Current mood:	relaxed
Current music:	July, July - The Decemberists (it's stuck in my head)

Chenango, Land of the Bullthistle
Scavenger hunts are easier the second time around. Training tonight was the same "Hamilton Initiative" activity that I did freshman year in Molly's PE class. It was a strange feeling knowing all the answers to things I'd never even heard about last time. I mean, I remembered "Lake Moraine, to Payne Creek, to Taylor Lake, to the Chenango River, to the Susquehanna River, to the Chesapeake Bay" off the top of my head. I finally figured out what all the symbols on the Hamilton flag mean too. Apparently the ambiguous red flower is a rose, which is the state flower of New York. Who knew. Anyway, it was awesome having such a direct measure of how I've changed in a year.

I read the last part of Aldo Leopold's book for today. Although it didn't teach me anything new about conservation (it was written in the forties), it was very poetic, and I enjoyed it. I was compelled to highlight something on almost every page, and I'm not usually the highlighting type. My new favorite quote about wilderness:

Where nameless men by nameless rivers wander
and in strange valleys die strange deaths alone.

Now I'm just trying to figure out my personal land ethic. It's one of those things which I need a long time to wrestle with until I can come up with anything semi-intelligent.