Current Thoughts On Life: A Very Clever Title

After several discussions with my best friends and my family, and especially after this trip to Finland... I've realized a few things.  I'm currently in the process of finding myself again. I'm rediscovering who I am as an individual, what makes me happy, and what makes me tick.

After these two trips to Alaska, it really struck me that I'm happiest doing the things I love. Sounds stupid and self explanatory, I know. But really what became of this realization is that I make myself happy. My choices, my beliefs, my actions, my consequences... My path... These are the things that make me happy. And then I looked around. I looked back at some of the things I had, and I realized I've been clinging to what feels safe. It felt safe because it was something I had grown accustomed to. Something that had been there for a long time. And sure, it once made me incredibly happy! But looking around at my future and where I'm headed, it's not the things in my life that make me happy, or that should anyway. It's me.

And sure I sound really full of myself in saying that, but let me go further. This last year I was so in love with my life, my job, and my potential. I found my passion. And I remembered something my family had always told me "you can do anything you set your mind to." On graduating from high school my principal went a step further to tell me I was "a force to be recokoned with." And I am. And I will do what I set my mind to, God willing. But thinking about this in conjunction with my previous statement, it's not anybody else's duty to make you happy. It's not your job to do that for anyone else either. Following that logic is simply foolish...

I was talking to someone recently who has grown closer to me than I ever expected, and I shared one of my favorite quotes:

If we rely on other people to make us happy we become reliant on a system that is not innately stable. Its easy to do this, yes, but people change. People constantly grow and become better (or worse). The people around them shape them in ways they never fully expect. The same is true for ourselves. I can tell you right now that I am almost a completely different person than I was 4 years ago.
Because of this fact it is crucial that we focus on making ourselves whole people rather than relying on others.

This is not to say that we should remove ourselves from relationships and the people we love. These people are there to help us grow, as I said, and they can indeed help us on our paths to happiness. They can add incredible joy to our lives, and they can support us when we are at our weakest. But be careful that you look first to yourself. Be independent, look for the things that make you uncomfortable and grow beyond them. Make yourself independently happy on life's journey or you will be left with nothing when the branch fails beneath you.

I have a lot to consider in this vein lately. I know I still have growth to accomplish. But somehow I know that I'll get there. I've put my mind to it, and, well, I talked about where that will lead me.

This. This is how I want to live my life. What about yours?

Travel and The Upcoming Adventures of 2019

Phew! Its been a while yet again! However, I'm really happy about how things are going this semester. As it stands right now, I'll be going on three trips this year alone, two internationally!

In just three weeks I'll be on a plane back to my favorite place - Alaska. This time I'll be much further North, and it'll be for research purposes.  I'm assisting one of my professors in the deployment of geophones! What this means is that I'll be out in the snow for probably 10-12 hours per day, placing small white devices that listen to earthquakes.  We're hoping to learn more about the Denali fault. As exciting as this all sounds (and don't get me wrong, I am very much excited!) I am definitely NOT prepared for the -30 to 10 degree average temperatures. Yikes. I have all the gear, I'm just not there mentally yet. I have three weeks to get ready.

Besides that trip, I'll also be flying to Finland just a short week afterward to visit one of my best friends in her last semester studying at Vaasa! This decision was very much more spontaneous, and while I know I won't regret it, my wallet is complaining.  But... That is the downside of traveling and experiencing new things.

Lastly, I'll be doing my field camp in Spain! I announced this more than a year ago but its finally happening! I have plane tickets, and I'm ready to fly out in June.  Guess I better get ready to hike for 12 hours a day for five weeks. Oof. Regardless of how sore I'm going to be, I can't wait to cross yet another thing off my bucket list.

Besides the craziness of all that, I also will be completing my last semester of my undergraduate degree this May.  I'm so excited for what the future holds, but I'm extremely nervous. There is so much change happening all extemelex quickly... I hope and pray I hit the ground running. Here's to a great year! Happy 2019!

Adventures in The Last Frontier

Hello everyone,

It's been quite a while since my last post... I don't dare to go back and look.  After talking with some people close to me I realized I haven't posted in a long time, and I guess its something that's been missed. So here it goes.

