I am (Probably) not Going to Die this Fall

It's hard to believe, but two weeks from tomorrow I'll be on an airplane flight that will take me out of this country. I'm going to be spending the next three and a half months living and studying in Honduras. I'm incredibly excited for what looks like a life-changing semester; but, of course, everyone has a different idea about what constitutes exciting. When one of the bellmen I work with found out I was going to Honduras, he was quick to tell me everything he knew about the country.

"I hear it's, like, super dangerous," he said. "Aren't you scared?"

Yes, the United States has issued travel warnings for the country. Yes, I did have to sign special papers to go on the semester. But no, I'm not scared. The semester is well-established, run by competent professors who have called Honduras their home for years.

"We are often asked if Tegucigalpa [the Honduran capital] is dangerous," JoAnn VanEngen, one of the professors wrote in our informational packet. "The answer is, it can be."

But, she continued, so can any city in the United States. The response should be caution and education-- certainly not staying at home.

The bellman wouldn't let me leave it at that. Practicing his Spanish, he asked haltingly, "Temes la peligrosa?", "Are you afraid of the danger?"

No, I said. I'll be living in a safe neighborhood, far from the gang violence that brings the crime rate up so high. I'll be studying with the organizations that are helping make Honduras a safer place every year. I'll be wise. I'll be cautious.

I was walking back from lunch the next day when the bellman appeared out of nowhere, like the physical embodiment of my unvoiced worries. "I was talking to my roommate," he said. "He says you're going to die."

I'm not going to die. I'm going to learn.

"Honduras isn't perfect," says my school's study-abroad website, "But it is the perfect place to look for answers to the hard questions about our place in the not-so-perfect world we live in... You'll learn about the factors that make Honduras the third poorest country in the western world. Then you'll use that knowledge as a lens to look at the rest of the world."

I'm going to witness a Presidential election, visit an orphanage, subsistence farms, and garment factories. I'm going to experience life in a way I never have before. Aren't you all jumping to buy plane tickets alongside me?

Maybe it's a little dangerous. But what worth doing isn't? I offer my guarantee and my assurance to the bellman and whoever else asks: I am not going to die this Fall.


(If you're interested, this article, published in my school newspaper last year, explains the travel warnings to Honduras and the subsequent responses. If you want to keep up with me over the next few months, I'll keep blogging! Let's see where this adventure goes)

All of us are Tourists

Havasu Falls, Havasupai Reservation

Breathing heavy from the hike, we stop at the bottom of the canyon and sneer at those who let the skinny horses cart their backpacks to the bottom. We jeer at those who flew down in a helicopter. But the water is the same blue-green for all of us. How can the journey matter when the destination is the same?

Hurtling graveward, I wonder if we’ll find the journey worth it. Are we travelers here on earth, or are we tourists, stopping only long enough for a photograph?

Somewhere, Everywhere

I am sick and tired of fanny packs. Of overpriced tchotchkes and the dim, muddled people who buy them. Memories can’t be pocketed by magnet or postcard or overpriced T-shirt.

The hikers with the heaviest backpacks have the hardest time making it up the path. Considering lilies is impossible when you’ve plucked them and pressed them and hung them on your wall.

Maswik Cabins, Grand Canyon Village

My open door faces guest cabins. I can sit in bed and watch them drag their suitcases up the stairs. They’re noisy and they’re always lost. They stay for a night, then a new gaggle arrives in their place, perched on the cabin porches like big, dull geese with clipped wings.

The tourists blend into each other in an eccentric wallpaper of elderly Japanese people in huge sun visors and slim Italians with shockingly low-cut shirts. Sunglasses press into the burned-pink flesh of their meaty foreheads. They all complain about parking. They all ask for the bar.

But these people are artists and teachers and lovers; children and parents and the reason I’m here. They pay for the trails I hike and the programs I enjoy. They are the reason for the shuttle bus I know so well and the hotel that pays me every other week. If we didn’t have tourists, would the Canyon be so Grand? Does it diminish with every set of eyes, or does it grow?

