Colombia!

Colombia!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Hailing all Micro 68s, 69s, and 70s!


I applied to be a Peace Corps Volunteer back in March of 2001, I think.  A fat stack of paper work and several medical exams later, September 11th happened.  I had been nominated for a position in Africa, but my recruiter and everyone else was freaking out.  PCVs were pulled out of countries deemed unstable, including Africa, and shuffled around.  It was Christmas Eve when I got the letter.  Micro-what, now?  I had to bust out the world map.  Oh, the former Caroline Islands.  I remember looking at them on the globe in like second grade, thinking, they’re so small, people really live there?  I remember standing on the bridge on Dartford Drive with Mom, the letter in my hand.  It was snowy.  A local artist had recently welded beautiful salmon-shaped pieces of metal to the bars on the bridge, and they seemed to be leaping and twisting in the sunlight.  The Little Spokane was running under our feet.  The evergreens were bent under the weight of the snow, some branches sighing and casting off the white stuff into the river.  I could hear the wind through the pine needles, and I’ve never felt as strongly as I did then that there were, indeed, voices on the wind and spirits in the trees (kind of anti-Catholic, I know, but it’s true).  Go.  Go.  Go.  They were all telling me what I already knew in my heart.  I would go.