This last year has flown by.  In November last year I was offered an internship working for another gold mine in Alaska! I was caught completely off guard by the answer, especially as I had only handed them my resume. I never applied for the job, but I'm sure glad they called me.  After being asked how I felt working around bears during my interview, I laughed and said "well, we have bears in Colorado... I've never dealt with one but I understand the protocol." Little did I realize how many bears there actually were in Alaska.

As soon as I accepted their offer I set to work figuring my summer out.  I played with the idea of living with a friend while I was there, but when that idea didn't pan out, I had to figure something out.  While I first thought that I was required to have housing in town, it became less of an obligation and more of something I was determined to do.  After all, if I was going to Alaska for three months, I might as well make the most of it.  In the end I was very fortunate to have landed an excellent housemate - a woman with a new condo.   She was a teacher and she was a bit older than me, but she had the same spirit and spunk I did.  It was like she was young at heart.  But wait, I have to describe how I got there...

Well, after determining that I was renting a room in town, I then had to figure out how to get to Alaska.  Immediately I told my parents that I was going to drive there and immediately the response was "you are NOT driving the car to Alaska!! That's so dangerous and so far away!" Really it wasn't much farther than a road trip I had done the summer before, so after some bargaining I got my wish.

Then, a week after I got home from school, my father and I set off for Alaska. It was a long trip - we took six days, but we enjoyed ourselves the whole way there.  My favorite location of all was Banff and Jasper.  The mountain ranges there are more spectacular than any I've ever seen.

But despite some mild car trouble, we got to Skagway, and then ferried the car over to Juneau.  Juneau is only accessible by sea or plane.  People talk about how remote Alaska is, and I've read things and heard plenty of stories, but I was never prepared for what I saw when we got there. The road into Skagway was filled with beautiful tundra landscapes and amazingly green canyons. Juneau itself had forests so thick that they were a part of the city.  You could step out of your backyard and into a rainforest. Oh, and there were bears.  On my first day of work as I drove to the parking lot where I would catch a bus, (then a boat, then another bus to get to work) I saw a black bear browsing someone's lawn.  In Alaska the wilderness still has the upper hand rather than people. There are constant reminders there that the forest and its creatures were there first, and that we are truly the intruders.

But besides Alaska being my new favorite place ever and the place I want to live for the rest of eternity... I had an excellent summer. I learned a lot of very practical skills at this internship like core logging and exploration.   I had the opportunity to do so many things that not many people my age can say they've ever done, and I feel so lucky and so blessed. I will never regret my decision to drive there (no matter how much of a hassle it was) or rent a place.  I learned more about myself all at once this summer than I ever have before, and I found my passion in geology.  And while I know I still have a lot of experiences ahead of me and that I still have lots to learn, this one was the best yet.

Thank you to my family for making this trip a reality. Thank you also to my friends in Juneau and elsewhere for teaching me and helping me grow.

What a beautiful world we are privileged to live in.

To see more photos of my adventures, please click here and be sure to follow me: https://www.instagram.com/meadowsparrow77/

How am I so lucky?

To everyone out there still looking:

Find yourself a guy who values the little things. Find someone who hides little notes in your drawers and Cadbury eggs around your room because he knows you love them too. Look for someone who knows how crazy your days are and brings you lunch because you forgot, someone who cleans up your room to surprise you and folds your random piles of laundry. No, I don't expect these things from him, and I never asked him, but each little thing adds up and shows me that he cares. If you can find someone like this, he's a keeper.

Thanks for the great weekend, my love.

Field Camp!

You guys! I'm super excited to announce that I will be going to Spain for field camp!  This means a few things:

1. I get to travel outside the country (bucket list)
2. I get to go to Spain (also bucket list)
3. I GET TO DO GEOLOGY IN ANOTHER COUNTRY

I can't wait.  Just thought I'd share this little happy moment.  I'm definitely looking forward to June! I will keep posting about my adventures on here.  Even though I'm really bad about keeping it up.  Sorry.  

Crazy Day Indeed!

