What Am I Looking For?

It’s not what I am seeking, but rather it’s the only thing I’d ever settle for:

It’s that, “soulful connection, but with my kinda weirdo.”

It’s that, “shared mission in mind, we’re building together”, kind of partnership. 

It’s that, “I’ll do you one better than promising forever, I’ll commit to meet you fully in each moment and with each thoughtful breath.”

It’s that, “I will know and love myself more and more and will share with you the fruits of that labor.” 

It's that, “I’ll finally let you take care of me now that I trust in my sense of self.” 

It's that, “I am here when you want support, but don’t need you to need me.” 

It's that, “we compliment one another’s individual purpose and drive, but also offer the best kind of distractions...” 

It’s that, “I am so proud of everything that you are and want to be both in your bleachers and on your team.” 

It’s that, “we may not always hike at the same pace but I will leave cairns for you just in case, and wait patiently at certain junctions; just as you have been patient with me all along.”

Not seeking... but settling for nothing less than that. 

Wilderness as Community, An Alternate Lens

The following is a speech, presented by Eugenie Bostrom at the National Wilderness Conference; celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, in Albuquerque, New Mexico on October 16th, 2014. It has since been adapted for use in National Geographic's 'National Parks: An Illustrated History - 100 Year Anniversary Book by Kim Heacox. 

"I was born to a single mother, she was sick and we were poor. Living just outside Los Angeles, with a constant mountain backdrop in the inconceivable distance; the only camping my family ever did was in shelters, or in living out of our car from time to time. We were modern nomads. People without place. With my mother’s health failing her, and our unstable living conditions, she was forced to give up custody. My brother and I were placed in a group-home outside of Chicago. I can’t assume how familiar you are with residential child care facilities, but for the most part, I can tell you, they are islands of individuals. Our group-home was certainly not a part of the surrounding community, and in the group-home you will find individuals, unknowingly seeking identity, but certainly not wanting to tie their identity to that place. Again, a people without place. As the staff of such places are typically overworked, and underprepared for the parenting roles they need to play, there was not much time for hiking or for outdoor exploration for the youth in the group-home. Wilderness was a word I can honestly say that I don’t think I ever heard until the summer that I turned 16. That summer, I applied to be a member of the Yellowstone Youth Conservation Corps. It wasn’t Yellowstone that had intrigued me, I honestly didn’t even know what Yellowstone was, I had never heard of the National Park Service. My sole understanding of government had been through interactions with the Department of Children and Family Services. What interested me was that someone who had previously participated  in the Conservation Corps from my group-home had gone to college. Now, I had been led to believe that the only way out of the cycle of poverty and exclusion that I had been born into was to go to college. I thought this was a ticket to college, and the only thing I knew, was that I wanted to break the cycle.

That summer was 1998, the 3rd summer of the Wolf in Yellowstone National Park.

Now l want to digress for a minute to discuss another  disenfranchised species: the Grey Wolf...

It’s generally accepted that the Grey Wolf was exterminated from Yellowstone in 1926. Without wolves, elk populations rose, as did coyote populations, which had a direct negative impact on the plant-life of the park, and the antelope population — and every other thing connected to the web of that ecosystem, as we now know. In 1995, the congressionally mandated, Yellowstone Wolf Re-Introduction plan went into effect. The wolves, who had been transported from Canada, were placed in one of 3 large acclimation pens strewn about Yellowstone’s backcountry. The wolves lived in those pens for one month, before the gates were opened and they were free to roam about the park.

Three years later the Youth Conservation Corps contingency was the first group to set out dismantling the pens and removing them from the backcountry.

I feel like you can see where this is going: a disconnected youth, finds a love for nature and her life is changed forever. Now while that is true, it’s not the whole truth - We need to actually dissect this a little more.

Going back, as you’ll recall. I was a person without place, I belonged to myself, I had learned to take care of myself; the same as my comrades. We shared commonalities of our situations, but we did not share the burden. We had never been taught how to do so. Though the staff at the group home tried diligently to teach us about the world, they tried to teach us that we mattered, that if we set our minds to it, we could do anything, it fell on deaf ears. Actually, I think it is children in the child welfare system who probably hear the words “you matter” from authority figures the most. But those words are white noise within a system and a rearing that is telling you the opposite.

My first project in Yellowstone, the dismantling of the Crystal Creek wolf pen, was the first time that I saw how I mattered. It was the first time I understood what community was.

This is not because I had meaningful work, though it was meaningful, it was not because I had a wonderful and supportive crew, though I did.