Somewhere, Everywhere

The Star Spangled Banner is locked away, because air and sunlight eat around the bullet holes. If enough people look at a book for long enough, the words will fade and the paper crumble. The same sun and water that break apart our treasures batter us. Is this why we stay inside? If we shield our bodies, will we save ourselves from the poison of breath and light and time?

Shuttle Bus, Grand Canyon Village

“Moose!” the woman on the shuttle bus shouts and nearly lunges out of her seat. Before I can stop myself, I correct her: “Elk.”

“Tell the driver to stop!” she shouts, craning her head, reaching for a camera.

“They’re out every night,” I say, because I can’t help it. “You get used to them.”

But here’s the secret: when I come upon an elk with a rack of velvet horns, my heart stops. Dark neck, tawny flank, knob-knees, he utters an eerie cry like a whining child and I breath out of my mouth and my nose and forget how to breathe back in for a moment.

Somewhere, Everywhere

All of us are looking for something that will last longer than we will. We grip memories tight in our sweaty fists. We so desperately want to feel again, we chase after wonder like a child chases butterflies. Some of us are aghast when our sticky fingers crush the fragile wings. But some of us crumple the bodies in our pockets as souvenirs.

When we love food, we consume it. There is nothing left but crumbs.

Havasu Falls, Havasupai Reservation

Supai village startles us. After miles of bare rock, barbed-wire fences and satellite dishes seem alien. Wiping dust from our ears, we hear a man with a lawnmower shortening the thick green grass behind his prefabricated house. It must have been carried down in pieces on the back of a horse, unless a helicopter lowered it. The pack horses rest behind wire. Their eyes are rimmed by flies and their ribs are countable.

A dog prances up to us, eyes wet and turned up. “Don’t touch it,” one who’s been here before tells us. “It’s a res dog.” Painted signs point us to the tourist office, which is a whitewashed shack; though it has air conditioning, and sells ice cream from a small refrigerator with crusted ice along the sides.

“It’s so poor!” one honest girl mouths, too loudly, and I cringe and fold inside myself. This is the one who said how lucky that the government had given the Havasupai—the People-of-the-Blue-Green-Waters—this beautiful land, this beautiful bounteous land in the dust of a remote canyon, eight miles from high ground by horse or weary foot.

I bite my tongue. I want the canyon to open up and drop me deeper, away from the even glances of the Havasupai girls my age with babies in hand, their stares too blank to be accusing, too guarded to let me flail them with my guilt.

When we pay our dues at the tourist office, a woman hands each of us an emergency-red wristband with “TOURIST” printed on it so we remember when we see it that this will never be our home. Others pull out their cameras. I duck my head instead.

There are waterfalls tucked in the bottom of the canyon. They are spectacular. People crowd into the crystal pools. They model bikinis and scream with joy as they jump off cliff ledges. We clamber up ridges and swing in hammocks, letting the roar of the river rush us to sleep. Every one of us sports the wristband. The Havasupai have left us to the water and the water to us.

I think that someone ate their fill, then tossed the scraps and demanded a share of even those. This makes me sick, but even so I’m grateful. The water is so cool and clear.

Have I paid my dues? Can one ever really pay enough? I’m a tourist and I hate it. Eyes have touched every surface of this earth, if not the next one. To whom does it belong?

When we’re hiking out, the dog follows me up the trail. He stops when I stop. He pants at my feet. He is a res dog, so I do not want to touch him, but he looks up at me with wet eyes and a mouth twisted somehow, resolutely, in a grin.

Somewhere, Everywhere

We destroy what we love by loving it. We’re hurtling graveward with butterfly wings. But the world is worth exploring, and all of us are tourists somewhere, sometime, even if it was only when we burst headfirst into this world.

We learn to be travelers, slowly. We drop our backpacks by the side of the path and take deep breaths. Maybe life is not what’s picked up, but what is left behind. Maybe we need the gawkers. Maybe we let the flag unfurl and fade.

We protect what we love by hiding it from the atmosphere’s appetite, but the sterile boxes work by shrouding things in darkness and silence, by killing anything that lives.

