Full Circle

I surveyed Stampede as my last meadow of the season, and most likely my last field season in the Sierras. The first meadow I ever visited was Stampede back in 2005 . If that’s not coming around full circle, I dunno what is. Especially since Stampede isn’t a meadow I went to often in the past 6 years. It was certainly not planned that way. Well, not by me.

At the end of the week I’m headed for the coast to see Stef and Ivan in San Francisco for a couple days, then home to Delaware (exact route TBD). After that I have a trip to Michigan for a wedding and a backpacking trip with Kristin in Isle Royale. Then it’s off to spend time at Song Lake in Tully, NY with my family. I haven’t seen my nephew since the day he was born 6 months ago so I’m pretty excited about that. And its been a couple years since I’ve been to the lake house.
That’s all that I have marked on the calendar for now. But who knows what will happen. I’m applying for jobs and thinking about spending some time in the southwest in the meantime.

I’m going to miss the Sierras, but I think it’s time to move on. I’m glad I had an extra season to end everything on a positive note. I thought we’d never make it to all of our sites because of the snow, but in the end we covered just about everything we needed to. And I got to see parts of the Sierras all the way from Seki NP to Modoc NF, which is pretty impressive.

I can always come back and visit. The Sierra's will always have part of my heart.