It was because the only other species that I could relate to, had just exemplified to me the meaning of community, the wolf had found its way home. The wolf mattered so much that an act of congress brought him back. In Yellowstone’s backcountry, within it’s intact ecosystem, I learned how species interact and rely upon each other. I learned about symbiotic relationships, and it cut right through the white noise. Through my understanding of ecosystem, I couldn’t help but translate that understanding to my entire existence. I now knew that what I did, affected those around me, either positively or negatively. Just as the Wolf’s existence in Yellowstone affected everything around it.

This is where the crucial difference lies, this is the alternate lens. There is a vast difference between exposure to nature, and experience in it. And when trying to reach a disenfranchised young person - though taking them into the woods may be good, it may also unfortunately be more white noise if not accompanied with meaningful experience that shifts their perspective. This is the tricky part, it has to be organic in the truest sense. When taking down that wolf-pen in the backcountry, we did not have a facilitator calling out the comparisons, asking if I see the correlation between an ecosystem and an urban community. Had there been, I would have tuned them out. I needed to learn from the land itself, I needed not to seek solitude and reflection, but to seek connectedness and exploration.

I’ve heard several times at the conference here that Wilderness is for all, and that its not a privileged experience - but it is. And we here are speaking from a privileged platform. We can’t tell people that public lands belong to them, when those people don’t feel they belong to it, to us, to place. We can’t tell them. We have to provide pathways for them to find it.

Aldo Leopold, the man of the week, famously said "We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us, when we begin to view the land as a community to which we belong we may begin to treat it with love and respect."

Now, This is my favorite quote of all time, but, all due respect to Mr. Leopold, I think it comes from a place of privilege. It certainly is correct when the "we" refers to a population in power. However there is a whole sect of society that do not regard the land as belonging to them. Nothing belongs to them. They don't abuse the land; they don't know the land, and if they do abuse the land it's because abuse is the only currency of connectedness that they have.  I challenge us to take Leopold's powerful sentiment and flip it for a different and vital audience: "When we begin to view the land as a community to which we belong, we may regard previous abuses and commodities with a new love and respect."

When working with communities, I ask you to view wilderness differently. I ask you to, as Terry Tempest Williams charged us last night, 'recompose our position'. Help people see wilderness not as a place to challenge and renew themselves, not simply as a place separate from their worlds that they can escape to, but rather as a mirror to themselves, and to their world, give them a sense of belonging that doesn’t just reside in the Gila, or the Selway Bitterroot, though it may be born there, let them take that sense of belonging with them."

Learn more:

• To see an adaptation of this speech in print, along with other amazing stories pick up this National Geographic Book.

• To learn more about the Yellowstone Wolves - hear from Doug Smith, project leader for the Yellowstone Wolf Reintroduction.

• To learn more about the group-home that I was fortunate enough to grow-up in visit www.mooseheart.org. 

• To learn more about my story - keep following this blog.

An Ode to Ice

"...As we crested a rocky saddle, we began to descend into what felt like a different planet.

We were in a cloud, but not like when you’re staring from the window of an airplane and they're so fluffy that you wish you could nap cradled in them like a Care Bear. No, this was a soupy, dense cloud, that seemed to weigh on us, adding to the heaviness of my legs and feet after the ascent. This precipice of our hike felt like true discovery, the kind of exploratory anticipation you felt as a child finding adventure in a cemetery or in an unassuming tree stand. We could hardly see past 10 yards, but the neon blue of the water reflecting off the micro droplets comprising the cloud made the air glow…amplifying the eerie quality of that dead-quiet, magical place.

Following the guidance of some rock-cairns, we scrambled down to the edge of a glacial lake, or pond, couldn’t be sure with our limited range of vision. We marveled at icebergs in shapes you could not imagine; and I know we saw the edge of Grinnell Glacier.... Even if my eyes deceived me in that extra-terrestrial-like landscape, if that wasn’t the edge of prehistoric ice that we sat squinting at, I still felt it’s presence. I know it was there - it was emanating; in that still, silent air, I could feel its icy-blue breath. We sat next to the water, took out a flask and toasted to old Grinnell:

"To you, glacier, we thank you for your invaluable contribution to this landscape and this ecosystem, for carving and shaping the land upon which we sit, for the thousands of years which your melt has nursed foliage, and provided sustenance and home for miles, and though we are sad that you are shrinking and that our children’s children will never see you in your glacier-like glory, we are so grateful for all that you have given to this world and rejoice in that your memory and presence will live on forever - we drink to you”

And with that we lifted the freezing flask of whiskey to our lips. We sat, laughed, ate cheese and crackers and as the lateness of the day started to make its way into our bones and we could no longer take the chill of rock, air and ice, we started our way back down the trail, out of our Rivendale, and back to reality."

