As school begins again, I find myself reflecting on what I do as a theatre teacher. I am gearing up to start the new semester, and with it the new theatre season. I will pour hours and hours into the theatre program after school and on the weekends. There are teachers just like me all over the country, about to engage in the madness of managing a high school theatre program. Most folks are probably unaware of this subculture, but I think my theatre teaching friends will relate to these observations and confessions. If you're unfamiliar with the life of the theatre teacher, some of these might surprise you.

1) I love what I do. I really, truly love it. If I didn't, I would not do it.

2) I went to school for this. I am a trained theatre artist with a degree in the performing arts. I know what to look for when choosing a play or casting a show. I dedicated years of my life to learning how to do this stuff. That's not to say parents or other folks shouldn't question any of my decisions; I will certainly have a misstep every now and then. But I was hired as the theatre teacher because I am highly qualified to do this job. I have spent many years learning about the arts, practicing theatre, and reading or seeing as many plays as I can. Theatre may not be one of the "3 Rs" but it takes time and effort to learn how to so this. If you do wish to suggest a way that I can do something better, please keep this in mind and approach me with respect.

3) Theatre productions cost money. This may seem obvious, but you would not believe how many people ask to get into the show for free or complain about ticket prices. We get donations from our school and our community in order to keep prices low so people can see our performances, and NO ONE gets paid from those ticket sales. Each show's box office supports the next show. That's about it.

4) I have heard that "drama drama" joke a million times. It was not funny to begin with. Threatening to send me the girls who "start drama" or saying "I bet there's DRAMA in drama CLUB!" does not amuse me.

5) Casting is one of the most difficult parts of my job. I cast shows based on my years of experience studying theatre (see # 2), reading plays, watching plays, teaching students, and operating a company of student actors and technicians. I do not have the show cast before I see the auditions. I do not cast kids because they are my pets or because I know their parents socially. I want the play to be the very best show it can be, so I place kids in their roles based on what I see in the audition room. I have never used casting as a method of reward or punishment. Above all, I will do my very best to be fair and to put together a show we can all take pride in.

6) No. We will not do WICKED.

7) Yes, I am tough. I challenge my students because I want them to learn and grow through theatre classes and plays. I have high expectations and I ask a lot of my pupils. When they push themselves to meet those standards, they will become better artists and, hopefully, better people. They will be glad they did.

8) I will make mistakes. Again, this may seem like a no-brainer, but I have often found myself being held to an impossible standard of perfection by students, parents, or administrators. I do not claim to know it all, nor will I get it right every time. I will ask a lot of myself, just as I will as a lot of my students. I will often succeed, but sometimes I will fail. Art is about risk. And speaking of art...

9) Perhaps the most challenging aspect of teaching theatre in a public school is that of balancing my dual roles of educator and artist. The educator is expected to proliferate the status quo. The artist is expected to push boundaries. The arts educator is therefore trapped somewhere between those extremes. In order to strike that balance, I will be sure to choose at least one or two mainstream, well-known family shows each season. But I will also include plays that are new or obscure or challenging or even all three at once. Students need both types of shows in order to grow as artists.

10) Directing plays is only a small part of what I do. Granted, it is the most visible part. I also teach classes in theatre and (as most of my peers do as well) English language arts. This means while I do spend a ton of time working on whatever play we're doing, I am also writing lesson plans, attending meetings, grading essays, and preparing kids for standardized tests. And this only scrapes the surface. Oh, and I'm also married and I have a child. If I forget something or accidentally give you the wrong information, please understand that I am being pulled in many different directions. I will set it right as soon as I have a chance.

Do you have other confessions? Relate to these? Add your feelings in the comments!

[Part two in a series of reflections on my experiences on a brief solo section hike on the Appalachian trail.]

I am a backwoods person, to be sure. That is to say, I was raised in a decidedly off-the-beaten-path rural community in North Florida. We were a good fifteen minute drive from the nearest grocery store and a solid hour from things like shopping malls and multiplexes. Our property was surrounded by trees and was only accessible via a dirt road.

I spent a lot of time in the woods. We explored, camped, fished, hunted, and rode our ATVs in the green, swampy North Florida forests. My uncle was superintendent of the local state park, so we spent plenty of time there as well.

When I moved the 120 miles or so away from my hometown to South Georgia, the landscape stayed roughly the same. I still live on a wooded lot down a dirt road in a very small town that boasts a state park and a lake. I still spend a lot of my leisure time in the woods camping, hiking, or just picnicking with my family. We like to go to state and national parks. We very much enjoy the outdoors.

Camping at campsites and along the riverbank is all well and good, but wilderness hiking is a different animal entirely. My recent hike on the AT was not my first solo jaunt into the wild, but it is my longest so far, and proved to be both the most challenging and most rewarding experience I have yet had in the backcountry.

