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Tennessee is a wild land.  Anyone who has stepped off a manicured path in the “Volunteer State” during summer months knows this.  Tangled roots turn to tangled leaves netted together with bramble and vine.  Insects traverse this spread as well, present in soil, dangling from greenery and livid in the air.  Cats also permeate this brush, pushing through green blankets to nosily eat, chew, or play with that which has been found.  The Wild Stewart, though, can only be found meandering during the winter and early spring months, when most of the ‘other’ wilds are asleep.

The cats are hunting with me.  We have heard a sound, and are in hot pursuit, scrambling through the underbrush to find it.  I am flanked by Polar and Three-Dot, patriarchs of the feral feline colony.  Andy, the youngest of the bunch, is yawning on my heels, stopping occasionally to sniff at my random footprints.  Leo, our fearless and highly irritable queen stalks the male cats as much as the sound.  Unfortunately, after a few minutes of fun and loud stalking, whatever it was disappears and we turn to retrace our steps.  I duck and twist around the budding branches and step over leaf-less brambles, finally stepping out into the yard.

The cats remain in the brush, dimming to sets of glowing eyes, and eventually fading into the darkness of underbrush.  Or scaling into the higher branches of trees and screeching like baby howler monkeys…

Later that night, as I removed clothes for a shower, I noticed a large blemish on my dairy-air.  Flexing into an awkwardly contorted twist, while pinching and shifting a large (and gorgeous) gluteus section to inspect the new blemish further, I observed a rider picked up during the evening’s excursion.  I waved a pair of tweezers at the wee tyke.

The wee tyke buried its head further into my gorgeous epidermis.

The next week, I found myself in the doctor’s office.  He said, “Wow!  What’s going on here?”

I replied, “Well… three days ago, after I shaved, I noticed a small set of lumps on my jaw.  I thought it was a line of pimples, but then it grew to a larger spot, and that night, other spots popped up on my face forming a rash.”

He nodded.  Encouraged, I continued.  “Then, the night before last, I started seeing some swelling on one of my cheekbones, which last night began pushing one of my eyes quite a bit, while the rash simultaneously took over that same area.  I went in to work, but I started having trouble concentrating, so left early.”

“This morning I only slept a few hours, and the rash spread to my chest, arms and into my scalp and down my neck.”  His eyebrows rose as I continued. “And now the swelling increased across my nose to my other cheekbone and eye.”

He nods a bit more, and then asks, “So… have you been bitten by a tick recently?”

I think back about a week when I clamped some tweezers around a tick’s body and popped it out of my ass.  “Yeah… about a week ago.”  He began writing out a prescription.

“What do you think it is?”

He paused his scribble long enough to respond, “ I don’t know… we’ll get a blood test, but results will take time.  We may not have time, so I’m getting you started with this right away.”  He handed me a prescription for doxycycline.  “ I believe, though, that it is either Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain spotted fever.”

“Is it contagious?”

“No.”

I began rapidly scratching everywhere I could politely reach.

Uncompromising extremists have always served an important purpose in our country. Their passion brings potential ‘wrongs’ to the awareness of society. They rally our citizens to discuss ad nauseam how our society’s actions impact their own and others’ lives. Their drive pushes our leaders through choppy waters by offering new alternatives to traditional means.

However, uncompromising extremists cannot successfully lead this country of very diverse beliefs and opinions.  When a majority of our political leaders fall into extremist categories, this big boat of a country simply gets pushed and pulled back and forth, remaining in stagnant waters. In order to move forward……or in any direction, a majority of our leaders must be willing to give and take or, at least, be willing to compromise somewhat from their favorite extreme positions. This type of conciliatory leadership results in very slow progress, but at least the country can move in acceptable directions.

Even the most logical and rational of us may lean toward extremes when we are stressed or fearful. During those times we need a team of leaders, who are able to calm us and guide us……not just the few of us who see eye to eye with those leaders…..but, the majority of us.