Following Gratitude; Acknowledging Serendipity

The following is a speech, presented by Eugenie Bostrom at the 2014 International Moose Convention in Las Vegas, NV.  The author owes much to the fraternal order, having grown up in a residential childcare facility founded and supported by the generosity of Moose members. 

Good Evening Men and Women of the Moose. First I want to say how honored I am to be addressing you this evening. Honored doesn’t seem like a word that has enough impact to express how I feel. I hope that in the next few minutes, I can express how much the Moose has meant to me, and how I would not be the person I am today without everything that the Moose is and does.

Last week I was interviewed for an article in the Moose Magazine. I was asked, how I would advise people to follow their passion; as I have been very lucky to find work and to actually get paid to do what I am passionate about. But I realized that I’ve never actually followed my passion, rather, I’ve followed my gratitude, and that has lead me to a life filled with passion every day. What I mean by “following my gratitude” is that each step in my life, since I left Mooseheart has been in effort to give back on the opportunities that I have been afforded. I walk each day in gratitude, for everything, and especially for, everything the Moose has done for me. I personally feel a special bond with the Moose because I have close ties to another former Moose program as well: The Youth Conservation Corps at Yellowstone National Park. While it was Mooseheart that gave me a home that I needed, and shaped me in my formative years, it was that stability in combination with my experiences in the Conservation Corps that gave me the confidence, the insight and the platform from which to launch. I want to take this opportunity to tell all of you how important, no vital, the Moose is -  how important all of you are, to me personally. To express this I could go into detail about how important Mooseheart was to me or how important the Conservation Corps program has been, but rather, I want to take this time to tell you about just one Moose member.

Evelyn Payne, from Front Royal Virginia Moose started writing to me when I was 11 years old. It was my first year living at Mooseheart…  You see, I had been born to a single mother, and although she loved my brother and I dearly, she did not have the capacity to fully care for us. But I don’t want to discredit the power of love here – my mother’s love is what carried us, though she was sick and we were poor, I never felt it. Though we hopped from place to place, school to school, not knowing where we were going to live, or where we were going to get our next meal, I felt stability in our mothers love. My mother must’ve known that she did not have much longer to live, and I think she feared that we might be taken from her by the Department of Children and Family Services, either way she made the decision to give up custody and place us in a home that provided that physical stability that had been missing. It was the ultimate act of a mother’s love – giving us up so that we might live better lives; she sent us to Mooseheart. She passed away a year later, at the same time that Ms Evelyn from Front Royal began her letters.

Front Royal, had been the lodge that sponsored my and my brothers' admission into Mooseheart, and as we were the only youth that the Front Royal Lodge ever sponsored - I was fortunate to be to the recipient of many many letters from the lodge’s secretary at the time: Mrs Evelyn Payne. She would write to me about the most mundane things, and her letters took such a conversational tone; she would write out things like “Oh the tea kettle is boiling, hold on”… and then on the next line “I'm back!”,  as if I would have known in reading this letter that she had briefly walked away from it. Even in my adolescence, I loved her letters and replied to every one - telling Evelyn about my recent basketball game or sharing with her my odd - youthful, political ambitions. She was my pen-pal until I graduated High School and left Mooseheart. In my early twenties I tended to move around a lot, as people in their twenties often do, I was spending every summer working with the Yellowstone YCC, and spending my winters in college, and then in Chicago, in Portland, OR, in Ventura, California... you get the picture. As my addresses were inconsistent – I, without meaning to, lost touch with Evelyn. I thought of her every now and then, but I was leading a new life – “finding myself,” as cliche as that is. As the years added up, my interest in re-engaging with the Moose grew stronger. My life and career were blossoming and I felt an even stronger pull to deliberately follow my gratitude. In 2009, after almost 10 years of seasonally returning to Yellowstone, I took a job with the US Department of Interior in Washington DC. Prior to this, I had never really spent time on the East Coast at all, and I had little understanding of the geography of the Mid-Atlantics. I figured that Front Royal, Virginia had to be within a day’s drive of DC, and resolved to at some point - seek out my sponsoring lodge when the time was right.