And wonder is a living, breathing thing.

On Earth as it is in Heaven

Last week, 9 friends and I went backpacking to Havasu Falls, which I'm convinced is one of the most beautiful places on earth. 

About 3 hours from Grand Canyon, the Falls are located on the Havasupai Reservation, a few miles from one of the most remote cities in the United States. Only accessible by an 8-mile hike or mule ride from the top of a canyon, this wilderness maintains its pristine beauty despite the tourists who do flock to the bottom.

 We camped beneath cliff walls that rose over a thousand feet above us. The walls were riddled with caves, remnants of failed mining expeditions.

 Havasu Falls is known for its blue-green water. It doesn't show up clearly in these pictures, but even after the rains of the last few months, we still swam in turquoise pools

 The river at the bottom of the canyon flows over rocks and terraces, creating miles of little waterfalls and rapids.

After camping overnight by Havasu Falls, we hiked farther along the trail. The path took us through carved rock, and down cliff faces aided by posts and chains.

Mooney Falls was spectacular, and swimming in the pool at the bottom felt like being in the middle of a hurricane.

 The path to Beaver Falls, 4 miles from our campsite, was bizarrely tropical. It felt like we were wandering through rainforest rather than the desert that Arizona is known for.

 Beaver Falls was worth the hike. We scrambled over waterfalls and swam in the blue-green pools. We climbed up rock faces and sat in caves behind sheets of water. The experience was surreal and incredible-- a tiny taste of Paradise on Earth.

Happiness is Overrated

A few days ago, I was sitting at the bus stop on the way to pick up something for dinner. Thunderstorms brooded in the distance, and a knobby-limbed elk sauntered across the road, causing a glut of tourists chattering excitedly in different languages to pull out cameras and point. Suddenly, in a burst of unprovoked curiosity, I asked myself,

“Am I happy?”

I was dumbfounded. I didn’t know how to answer the question. It floated in my mind as I finished my dinner, as I returned my books to the library, and as I talked with my roommates before bed. It seemed like I should know if I was happy or not. We learn when we’re children that happy is the opposite of sad, and what are we supposed to think when we’re somewhere in between?

I’ve had moments here this summer of unsurpassed happiness. Sitting around a bonfire with a guitar, learning Jamaican worship songs and twisting voices together in sublime harmonies. Driving to the city with friends, the radio blaring and our arms out the windows to catch the wind. Preaching. Hiking. Laughing.

But I’ve also had dark moments. Sometimes loneliness wraps me tight like a blanket in the heat. Sometimes my words falter and I’m embarrassed; I’m called out on my mistakes, and I feel ashamed.

If you added up my triumphs and my failures, or averaged the good and bad, I think the trend would be positive. But is that what it means to be happy? Can good cancel out bad, or does it sharpen it?

In English, we’re limited in how we can say what something “is.” I either am happy or I am not. In Spanish, however, there are two words. You can say “Estoy feliz:” I am happy in the moment; or “Soy feliz:” I am a happy person. Happiness is inherent to who I am.

I meet people every day who aren’t happy. And part of that unhappiness comes from the feeling that they should be. Magazines tell us if we were thinner, we’d be happy. Commercials tell us happiness will come if we only eat more. People consume alcohol and exploit relationships all in a desperate attempt to gain something that they’re missing.

But what if we don’t have to be happy all the time?

I treasure the times when “estoy feliz,” but maybe the ability to be constantly happy is unrealistic and even unhealthy. Should we be happy when a loved one is struggling? Should we be happy when we’re lost and we know it?

Sadness, I think, and frustration and sorrow and anger are necessary human emotions. Anger illuminates wrongs in the world and gives us the impetus to fix them. Sorrow stems from empathy, and allows us to encourage others.

Happiness is about me. When I have what I want and when I’m where I want to be, I am happy. These times are wonderful and they are important. But think of where you’d be if you went with “happy” over “right”!