So, this election year as we all vote for our Senators, and Representatives during this stressful period, rather than vote for the leaders who sound exactly like we do when discussing politics or religion with our buddies, please consider voting for those leaders who have a history of striking a balance, who are able to listen respectfully to those with radically different ideas, who exhibit a talent for reconciling opposing perspectives in a conciliatory manner. Hold on to your idealistic hopes of what our country should be or may become and keep pushing toward those goals. However, realize that we are a country committed to providing an environment in which all of us can live the way we choose even though we all may choose to live radically different from each other. In order to accomplish this commitment, we cannot vote in our favorite extremists and hope they can beat down ‘the opposition’.  It simply doesn’t work that way in our country. Extremists can’t accomplish the extremes they promise. The best they can do is hold fast and keep change (good or bad) from occurring.

Shortly after returning to Peace Corps Nepal in June (after 6 weeks of evacuation), we began having health issues. Following several doctor consultations, Peace Corps decided to medically evacuate us stateside, where we could receive medical treatment from American doctors. We were both diagnosed with PTSD related to the earthquakes in Nepal.

Since returning to the states for therapy, additional physical medical problems have shown up. One of us had a Lymphoma cancer scare that eventually was determined to ‘not’ be cancer, but an “atypical infection” contracted during our time in Nepal.  The other returned from Nepal with a dangerously high cholesterol level, thanks to a year of the basic Nepali diet of carbs and oil.

Currently, we are healing here in beautiful Nashville.  Unfortunately, our health symptoms did not resolve by the end of Peace Corps’ medical evacuation limit (45 days). Therefore, Peace Corps medically separated both of us giving us a year to improve enough to be medically cleared and return to our service.

In the past two months, the Peace Corps Volunteers remaining in Nepal have experienced ‘stand fasts’ (an inability to leave their site) due to political demonstrations related to disagreements over the new constitution (over 40 people have been killed during the demonstrations), and are currently encountering a lack of and a cost increase for food, gas, and cooking fuel due to an unofficial Indian trade embargo and border protests.  Since India borders Nepal on three sides and the two roads north to China were destroyed during the earthquakes, India is the only way for Nepal to get imports by road. After the April 25^th earthquake, the hits keep coming to Nepal and Peace Corps’ Nepal program.  Therefore, even if we were given a clean bill of health, we aren’t confident we could return to serve our beloved second home.   Our current plan is to restart our Seattle lives soon, with the hope to one day, in the not so far future, work abroad again (after Vee finishes graduate school).

So… we were in The Peace Corps!  Whoa, what an experience. It is an amazing organization.  It leads to an amazingly gratifying and amazingly frustrating experience, with all the in-between adjectives peppered throughout.  We put a lot into it, and found out that, as the cliché says, you do indeed, ‘get out of it what you put into it’.  During our year in Nepal, Peace Corps gave us everything that we were wanting from service:

• We wanted to gain an understanding of what it is like to live as a minority
• We wanted to experience living in a different culture
• We wanted to learn another language
• We wanted to broaden our view of international relations
• We wanted to reach a practical comprehension of development and sustainability
• We wanted to travel

Before you run out to sign up for Peace Corps, please understand this was not a year of vacation. These experiences were not easily earned.  It was a very difficult year filled with painful eye opening moments and realizations about our beliefs, our view of other cultures, our country, and ourselves.  But, as with most challenging periods in life, we were irreversibly impacted.

We hope to be able to share more of our experiences with others in the future, and appreciate the support we’ve been given by the overlapping circle of family, friends, and the staff at Peace Corps. Our hearts go out to our Nepali families and current volunteers as they struggle with the situation over there. No matter what future adventures we find, know that all of you travel with us in our hearts.

It’s been less than three months since we were last all together, a matter of a few weeks. But, the beginnings of transformation are evident. Body movements are more relaxed.  The physiques are leaner. New scars haphazardly dot and stitch the skin, from tattoos and piercings to unintentional wounds. Seasoned eyes give preview to the breathtaking, horrifying and culturally eye opening experiences our souls have stored in knowledge banks for later processing.

We’ve shared the excitement of Peace Corps staging, the exhaustion of traveling half way around the globe in a few hours, the hellish stress of Pre-service training, and the understanding of isolation at permanent site, all in a fast-spinning five month timeframe. Welcome to In-service training, my friends. We’ve missed you. It has been such a long journey. And the thirty of us have so much further to go before…

we rest.