Once we were settled in the nation’s capitol - the 1st weekend that my boyfriend at the time and I had free, we decided to go camping in Shenandoah National Park. I had heard from co-workers how relatively close it was and that it was an easy drive; a straight shot out Route 66. So we packed up and just hopped on 66 west. We were leaving about 3 hours later than we had planned, so we didn't have time to look at a map, and we’d just planned to drive until we saw signs for Shenandoah. At some point it started raining - heavily. It was raining so hard that I had to pull off of the highway at the closest exit. We pulled into a gas station and waited until the rain died down. At the gas station we saw a sign telling us how many miles to Shenandoah National Park. We followed the signs. We passed a sign letting us know that we had just entered Front Royal, Virginia… it was so out-of-context that I was trying to piece together in my head why Front Royal was so recognizable, when my boyfriend absent-mindedly said “Oh look there’s a Moose lodge”.  And it hit me;  I screamed “Thats my sponsoring lodge!”. My boyfriend, a little startled by my outburst, pulled over and asked if we should go check it out. I said yes, but thinking that it would probably be empty… It was 6:30pm on a Friday evening after all. As we pulled up to the lodge we saw that the parking lot was empty. I thought that I might just leave a note. Then as we crested a little hill pulling into the lodge we saw that the parking lot in the back was packed indeed. “Well somebody’s here” my boyfriend said. As we parked and walked towards the lodge I thought to myself “Who do I ask for? What do I say? How likely is it that they will remember who I am, or care even.” This happened to be an evening when the Moose lodge was hosting one of the area’s most popular bands. So the place was packed. As I showed my Moose membership card at the entrance I leaned over to tell the woman checking the card that Front Royal was my sponsoring lodge, that I was from Mooseheart. She said “Oh, check with those ladies behind me”. Behind her were three of the most vibrant women I have ever had the benefit of knowing. Each of them old enough to be my great-grandmother.  I leaned down to the woman in the middle of the three and explained myself again. I said, I was from Mooseheart and that Front Royal was my sponsoring lodge. She asked me my name, and when I replied “Eugenie Bostrom” she grasped my hands in hers and shouted “Its the Bostrom girl! Its the Bostrom girl!”,  and when she told me her name I recognized her immediately as my long lost pen-pal. My boyfriend watched in utter shock as the magic of the scene unfolded. That was undeniably one of the most amazing nights of my entire life, as the copious love that was poured into me that evening by the entirety of the Front Royal moose still astounds me. Not only did they remember me,;hundreds of people came up to me telling me how proud they were of me, asking me if I still played basketball etc., telling Matt, my boyfriend that he better be “taking care of our girl”. They still considered me their girl. They still had pictures of adolescent me hanging up in the lodge. To say it was surreal would be an understatement.

That evening, one of the original 3 women who I had met, interrupted the very popular band, and told them to take 5 while she ushered me in front of the microphone. That evening I cried in appreciation to the wonderful people filling the lodge. That evening I reacquainted myself with a dear friend: Evelyn. It wasn’t just the letter’s of course, it was the amazing love that Evelyn radiated that made me feel close to her. At the same time it wasn’t just the love that she radiated, it was the love that she spoke and that she acted out every day. Evelyn told me, every time that I spoke to her, how much she loved me and how proud she was of me. This woman, who I had never met in person, until a happen-chance upon a Moose Lodge 5 years ago, expressed a love for me that I couldn’t imagine, and that I returned in-kind.
She lived a life full of love… and prior to her passing last year,  I never got to tell her how much her love meant to me. I don't know that in a lifetime,  I could express my appreciation for everything that she was for me, how in the simplest ways, she comforted, inspired and enlivened me.

This quote from Dr. Zhivago best describes Evelyn’s moving on:

“You in others-this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life-your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you-the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.”

Evelyn embodied the essence of living… and now that essence lives on in those that she loved. And how blessed am I to be one of those.

She meant so much to me, and though I never told her outright, the best way I can express that is by living her legacy.

I know that there are some members of Front Royal Moose here with us, and any of them will tell you that the Moose was everything to Evelyn. She was a Moose through and through – and so by living her legacy, I am really living the legacy of the Moose

– a life of service to others – following my gratitude.

Thank you.

I Crave Saga

I'll admit it.
I am drawn to the torturous nature of our connection.
The strife and struggle that we pursue; feigning betterment,
the cracks and chasms that result, define tragic beauty.
I crave saga...
and you do too.

The irony is that the one for whom the saga spins,
thinks this could never be about him - while alternate egos
are sure my pining belongs to them.

The plot thickens and the story only deepens - increasing its aesthetic value
and its emotional hold on us.