the Mothership and our ties to it

I'm in Silverton. It's beautiful. It's remote. It's far away from lots of my friends. It's fun. It's challenging. It's contradictory.

Contradictory in the sense that even though I know I should be "done" with work for the day my camp training is kicking in and not really giving me the option of relaxing or enjoying being "off". Contradictory in the sense that I am having a lot of fun, and really enjoying my job, but I'm also lonely and needing a community.

Yes, there are other people here. Right now we have a whole 8 people on base. Whoo freakin Hoo. Eight. In a couple days it will be down to 4, then 3. At times over the summer there may be only 1 or two people around. I like the people that are here. We have fun hanging out together. I miss all my other LC-type-people that are scattered in places like Marble or Leadville.

We've started calling Leadville and the LMC the mothership. My goal is to refer to it that way the entire summer. It kinda makes sense. We came from the mothership. It's where we recieved our indoctrination to the organization and our "mission" here. Whenever we need more supplies or need to prepare for our next course where will we go? That's right, the mothership. Our central leadership is in the mothership, a major part of our support system is in the mothership, it makes sense. (At least in my head.) The best part is the way everybody still laughs everytime I say "mothership". I think that may be one of the best parts of the whole deal.

Speaking of missions, today I got to do my first real in-depth activity with the course I am working. We talked about expectations and went through the gear and food. I really like my job. Everybody says I did a good job. I feel kinda special that C even complimented me.