Almost a month now in Rwanda: a whirlwind of moments of truth and powerful experiences. This is the fourth Nobles student trip Ben and I have been on and it will be our last, though certainly not our last trip to this country. Ben knew several of the students, but I knew no one except for Alex Gallagher, a friend I love who makes me laugh a lot who’s the head chaperone. This is not an easy trip. So much sadness to digest; tough, good work under a strong sun and sometimes a deluge of rain, and many rough roads, but Rwanda is filled with joy and beauty. It is a safe place. The kids from Nobles totally stepped up, and all of us learned and grew in surprising ways. There is so much love at Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village and inspiring women on the basketball courts with Shooting Touch. I’m grateful that the Nobles group embraced a stranger like me.

Now we’re traveling with our good friends, Alec and Susan Lee. We’ve already had surprising and serendipitous encounters: an impromptu music session and meaningful conversations with ASYV alumni, young men who generously shared their stories unveiling the power of four years at the Village. It changed the trajectory of their lives. They said they had no future before starting at ASYV, and now five to ten years after their graduations, each is pursuing a dream.

Today we visited SOLA, an amazing place with an more an even more amazing story. This school for Afghan girls is the vision of Shabana Basij-Raskih, a woman I wrote about earlier. She along with others in Kabal and the US helped 256 girls and teachers escape when the Taliban took over. Rwanda welcomed this group with love; doctors and counselors met them at the airport in Kigali, and so many in this country have offered kindness and support for the past twenty months.

In this wobbling world that has been pulled and tested by the prevalence of untruth and hate, I am seeing so much hope in Rwanda. I’m just so grateful for the gifts that come with this kind of travel.

There is gorilla trekking on the horizon :).

Stay safe, everyone.

So three weeks have passed, and I may have forgotten about this blog 🙂

Spain, specifically Barcelona, seems like a dream now, the good kind, full of clear fragments stacked and fueling memory. We walked everywhere is seems. We also had a great bike tour of the city. Here’s what I remember: the clang of church bells, the smell of bread-baking wafting from the open doors of the ubiquitous bakeries, Anthony Gaudi’s fluid walls all curve and movement, being inside the Sagrada Familia and feeling like I was a part of a kaleidoscope, lofts of pigeons and their sturdy iridescent necks, being one of 100,000 in the Barcelona soccer stadium, the quietness in early morning, the kindness of everyone we met, and olives stuffed with anchovies. Yum! We feel so lucky that we’ll be back to this part of the world in a few weeks.

On March 8^th we flew into Kigali, Rwanda, and saw a kind man holding a sign, Ben & Sarah Snyder—Heaven. Yes, that’s the name of our hotel in Kigali. The next day we headed out to ASYV for a few days of meetings with teachers, visiting classes, going to Village Time and Family Time, immersed in this healing place. We listened to stories. Isn’t it all about stories? I think stories are our humanness, how we touch each other.

On Sunday, the 12^th, we were back at the airport to pick up the 24 students & chaperones from Nobles. We’re with these intrepid travelers until March 24^th. Ben and I have been leading this trip with others for four years pre-Covid. It is a whirlwind of experiencing and learning. We started at the genocide memorials which are truth-telling and heart-wrenching. We immersed ourselves into a group of great students and leaders at African Leadership University, finding such inspiration and hope in their hunger for success and love of learning.

Yesterday was about animals and the beauty of the Rwandan hills and lakes in Akagera National Park. A safari turns me into a kid again, that dashing around in an open-top jeep in search of and finding amazing animals. And now for the next week we are ensconced in the healing community of ASYV, a place filled with greenness, birdsong, and love.

Thanks for reading!

Stay safe out there.

Love,

Sarah

On Thursday we fly to Spain and then Rwanda for six weeks all together, and I decided to start up the blog again. Today in Vermont we have a real winter. Finally. Endless snow, every tree holding some on its trunk and branches. You have to cover all of you to walk out the door and that inimitable crunch of boots in the deepness. It’s beautiful. But it’s hard not to think about all the suffering in the world. Ukraine. Turkey. Syria. This Sunday on 60 Minutes I watched how a thirty-two year-old woman from Afghanistan, Shabana Basij-Rasikh (who went to Middlebury), the founder of SOLA, a school for Afghan girls, was able to get 256 girls and teachers out of the country before it fell into the dark cave of Taliban men. She has reignited her school in Rwanda. We will be in Rwanda for a month doing service and volunteering and learning, and we’ll visit SOLA. I can never imagine being as good a person as Shaban Basij-Rasiks, but I’m able to use a pen and paper and my fingers; I will breathe in her words in Rwanda and bring back something here to share.

As usual, Ben and I are lean packers, only a carry-on; so I am in the process of getting stuff out and then taking away half of that. Books are tricky. I’m not a Kindle reader. I just came back from The Norwich Bookstore with three paperbacks (see photo below), recommended highly by Andi, a friend who works there.