Perhaps what strikes me the most about backcountry distance hiking is that things mean so much more out there. The things we take for granted here in civilization can mean one's very survival once electrical outlets and flush toilets are left behind. My first full realization of the truth of this came on my first day, when I had been walking for several hours & was starting to get a little low on drinking water. I wasn't completely out of the wet stuff yet, but I knew if I didn't refill soon, I'd start to run into a problem when it came time to make camp. I arrived at a short little side trail that led to a fresh, cold mountain spring. The sign marking the trail read:

WATER

High Quality H2O

BLESS IT!

The enthusiasm of the signmaker did not seem out of place at all at the time. Water, which I so take for granted in my everyday life, had become something meaningful and important. When I could no longer take a few steps to the kitchen and fill my glass, I was forced to pay attention to water. I attended carefully. I found the crack in the stone where the spring erupted and I filled my plastic waterskin, carefully affixing the filter attachment before indulging in the cleanest, coolest, most delicious water I had ever tasted.

I learned, also, that good shoes and fastidious foot care can make or break a hike. In my case, even with both, my feet developed problems after a while. But without them, I wouldn't have made it past the first day. In my closet at home I have about a dozen pairs of shoes. If I damage a pair or if I find that it no longer fits quite right, I simply buy a new pair. Until I began hiking a few years ago, I did not understand how important something as seemingly routine as a good pair of shoes could be in the right situation.

There were other elements that were essential to my journey, of course. There was the food I had packed and the length of rope that was needed to suspend it above the ground at night so as not to attract bears to my campsite. There was my tent. My maps. My sleeping bag. My walking sticks, which my time as a hiker has taught me are far more important than most people give them credit for. These were all necessary. But for me, it all boiled down to fresh water and comfortable shoes.

Both in the woods and since my return, I have often found myself thinking of Henry David Thoreau's famous passage in Walden:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

As a teacher of American literature, I have read, spoken, heard, and taught these words for a decade and a half. I understood them, to some extent. I knew the meaning of the words and I knew what Thoreau was getting at. I had an intellectual grasp of the concepts. But it was not until I had gone out on my own and backed life into a corner with sweat running down my face and thigh muscles that would have been screaming had only they had voices that I truly understood how right Thoreau had gotten it.

The phrase "the essential facts of life" has much more meaning for me now, as I am beginning to understand in my very soul what Thoreau meant by life in "its lowest terms." Life in its lowest terms is a cold, clear spring after miles of climbing mountains. When Thoreau speaks of "what was not life," he's talking about my iPhone.

When we take away those things which bear only the illusion of necessity and not the thing itself, we take the first steps on the path toward a new life. Wisdom traditions both old and new tell us this. Thoreau's "cut a broad swath and shave close" is Jesus of Nazareth's "sell all your belongings" which is, in turn, Tyler Durden's "the things you own end up owning you."

Am I there yet? Indeed, I am not. I will continue to use my air conditioning and my computer. I will still care far too much about how many times a brown oblong ball crosses a white stripe on Sunday afternoons. But I will be taking John Muir's advice, as often as I am able:

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

This week the laurel oaks on the back half of our property announced the approach of autumn in blazing reds and yellows.

Although we technically have another six weeks left of summer, fellow teachers and parents will understand that for me fall is already beginning. I have started the process of lesson planning and classroom preparation, and quite a few of my colleagues in other systems have already seen students return for the new semester.

Each year as summer winds down, I find myself feeling nostalgic. The slant of light shifts, the leaves begin to turn, school starts to gear up again, and my thoughts begin to drift back to childhood. I'm certain things didn't feel so wonderfully perfect then as I now remember, but memory is funny that way.

When my grandmother passed away in January, I wrote a poem for her funeral that captures how I've been feeling & some of the things I've been thinking about over the last few days. She has been gone for seven months now, but each time a season changes I find myself thinking about her and missing her all over again. I decided to share the entire poem here rather than try to put those feelings into new words.

Not Quite an Elegy

Summers at my Granny's meant
   hot days and scuppernongs & figs & hard little peaches
   that defied the muddy soil in her back yard, pushing
   out into the world to bring us juicy sweetness.
   Those days meant relatives & numerous stray cats --
   she could never say no to feeding either.

Life at her house on those long, sunny days
   was about scratchy yellow carpet,
   clear plastic mats defending the high traffic areas from wear.
   It meant playing hide & seek in the many rooms
   that had been added to the once-tiny house
   sitting just below the main road.
   It was watching her open a fresh can of evaporated milk
   to sweeten her coffee
   Then seeing that same can last a week in the
   heavy old refrigerator in the corner of the kitchen

Autumn meant we saw her less during the days
   Although many afternoons were spent sitting
   on her floor with our old rerunning friends
   George Jefferson & The Fonz
   (though try as I might, I could never activate Granny's
   aging record player with a snap of my fingers)

That time of the year meant visiting on Sundays
   gathering to eat the butter beans
   she had shelled on Saturday,
   her short thumbs shaped perfectly for splitting the hulls.
   Those Sunday meals meant family.
   And on Sundays near a birthday, the special
   man or woman or boy or girl of the week
   was honored by my Granny with his or her favorite dessert
   For me, that was her classic lemon meringue pie
   fluffy white & brown giving way to
   perfect, translucent yellow
   A sweet slice of heaven on a heavy china plate.