I want to propose an alternative. I want to stop chasing after happiness and instead pursue contentment and joy. These are not emotions, but states of being. They are decisions and outlooks on life. Even when I am not happy, I can choose optimism. I can be content in struggles because I believe in a God who never leaves my side.

I think of Philippians 4:11-13, where the apostle Paul speaks about contentment. He was whipped and shipwrecked and imprisoned and hated by many. Yet he says,

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.”

Happiness is overrated. Welcome it with open arms when it comes your way, but don't feel like a failure when it isn't easy.  There's more to life than ease and comfort. Instead, choose contentment. Reach out-- choose joy.

Home Sweet Home

If you can make out the sign reading "Grand Canyon Kennels," I assure you, the arrow is NOT pointing to our new home, but to a building further down the street. 

When two girls from our team went home early, a friend and I moved out of the employee dormitory and into this cabin where they had been staying. Though it's essentially a small shack with a bathroom and barely room for three beds, I consider it an improvement. 

Construction has been going on in Colter Hall since the week I arrived, and it was common to wake up to cranes like this outside of my window, the shrill beeping of large machinery, and the course laughter of construction workers. Neighbors were infested with bedbugs and due to further construction on the bathroom right across the hall from me, there were only three showers in the building to accommodate several hundred woman.

Though the cabin I'm in now is no paradise-- the laundry facilities as seen below are perhaps lacking, and the buses that rush by still wake us up in the wee hours of the morning-- I'm thankful for the opportunity of a cozy new home, at least for my last few weeks.

Assumptions of the Rich and Powerful

The El Tovar is the best hotel in the Grand Canyon area—and I’m not just saying that because I grace the front desk. We’ve hosted famous actors, businessmen, and eight of the last dozen Presidents. Last week Joan Rivers stopped by our front desk. Though most of our clientele are still middle class, I come in contact with more wealthy and powerful people than I’ve ever rubbed shoulders with before. What I’ve found is not that these people are consciously snooty or prejudiced. I’ve found they simply make assumptions about other people—assumptions, I’m afraid, that I may be guilty of as well.

Last week a woman rushed up to the front desk in a panic, asking if she could have an iPhone charger. We don’t keep phone chargers on hand, of course, and I told her so. “You don’t have any back there?” she asked impatiently, furrowing her eyebrows in disbelief. “You won’t even let me use yours?”

I’m sure it didn’t occur to her that she was speaking to a front desk full of people who make $8.25 an hour. Not only don’t I have an iPhone, I don’t have a phone at all. But when I told her I didn’t have a charger she could use, she assumed I was simply being selfish.

It’s a certain sort of irony, that the people who work in such a fine hotel generally aren’t able to afford it. This woman didn’t sense it, but I do occasionally see flashes of that realization in people’s faces. Sometimes they’ll ask me what I prefer in the dining room where meal charges regularly run over $100. When I confess I’ve never eaten there, they become temporarily embarrassed, stumbling over words.

People will complain when their air conditioning doesn’t work. “Can you imagine how terrible it was in this heat?” the martyrs gasp. I sympathize because that’s my job—to shake my head, apologize, and “poor baby” them. But I can do more than imagine, I sleep every night in a tiny corner of a room with no more furniture than a single bed, dresser and a porcelain sink. I don’t have the luxury of a fan and certainly not an air conditioning unit.

But even though I’m living in that situation, I cannot separate myself from the offending tourists. I am, in a sense, a tourist myself here. The fact that I borrow and work myself through college makes me feel separate from other students I know, for whom the way is paid in full. But though I’ll quip and banter about being a “poor college student,” I know that I could run home in a moment and be fed and clothed and comforted. I have more than I need, and I know where I could get more.

Coming to work in the Grand Canyon was a voluntary choice based more on the promise of ministry than necessity. I probably could have found work elsewhere and made more money, but I decided to make the adventurous choice. Co-workers here, by contrast, have defeated homelessness, divorce, and every tragedy imaginable. Many have nowhere else to go. And though I share for a summer the public showers and threat of bedbugs, we don’t share much more than that.

