Taos

Recently joined marcher and blogger at The Ithacan. She is blogging there regularly while on the Climate March. I can’t ever say enough about how incredible my first day was. It was raining all day, and the poor weather really tested me, but I’m proud to say I walked every step and I slept in my tent at the end of the day. Some marchers hitched rides and stayed elsewhere for the night — some in a dance studio with hot showers, others in a hotel if they could afford it — and I certainly didn’t blame them. It was a rough day and I was tempted to follow suit. But, I figured I signed up for all sorts of weather and I’m determined to stick it through, thick and thin. One of my goals while being on the march is to become closer to nature and embrace simple living, and despite getting a little cold in the middle of the night I don’t regret my decision to stay outside. Despite the beautiful sunny morning on the 24th — my first official day — when Carol, my Taos host, and I left for the Taos visitor’s center it started to rain, and as I unloaded my things into one of our support vehicles at the center it started to hail! The marchers were just arriving when Carol and I got there, and we took shelter in the center for a while and let the hail pass. Before we set out for the local park, a Buddhist monk, Reverend Yusin Yamato, who has walked across the country three times carrying a prayer of peace, blessed all of us. He proceeded to walk with us the whole way beating a drum.