On Saturday I decided that I wanted to be John Ruskin. Not the part where he falls in love with a ten-year-old girl, but the part where he does everything, and lives in a place called Brantwood. Which, unfortunately, sounded to me at first like it should be the name of a student housing apartment at BYU. John Ruskin changed people's minds about art, especially about Turner's art, and he sketched watercolors and he advocated for social change in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, and he tried to brighten up schools with posters of paintings and told little kids to go outside to learn and collect bugs and plants and other things. And the Queen liked him, so he got an estate by Coniston Lake that he liked to ice skate across in winter to town, and has enormous gardens, and a large parlour that I played "Dawn" on the piano in. And then I did a watercolor sketch in his study because I was sure that it would be an insult to both Ruskin and myself if I did not do a watercolor on his property. It was pouring down rain, so I had to do a watercolor inside. Unfortunately, I was so nervous that I would get in trouble for having paints and a huge container of water inside of Ruskin's Study that it's like the worst watercolor in my sketchbook. It was the idea that counts though. Right?
Yesterday was the first day where we saw the sun and the first day I have worn shorts outside of a hostel. Today was the second day I wore shorts, and the first part of a long trek across the Yorkshire countryside. Today we walked about 14 miles in the type of landscape I can't help but describe as perfect. There were endless fields of bright green grass rolling in hills called dales, both long and short, and we simply walked through gates and over walls, because we were walking on a public trail. The Penine Trail is a really old trail and landowners simply ask us not to scare their sheep and to keep our dogs on leashes so they don't hurt the lambs (which are so cute Rachel, you would be dying) and to keep the gates closed behind us. And we just walk across their fields and through the gates, and sometimes the trail disappears and we get to go through stinging nettle and barbed wire to find it again. Near the end of the hike, I began to run through the long grass, pretending I couldn't feel my backpack banging against my back like one of those elementary school kids running after the bus, and I may or may not have sung "the hills are alive with the sound of music!" and it is possible that I may have just layed face down in the long grass and smelled the sweet perfume of warm grass. I grabbed Whitney's hand and began to run with her, and I grabbed her other hand and we began to spin around and all I could see was Whitney's excited, smiling face and streaks of bright green flashing in the background. Until something unpleasantly mushy was on my foot and my sandals.
I let go immediately and looked down at my now poop-covered foot. Everyone in the group started to laugh, especially at the irony of my previously and painfully idyllic actions. But there it was. Reality. Smeared across my big toe. There is sheep poop in the pastures of England, everyone. That is all.
I should probably go because there was a rude English woman who asked me a while ago how much longer I would be on the internet. She had a glass of clear alcohol and yellowish teeth that stuck out toward me and ugly fake blonde hair. She is waiting to "check her emails" so we shall let her do that.
PS sorry for all of the bathroom/not bathroom stories in these posts. i guess i just really don't have any good stories. but i'm realizing that basically every post is slightly inappropriate.
Cheers!
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