“There was a whole mess of misdiagnosed medical things and disastrous physical health in college… (then I was told) not only is it not bad for you to be exercising but it would help you more if you WERE exercising…”
“…she said come (out for the rowing team), nobody’s done it (so don’t worry about being new), we are the team with no reputation…”
“Practices were at 5:30 in the morning… we’d ride our bikes over when the sun was rising…through super quiet campus paths… and fields… it was often misty…there was never exactly a direct route… and then we would cross a bridge and backtrack just a little ways to the boathouse.”
“…it was 8 women trying to get these gigantic boats out… it was a struggle… but even that was fun…”.
“…eight individual people… all doing our own thing, we’re not physically tied to each other, except through the boat and the oars… what’s most important is the unity… the boat will go faster and more smoothly if you’re in time with each other… that unity I love- I think its the purpose of life, to me its the purpose of the church, its the idea of always seeking unity even when the leader isn’t perfect, because the system is perfect, even if the people implementing it (the system) aren’t perfect… that was beautiful to think about out there (on the river) and to think about while trying to set the pace and knowing that I couldn’t perfectly set the pace.”
“We are blindly pouring every ounce of energy we have going in a direction we don’t know (can’t see)… its a total matter of trust and dependence on everyone else.”
“you have this peace (on the river)- in a year that was intellectually and logistically overwhelming, (it was restorative) to have that quiet peaceful time where I felt like I wasn’t responsible for having to do the rest of that stuff and it was ok to be taking the time off.”
"The way I remember it (the river) most was in that time of light right before the sun was really up but the sun was bright enough- it looked like we were rowing on diamonds…and the smell of it… it was very fresh… dewy, damp, almost musty… it smelled thick. The exercises we would do…we would have to close our eyes so we would have to do the whole thing by feeling the motion of our own bodies and the position of our own bodies and you could feel the oar touch the water in way when your eyes are closed that is hard to have that level of awareness when your eyes are open.. we would do this exercise where you are just bobbing your oar in and out of the water doing it in time with other people and the sound was magical- I could have sat there mesmerized for hours- eyes closed, making that sound… it was totally quiet… I remember thinking ‘even the birds are being quiet’…every single sense was involved.”
“I think about my view (from the boat) all the time… the end of the boat and a water view and trees or brush around… that is what I think of and I can sort of hear the sounds and smell the smells and feel the wind… the physical feel of the pulling”
“Nothing could replace it, all these circumstances came together at one time… you couldn’t do anything to deserve this perfect set of circumstances coming together, and you couldn’t plan it- I feel totally blessed that I got to experience that, it was great that I got to do it for a year- I can’t relive it, I can’t make it happen again no matter how much I try to recreate it. But to have gotten to do that was a total gift.”
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