Perhaps because we come from different backgrounds, I find I make my own assumptions about my neighbors here in the park. Though I don’t think that everyone has an iPhone or can afford different luxuries, I find I do make assumptions about things like hope.

I’m enormously hopeful, a blind optimist. I was raised under the rhetoric that if I worked hard, I could do anything I wanted. I still believe it. I’m in school, and doing well, and when I graduate I’ll do something I love to do, something that matters. I bristle around negativity and pessimism. But I’ve come to realize that in many cases, assuming that others share these attitudes makes about as much sense as assuming that the housekeeper you’re yelling to hurry up has an iPhone. Some people have never been given the opportunity to hope.

I’m amazed by the opportunities that I’ve been handed. I had loving, intelligent parents who pushed me and challenged me. I benefited from passionate and helpful teachers. I’m surrounded by bright, motivating friends. Of course I’ve worked hard as well, but these things have given me advantages that I can’t assume others share.

One cannot equate hope or ambition with wealth, but there is a disheartening correlation. When a child grows up unable to control where her next meal will come from, she may grow up feeling there is little else she can control. Initiative, in many ways, is a learned skill. It must be observed to be imitated, and so many people here lack models.

I’m leaving in a few weeks, and I won’t look back. Others have worked for five years or ten, in the same entry-level position. Some might brand these people failures, but that’s making an assumption that comes from a place of, well, wealth and power. I don’t have bright plans for the future because I’m better, or smarter, or more diligent than anyone else. I’ve been taught. I’ve had dozens of people invest in me and encourage me, teaching me that there is no such thing as a dead end in life.

Rather than assume that everyone has what I have—whether this be material possessions or an outlook on life—why shouldn’t I offer it? Give encouragement, share opportunities, lend hope: I have plenty of those things behind the front desk, if the woman had only asked.

A Day in the Life of a Front Desk Clerk

K: El Tovar front desk, this is Kate. How can I help you?

Guest: Hello, my microwave is not working.

K: Your… microwave? I’m sorry, none of our rooms have microwaves.

Guest: This one does! But it keeps asking me for a four-digit code.

K: Ma’am, that would be your safe.

Guest: Oh… goodbye. [abruptly hangs up]

--

K: Hello, how can I help you?

Guest 1: Did you have any rooms last night?

K: Last night? I believe we were sold out.

Guest 2: Good.

K: Can I look up rooms for tonight for you?

Guest 1: No thanks, we were just curious.

[Guest 2 to Guest 1]: I told you.

---

K: Just to confirm, we have you staying here with us for one night in a room with two queen beds at a rate of $221 per night. You’re guaranteeing that with a Mastercard. Does that sound right?

Guest: Yep.

K: Alright let me read you your confirmation number. That’s 39XXXX.

Guest: And the area code?

K: Excuse me?

Guest: I’m from Canada, how am I supposed to call without an area code?

K: I’m sorry, where are you trying to call?

Guest: The confirmation number!

K: …that’s not a telephone number, Ma’am, that’s just in case you need to update your reservation later.

Guest: Ok, I never heard of a telephone number with six digits anyway.

--

Guest: Where can I pack?

Co-worker: Pack up your luggage?

Guest: No, pack!

Guest’s wife: Darling, don’t forget your ‘r’s.

Guest: P…ark.

Co-worker: Oh, you’re from Massachusetts!

Guest: Yes, and I just need a place to put my cah.

Guest’s wife: Darling…

Guest: CAR.

---

Little boy, barely visible over the desk: Miss?

K: Yes, sir, can I help you?

Boy’s mother: He found some change outside and he wants to donate it.

[boy places a quarter and two pennies on the desk]

K: Well, thank you very much! This will help maintain the trails and buildings around here!

[boy walks off beaming]

K: Um… what do I do with this?

Manager: Oh, you’re not authorized to handle cash yet.

K: Can I drop this somewhere?

Manager: No, we’ll have to create a separate guest account in the computer marked “donations,” then transfer the posting to the billing screen…

K: It’s 27 cents.