Wow ok, so I gotta be honest in writing this post.  Today was quite a day.  To be fair it was a Monday, and that's probably why it was so crazy.
Regardless, its a whole new experience for me to understand the pressure of a project.  Up till now things had been pretty relaxed at work which was great.  But honestly I like being busy more.  While sometimes that involves being frantic, I'm definitely sharper and on my game on those busy days.

However, being busy at a grocery store and being busy with a project that is your own are two different types of busy.  The first is more what you would feel when everyone else is looking to you to be on time which is to be expected with customers.  But being busy and under pressure from your project is more what it feels like when you overbook your calendar... Because everything you planned is still under your control and your success depends on you.  There may be other people at the company expecting results... but when you know you have something due based on your own deadline, there's no body to point fingers at.

While pointing fingers and throwing blame has never been my thing and its not at all what I'm looking for today, it really​ just makes me realize.  I'm in charge of this.  Yes I have the help and support of everyone I'm working with (thank God), yes I am only an intern, but if I want to say I succeeded in my own eyes, it's really up to me.  I guess this applies to a lot of things, but it really hit home today.

Yes, today was insane.  The craziness was a good change of scenery but still not a pleasant experience.  Lots of things went unnecessarily wrong that were outside my control.  There were several people that helped me sort out the kinks and for that I am extremely grateful.  But ultimately this project ​is up to me, and I will be responsible for making it succeed.

I can do this!

First Several Weeks at Barrick

Hello again!

Once again I'm consistently bad at writing these posts to keep up with my life.  But of course, now that I've been hit with a cold I have time to sit down and catch up with stuff.

I wanted to play catch up with my first several weeks at Barrick!

The first week was all training.  While the material was for the most part pretty dry stuff and it was a lot of slideshows in a dark room (zzz...), our trainer was an awesome guy who did his best to make it interactive and not boring.  This was very appreciated haha.  The scary stories people told about mining accidents and how easily they happen was probably the worst part... But it makes you think about everything you do.  It makes you realize that something you take for granted that might not immediately affect you, could kill someone else.  And while that is scary to think about not only your life but the lives of friends being in your hands, it is important.  It really fits with their motto, "Everyone going home safe and healthy everyday."

After training we took a tour of the mine.  The mine sits in Golconda, NV, but originally the land around it was part of the tiny town of Getchell.  We toured what remains of the town... there are a total of like 4 buildings, including a school house on Barrick's property.  The mine operation at the Getchell mine started in the 1930's, originally as an open pit gold mine.  When WWII started it was the only gold mine that stayed open, but not for gold purposes.  Because of the geology of the area there are a lot of hydrothermal minerals, including arsenopyrites.  In layman's terms, this means that we have incredible high levels of arsenic in the rock.  Therefore it was used for mining arsenic for the war.  While its no longer mined for this reason, the extreme levels still pose a hazard to all the miners in the form of dust.  Every miner is required to take a urine test for these levels on a regular basis to check if they are too high.

After a while, other companies purchased the area and started the underground operations.  These were very dangerous in those days, not only because of the technology used to mine the area but because of the ground itself.  The area is well known for its very unstable and gravely terrain.  After killing just as many miners in the surface pit as underground (which is a very high statistic), it became known as the 'widowmaker mine.'  Kinda scary right?  Well thanks to modern technology and shotcrete, the underground is a much, much safer place... the surface pit is no longer used because of instability.

Touring the underground was like a giant maze.  Let me just tell you, there are a lotttt of tunnels and headings and station names that I'm still struggling to remember.  As a geologist though, the mine was much less exciting than I thought.  All the walls (ribs) and ceilings (back) are covered with shotcrete to make them stable, so there is not very much real rock for me to look at.  Except at the headings (headings are the ends of the tunnels where they dig the ore out, btw).  The headings are orange and black streaked with white sometimes.  The black is the carbonaceous ore, the orange is orpiment and the red is realgar, while the white is usually dasite which is a granite-y type rock.

My official project this summer is to study and fill in gaps related to the high carbon values in our mine.  Why it is there? We don't really know.

Anyway, hopefully this has been a good catch up! Hope nobody else is fighting a cold during the summer (which, by the way, is the dumbest thing ever).

Stay safe, friends!

(Disclaimer: None of the images belong to me this time.  Rare, I know.)