I forget where we were

A few months ago, I'd apparently convinced myself that after 3 field seasons on the world's Greatest Lake, experiencing something novel would be all but impossible.

Thankfully, as per usual, I was brilliantly wrong.

Thirty days and a thousand stories later, I'm lounging on my deck back in Madison with some gin, soaking my fungus/blister-ridden feet in salt, and nostalgically looking back at photos and videos... trying to convince myself that the last month actually happened. People keep asking me how it was, and the word that immediately comes to mind is "hard". Not to be overly dramatic, but coming back alive AND in one piece didn't feel like a given this time.

Trenchfoot. It's for real. 

The Internet was largely absent for large chunks of the trip and more of a myth than reality during the remainder. And when 14-hour days became mandatory, I abandoned the notion of blogging and devoted all my daily free time to sleeping.

But I am a lover of stories, and even though my tales from the summer will be have to be reconstructed from the late night, so-tired-I-feel-drunk scrawls of journal entries, there are stories I need to tell. And over the next couple months, I hope to share field notes from our wild, hot, African summer on a lake that's more magnificent than we can ever hope to understand.

In the meantime, I'll force my body stay awake when all it wants in the whole wide world is to sleep, abandon my inclination to hoard toilet paper, and try to remember that most people shower more than twice a month. And I will hesitantly resume a life that feels safe and tame and a little bit dull by comparison.

Stay tuned.