Manager: From the billing screen, we can select, “non-hotel guest” and… here, just give it to me.

[hands manager three coins]

[15 minutes later]

Manager: It’s posted!

---

Guest: Kate! Is that you?

K: Yes it is!

Guest: How are you?

K: Fine, how are you?

Guest: Just great, thanks to you!

K: Well, I’m glad you made it.

[co-worker checks guest in]

Guest: Well, thanks again Kate!

K: Absolutely, enjoy your stay!

[guests leave]

Co-worker: Who were they?

K: I have no idea.

---

The Presidential Suite is the best room in the hotel, but we aren’t allowed to take any reservations for it, as the National Park Service technically owns the room. On days when they aren’t using it, they release it for us to sell. One elderly woman, traveling alone, just happened to inquire about an upgrade right as the suite became available. She booked it, and was especially enamored with the list we gave her of all the Presidents who had slept in the room before her.

Guest: May I have another one of those lists?

K: Sure!

Guest: [conspiratorially] I wrote on the other one.

K: Oh? What did you write?

Guest: I wrote my name on the bottom of the list! [giggles]

K: Are you going to be our next President, then?

Guest: Oh, no. But I think our next President will be a woman.

K: Is that so?

Guest: Yes. I’m going to put Mrs. Hillary Clinton on the bottom of this one, just to be sure.

---

K: …and that’s a room with 2 queen beds.

Guest: Two queens? I wanted one king.

K: I’m sorry, your reservation was made for a room with 2 queens.

Guest: Well that’s all you had when I made the reservation, but I want one king.

K: I can see what we have… I’m sorry, we’re sold out of king rooms for tonight.

Guest: Well, what about the people who have a king bed?

K: What about them?

Guest: Can you call them and ask them to trade?

K: Those guests are already checked into their rooms, we’re not going to ask them to move.

Guest: Why not? Maybe they want two beds! You’re not even going to ask??

K: …No, ma’am, I’m afraid not.

Guest: [near tantrum] But I wanted a king bed!

K: [stares at her, not sure what else to say.]

Guest: Fine. Two queens. [sighs] Here’s my credit card.

---

Guest: Where can I buy bottled water?

K: The park service doesn’t allow us to sell bottled water in the park. You can purchase a water bottle and use one of our re-filling stations, though.

Guest: Those look like drinking fountains. I don’t drink from drinking fountains!

K: It’s filtered water that’s piped in here for us. It’s the same as what you’d be drinking from a bottle.

Guest: Oh, no… anywhere else I can go?

K: Well, the tap water is also the same water.

Guest: I’m not drinking tap water!

K: Ok. Well. The cocktail lounge behind you can give you water in a to-go cup.

Guest: They probably use the tap water too! I don’t want tap water! Can I get juice?

K: The cocktail lounge sells juice.

Guest: I don’t want to spend $6 on a cup of juice!

K: Well, you could get a cup of juice at the cafeteria about a mile away. That’s about a mile walking, or you could take the shuttle bus.

Guest: That’s so far! I just need to take these pills here. I don’t need much. Isn’t there anything else I can do?

K: Maybe you could get a glass of water with your dinner?

Guest: I already ate dinner. I took a sip of the water and there must be minerals or something in there. I didn’t like it.

K: I, I really don’t know what else to tell you.

Guest: I’m going to try that cafeteria then. I know I’m going to get lost. Oh, these pills cause me so much trouble!

---

K: May I see a photo ID and credit card, please?

Guest [to husband]: Isn’t she precious? Look, she’s a trainee.

K: [ignoring] Alright, would you sign here by the room rate, then across the bottom there? Check-out time is 11am tomorrow morning.

Guest: You’re doing a great job. [to husband] Isn’t she doing a great job?

K: Thank you. How many keys can I make for you?

Guest: Two is fine.

[Goes to make keys. Guest pulls her phone out]

Guest: Smile! [takes picture]

K: Uh… your room number is right here, you’re going to be up those stairs and down the hall.

Guest: Thank you, sweetie. [to husband] Precious!