Fall gave way to winter, and with it just enough freezing nights
   to insure those same scuppernong vines
   would yield a fresh crop in the coming year.
   It meant we got to decorate my Granny's
   small, artificial Christmas tree however we wanted.
   Too much tinsel, but that's ok, baby.
   And every year, sparklers on Christmas Eve,
   maybe a firecracker or two on the road
   as long as no cars were coming.

Those cold days were about firing up the
   low, metal gas heaters, taking turns standing near them,
   carefully rotating our bodies when one side
   was too hot, the other too cold.

Spring always felt like Granny's favorite season
   It was a time to wear pink, a time to celebrate Easter,
   A time to plant and to take trips all over the county,
   smiling and hugging necks, reminding everyone she saw
   Friends are family, too.

Warmer days meant she no longer had to kneel next to the tub,
   but she could wash her long, silver hair
   outside under the faucet
   before heading down to the beauty shop.
   We would sit & watch the magic happen, as waist-length locks
   were twisted & collected, piled high atop her head
   in the beehive she wore until the day she left this Earth.

Every year was a good year, even when bad things happened.
   Maybe an overzealous grandson had
   broken her ribs giving her her first go-kart ride.
   Or perhaps he had artistically reshaped all the
   pictures in her photo album with the craft scissors.
   Or gotten himself locked in the chifferobe,
   wondering whether it was better to call out
   and give himself away as a rule breaker
   or just stay there and hope The Lord
   came back before she could find him.

Every year was a good one, filled with perfectly-shaped biscuits
   and coconut cakes; fluffy slippers and
   fuzzy pink house dusters; open-toed shoes
   no matter what the weather was like.
   And above it all, love and patience and a commitment
   to family. We'll remember those things when we see
   a sofa with little pink flowers on it, or when
   we drink just a sip of coke to help wake us up
   from our afternoon nap.
   We'll remember when we see a hydrangea, reminding
   us that just around the corner,
   here comes comes the spring.

[Note: I began writing a post about my experiences on the AT in July, but it became too big for just one entry. This is part one; part two will follow soon.]

It has been several weeks since my first section hike on the Appalachian Trail. Hiking the AT, even just a tiny bit of it, was a fantastic experience. It was a solo hike, about 48 hours long, and I will readily admit that on this journey I learned quite a bit--not only about hiking but also about myself.

I had been wanting to hike part of the AT for a couple of years, but I knew it would take some preparation. I read, I googled, I talked to people with experience hiking the trail, and I otherwise did my due diligence. One phrase that stood out to me in a small way when I was sitting at home in front of my computer became more & more real the deeper into the mountains I walked. That simple phrase was "it's your hike."

This may seem obvious, but the truth is that one of my personal struggles is with comparing myself to other people. I am competitive by nature and I tend to measure my worth with a metaphysical yardstick based on the accomplishments of others. As I walked the trail, I sometimes found myself slipping into this familiar pattern. If someone passed me, I would judge myself for not moving fast enough. If someone's camp was set up, I would think they were better than me for whatever reason: they had better gear, theirs was a better location, they had a more efficient method of hanging their food up in the trees and away from the bears, whatever. Since this was my first AT hike, I would sometimes catch myself thinking "I'm not doing this right."

And that's when I would go back to the simple advice of hikers before me: it's your hike. This was my day. I was alone in a beautiful wilderness with only a few pounds of gear to sustain me. I was drinking cold, clear water from mountain springs. I was living a dream I had had for years. It was time to let go of judgment & just hike.

It was my hike. So that's what they meant!

When I was able to let go of judging myself & judging others, I was able to move forward and face the challenges of the mountains rather than the challenges of being "good enough" to even be there. "It's your hike" became my mantra. It became my pep talk. I would tell myself to just keep moving forward when I needed to make progress, to rest when I was tired, eat when I was hungry, and stop for a few moments to have my breath taken away by the view.

I gave myself permission to let my hike be own. I walked forward for hours at a time. I climbed thousands of feet and stood on the tops of mountains I had been staring up at earlier in the day, marveling at their heights. I gathered water from falls streaming down from far above me and encountered animals in their natural habitats. I pitched my tent so near the sky that I awoke inside the clouds. I breathed fresh mountain air and felt alive.

