Hello! My name is Rebecca, and I am thrilled to be this semester’s Camas intern. Since I will probably interact with many of you in the coming months, I thought I would introduce myself a bit. I am a junior studying environmental studies and English literature. Two teachers raised me in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. My mom quoted Shakespeare and Teresa of Avila and her ESL students, and my dad led me to birdhouses he had set up for Western bluebirds all along the country road where we lived. I like light rail trains, playing violin, singing the Ode to Joy chorus, reading theology for my bedtime stories, hiking, climbing badly but with a philosophical mindset, and examining every word you throw at me.

I write out of necessity. Last semester, I signed on for twelve credits of independent study related to pilgrimage in Europe--its history, its literature and stories, and its religious significance. I combined this with a focus in travel-themed nature writing. Then I walked--well, also bussed--the Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage that ends in the Galician city of Santiago de Compostela, which is said to hold the remains of St. James the apostle. I started walking just south of Lyon, France, in Le Puy. I had expected enlightenment to just show up and ravish me. I had expected to feel limitless. Instead, I came to an understanding of my limits, and into a need for writing. I got and stayed injured, despite daily icing and stretching and weeks of rest--some days, I could not even step out as a tourist.

All the comfort and enlightenment I had wanted often did not come, but friends came. Friendly donkeys came. Decrepit, echoing cathedrals with fading ceiling frescoes (and one with a hutch of indoor chickens) came. Dancing poplar leaves came. And, most importantly, I witnessed something mysterious carrying me through it all, if you can believe it. Friends still ask me daily, “how was your trip?” and I tell them, “It was spiritual. Every day was difficult. I made a lot of friends. I am still recovering.” I don’t think we’re ever meant to stop recovering. Paul Elie, author of The Life You Save May be Your Own (a book about four prominent American Catholic writers) believes that “a pilgrimage is a journey taken in the light of a story…the pilgrim…[seeks] to be a witness.” We are meant to remain witnesses, to keep reacting to everything we experience in the narratives of our lives. I have just recently awakened to that idea. I do less lately; I hope to witness more. And, of course, I will undoubtedly react to it with writing.

I am glad to be back in the Missoula valley, a place where I have met so many other people who choose to be witnesses--to dying white bark pines, to successful river clean-up projects, to wildflowers in the mountains, to shrinking glaciers, to fracking, to just the food on our tables. In Missoula, I turn to Camas for a window into how other people of Missoula and of the West witness the world. There is something beautiful, rare lately, to this slower, thoughtful place and community and publication that lets life impress itself upon us, that lets us stop in the rush of our lives and react to and love this world.