We have two round trip flights: Boston/Barcelona and Barcelona/Kigali. We’re in Barcelona for four days (Airbnb in the cool, recommended area of Gracia); the only thing we have planned there is a soccer game, of course, and exploring. Then we head to Rwanda for a month—lots of stuff to do and learn there. This will be our sixth visit. Ben is about to be the chair of the board of an organization we were first introduced to in 2015, Agahosa Shalom Youth Village. We’ll be with the Nobles student trip for two weeks and with friends and just exploring and being of any help we can as we learn and grow. Then back to Barcelona and a seven-day hike in Catalonia. Then home.

One more thing, a shameless plug: my new book, Now These Three Remain is out there and ready to be bought at either my publisher, the amazing Lily Poetry Review Books, or on Amazon. I will be having readings when I return, the Lily Zoom launch at 2:00 pm on Sunday, April 23^rd (also Shakespeare’s alleged birthday :).

Thanks for following us along another journey.

Be safe out there.

xoxo,

Sarah

the beauty we’re leaving behind but coming back to

books I can’t wait to read

& my book 🙂

As we have both shared, over the last 4+ months (and hopefully over the last 30+ years together) feelings of gratitude have been somewhat overwhelming during this journey – which perhaps ‘officially’ ended with reunion weekend at Nobles earlier this month. So some thoughts about the trip – and about what comes next (if anyone is reading and/or at all interested).

First – the trip. I love data (simple data, however!). So here is some from the trip:

• 11,448 miles driven on American roads
• 50% (roughly) of miles NOT driven on interstate highway
• 30 states traveled to or through
• 2 incredibly beautiful countries – the US and Chile
• 332 (approx) miles hiked
• 440 (approx) miles biked
• 14 Nobles graduates visited along the way
• Favorite new national park – Capital Reef (UT)
• Favorite new US city – Nashville (thanks, Ned!)
• Most surprising/impressive state park – Palo Duro Canyon (outside of Amarillo, TX – go there if you can!)
• Favorite new country – Chile. Wow. (It was also the only new country – but, man, it was amazing)
• Best protest witnessed – International Women’s Day – Santiago, Chile
• Most fun Sarah discovery – downhill skiing again! (Thanks, Parizeaus!)
• Ben’s favorite Memory Lane moment – biking/hiking in Cedar Run, PA (the Bowdoin crowd will appreciate this)
• Favorite hike – too many to name just one (we get asked this regularly)
• Biggest physical challenges – the W-Trek/Torres del Paine and Cerro Castillo – both in Patagonia
• Longest single drive – 833 miles from Hattiesburg, MS to Amarillo, TX
• Most meaningful conversation – so many, but learning from the director of the Courthouse Museum in Monroeville, AL was an important one
• Most powerful museum – The Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice (otherwise known as Lynching Memorial) in Montgomery, AL – a place for all Americans to learn
• Coolest wildlife – elephant seals in Cambria, CA
• Most generous hosts – Julia/T/Aunt Nancy in Santa Fe (thank you!) – who knew we’d swing by three times!?
• Most patient person – Sarah by far for putting up w/ me. 

    A former colleague always talked about “getting after it” with young people – be it on a team, in the classroom, or in life. It feels like we “got after it” on this trip and looking back, it seems like we took pretty full advantage of the opportunity. 

    Second, home and my ‘next chapter’. 

    Certainly, this trip gave me time to think about what comes next. What was fairly easy to do was come up with five ‘buckets’ of priorities.

• Bucket #1 – Family and friends – It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) the highest priority for this chapter is making time for the people who matter the most and having the flexibility to create the time to be together whenever possible.
• Bucket #2 – Fitness, health, fun – For both my physical and mental health I need to put the time into this part of life and especially build in time to be outside. One of the best parts about the trip was simply being outdoors for big chunks of every day. 
• Bucket #3 – Meaning – I’ve been so fortunate to have meaningful work be integral to my professional and personal lives. I need to land on something(s) that can be built into the day to day but not interfere with buckets one and two. 
• Bucket #4 – Learning – There are so many things I’d like to learn. Where (in person? Online?)? When (daily? Weekly?) Experiential or academic? Both? Lots to think about. 
• Bucket #5 – Community – One piece of the timing of stepping away from Nobles was to have enough time to build a community in the Upper Valley. We have a number of good friends yet need to continually expand the circle. 

To be able to live in this beautiful place (just follow Sarah on Instagram and you’ll see sunset after sunset) is a gift beyond compare. And to know that we have the resources to travel, to support a comfortable life, and to support some causes we believe in is something few people in this world have. 

