazon.com giftcards for my birthday and Christmas)

5. Mice.....apparently they like cars. As in they like to make nests in them AND eat the wiring in them. (This I have not yet experienced, but I am paranoid. I was advised to periodically check under the hood of my car to make sure they aren't making nests in there. Right after this I went to check...it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to open the hood of my car. I think I was supposed to know how to do that a long time ago. Oops!)

6. There is no cell service out here. (thankfully the camp has wifi so I can facebook and frequently update my blog...yeah right...)

These are my observations for week 1. With as much "quiet time" as I have out here, I hope to do a little better at this blogging thing. We shall see.