Someone gave me a present today, a really really nice present. I bumped into Turtle at Camp Fire day camp training. She and I had been counselors together at Camp Sealth nearly thirty years ago. I had been nineteen, just finished my first year of college. Today, Turtle said to me, "I remember I asked what you saw yourself doing in that far off land of adulthood, and you said 'being a poet.' And here you are, a poet."

I knew I wanted to be a poet my whole life. I also knew I had done almost nothing towards that goal until I graduated from college. I started a creative journal my senior year of high school, I wrote a few poems, and I even edited my high school literary magazine, but that was about it. It wasn't until the summer after college that I took my first poetry class.

And yet, I had an identity. I had a vision. I believed. And she taught me this about myself today.