I had hoped to last four days, but after only two, I found that I had gone about as far as I was able to go. I had made 25 miles in just under 48 hours, but my body was starting to rebel. So of course, the old feelings of guilt and failure began to creep in, and I wondered what the hell I had been thinking when I decided to climb mountains alone for a vacation. I felt that calling it quits now would ruin my hike somehow. And then the same pep talk that had helped me move forward helped me to understand that quitting was ok. It was my hike. It was a hike I could be proud of, and it was a hike that needed to end. I made a call to the friend who was planning to pick me up on Friday & arranged to get off the trail early.

One of my favorite quotes, though I rarely actually live up to it, has always been Teddy Roosevelt's "Comparison is the thief of joy." What I learned on the AT is that though this is certainly true, it's difficult to practice on a daily basis. But when you distill it to its essence, it becomes much more achievable. "Comparison is the thief of joy" really means "it's your life" or "it's your art" or, for me, "it's your hike."

This is not vanity. This is not selfishness. This is not the popular image of Old Blue Eyes defiantly belting out "My Way." It is simply a realization that my life is my life and I don't have to be as good as (or as rich as, or as thin as) anyone else to be happy. I don't need to meet some societally-imposed standard in order to be a worthwhile human being. All I have to do is keep walking forward, rest when I am tired, eat when I am hungry, and stop as often as I like to enjoy the beauty of the world.

It's my hike, after all.

Several years ago, my wife started moving us toward a more eco-friendly way of life. We started small. To tell the truth, we are still only crunchy in a small way, but we are progressing. One of the ways she decided to put us on the path to a better planet was through the use of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap.


I was... resistant.


I was resistant because the soap was unfamiliar & I wasn't crazy about the way of smelled. I also insisted on bars rather than the traditional liquid. At the time she began buying the soap, I did not bother to read the 2,000 word religious & political diatribe on the bottle. That would probably have made me even more resistant.


Well, time went on and she kept buying the soap. I used it sometimes, but only if it was in bar form. And now the story takes a bit of a turn away from soap. But we will get back there, I promise.


In early January of 2013 I began planning an anniversary trip for my wife & me. A friend recommended an eco-friendly hideaway near the GA coast called The Hostel in the Forest. It seemed a little out there to me, but I thought we could give it a try.


I did some research on the place & learned that the toilets were composting, no nonbiodegradable trash could be produced by guests or anyone else, and the showers were outdoors. Guests would be expected to pitch in and work while they were there.


It didn't seem like a romantic getaway, so I went ahead & spoiled the surprise by asking my wife about it. She was all in, so on our anniversary weekend we shipped the child away to grandparent camp and headed to the forest.


The place was amazing. It was full of art and love and music and literature. It was a great experience. And on the morning of the second day, after a night in one of the little houses, we headed to the outdoor shower.


Outdoor is a considerable understatement.


These showers weren't merely outside. They were completely open to the forest. They had walls on two sides and trees on the other, and that's if you were lucky. Some showers were completely open. The shower heads were mounted on tree trunks, and the used water trickled down the body of the person showering and directly onto the forest floor.


Since the forest would be collecting the cast off water, the soap had to be forest-friendly... I can sense you getting ahead of me now.


Sure enough, on a little shelf just to the right of the tree trunk, there was a bottle of good old Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap. The liquid kind.


Being the good sport I am and figuring it couldn't really hurt anything, I stripped down in the middle of the forest and showered under the water from a fixture protruding from a live pine tree, cleansing myself with lavender scented Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap. I now no longer use any other product.


Showering in the forest was transformative and amazing. I was able to breathe the air directly from the trees and drink in their beauty. It was a baptism.


I don't use Dr. Bronner's because it is some sort of amazing miracle product (maybe it is; it doesn't even matter to me). I use it because my brain formed an amazing pattern that cold March morning.


As I stood there in the warm water, surrounded by the clean, fresh air of early spring, my subconscious made a permanent connection between lavender scented Castille soap and the love, beauty, and freedom of nature. When I shower every day I get to go back to that in some small way. It keeps me aware that the wide world is just beyond the thin walls of my bathroom.


We have been back to The Hostel in the Forest since that first time, and we hope to go again. I encourage everyone to find a plae like it. Find a place that is open and natural and peaceful. Find a place where you can strip down your soul and let the warm refreshing power of the wild wash over you. You will never look at things the same way again--even if those things are simple bottles of soap.


As for me, I'm drawing up designs for my very own outdoor shower.

I'll be trying my hand at blogging. I know I'm about ten years behind the curve on this, but better late than never. I simply find that many times I have thoughts that are too long for a tweet or a Facebook status, so I needed an outlet for wordier posts.


My interests are pretty broad. I might write about wilderness hiking one week & theatre the next. I will probably write about morality & spirituality as well. I'm making no rules for myself, I'm just going to dive in.


August 3, 2013