Day 41

This journal goes out to all of the people back at home,

Some that follow our blog may be reading from their phone.

There is a sense of community you cannot find at home,

With your rooms and your doors and your time to be alone.

At home you can hide, you ignore texts and calls,

But out here you face your fears and your emotional withdrawals.

Not all groups had free days in between expeditions like we did,

It was odd to me and ironically if I wasn’t with the group all I wanted was to be hid.

Because it was culture shock it was going from the people in our group back to those distant other real people,

But we had grown so close our tight knit group like a group you’d think you’d find more of in the churches under their steeples.

See that’s the problem with the people in society today,

We talk crap behind backs but face to face we’ve nothing to say.

You’d rather cower behind “what-ifs” and never tell them what you’re thinking,

But how will they ever know what needs changed is your words to them are shrinking.

So coming back into society was much harder than I’d thought,

Because now I know more things, I see their faults, many criticisms sought.

But most of all it was hard because no one understood, Just some college kids on a river in the middle of the woods.

You can’t ask me to define a trip like this you won’t understand what we learned,

You can’t understand that we feel further along that we have more pages turned.

Like the books we’ve read, the maps we follow, and everything else metaphorical,

I get the most out of the questions Jeff ends, with “this one is rhetorical.”

Now back to my group, in our free time I missed you guys a lot,

One morning I cried, felt like throwing up, I just wanted the anxiety to stop.

This free time made me think about things I hadn’t yet,

So many thoughts with mixed emotions that I want to get off my chest.

But for now it’s time to end this journal so I’m saying goodbye,

If you’re holding a bee in your hand then what is in your eye?

(beauty, is in the eye of the “bee-holder”)

 - Josh Baughman