At the same time, there will be two major adjustments for me. Other than sabbaticals, I’ve basically worked full-time (when not in school) for forty years – and to not have that routine will be both a welcome change and require some attitude tweaking. That said, my work life has been so incredibly interpersonal (literally hundreds of interactions every day) and has generated so much positive energy and meaning for me, that I need to figure out where that energy and meaning will come from. I’m not sure yet and while I know I need to be patient in finding those things, my natural impatience could get in the way. We’ll see…and the bottom line is that it’s good to be home, to sleep in the same bed every night, to marvel at the natural beauty, be with my best friend and person I love the most, and be grateful for all we have. 

If you get this far, thanks for reading, listening and being part of our journey.

Two weddings on the horizon—so fun!

Stay safe, everyone ❤️.

Actually three weeks ago we rolled into our driveway in Vermont, but those weeks have been chock-filled. We’ve been back and forth to Nobles and Boston for fun and surprise for Ben, a wonderful three days with family, the best imaginable Mother’s Day of delicious diner fare (My Diner) including a table sharing stack of pancakes (thank you, Dave Barnes for that amazing idea), lovely cards from my kids, the presence of their fiancés, and the rest of the day wedding-dress shopping with Abby (yes, she said yes to a dress, and no, there will not be a photo of it below). All of that in addition to digging out of four months of mail and tracking down magazine subscriptions that have been returned or stopped. And I have begun to dive back into things I love and have missed doing like cooking and being immersed in poetry workshops and even one poetry reading. And Ben is now realizing that he’s actually retired 🙂 He is becoming the resident gardener.

I want to say thank you to all of you who’ve traveled with Ben and me around the country and to Chile and read our musings.

I may continue to write some pieces here, and I’m certain Ben will be writing, definitely one more entry here soon, and then he may start his own blog.

Below are photos from the end of our trip as we headed East, starting with our last night in Santa Fe where Julia, Ben, and I went to an Earth, Wind, & Fire concert. Beyond fun!

Thanks again for reading & following us. Stay safe, everyone. ❤️

It would be a great Wordle word, by the way.

Ever since we hiked Fortynine Palm Oasis Trail in Joshua Tree National Park, I have been thinking about the word. It was such a surprising eruption of lush green giant palm trees in the middle of sand, rock, hills, & scrub. It was a miracle really, underground water surfacing just where humans and longhorn sheep need it. Oasis comes from Latin and Hamitic language, like Egyptian. It means a fertile spot in the desert, a relief, a refuge. It’s a bit like the mirror image of an island in a vast ocean: a small place of water in a sea of sand.

I just like the word (all those vowels), its sound, its meaning, and the metaphor it offers.

How a whole world can seem filled with suffering, and yet we find places of refuge. 

In the Trump years amid that pall of relentless sadness, Stephen Cobert was an oasis for me. During those first endless and frightening no-vaccination-in-sight months of Covid, huddling with friends and family in the snowy air on our light-strewn patio with tower heaters and beers in mittened hands, that was an oasis.

Poetry is an oasis for me every day. Writing is. Ben is. Bird song is. My children are. My family is. My friends are. Trees are. Breathing is—being aware of my breathing is because then I am thankful.

Oases are everywhere I think.

In the last twenty-four hours I have read two articles that seem so connected to the power of finding and seeing oases that I’d recommend: The Atlantic piece by Arthur C. Brooks “How to Want Less” and in The Marginalian by Maria Popova a piece about the vision and words of poet, Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights: Yearlong Experiment in Willful Gladness.

The first thing I’m going to do when we get home is buy Ross Gay’s book.

Stay safe, everyone! ❤️

I’ve had a fascination with religion ever since I connected it to my fear of death in college when I walked into Professor Geoghegan’s classroom and was mesmerized by all he knew and heard a new language, words like numinous and paradox, words I had to look up in a real dictionary back in my dorm room. So much grew inside me there, a love of stories, a compassion for all of us as we lived our lives knowing we’d die and finding ways to go on through stories and faith.

My favorite books back then were The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich and I and Thou by Martin Buber. I loved Simone Weil and the Buddha. Everything I read and learned through mystics and Buddhists in those four years made sitting in a pew at the Presbyterian church in Moorestown, N.J. playing hangman with my sister on the back of the Sunday program seem so tame and uninteresting (though I did love the strength of a Mary saying she was carrying a child of a god). For many reasons I never embraced the religion I grew up with.

Today I have faith in something both invisible and real, something I feel while hiking and biking or just really listening and talking with another—the space between us sacred and spiritual.

And I realize the strong faith I have in drivers when I’m on a bicycle. While Ben and I biked down Highway 1 from Moonstone Beach in Cambria to Cayucos and back today, I was never scared. (I do wear bright colors, have lights on both the front and back of my bike, and only choose roads with wide shoulders).

And I know shit happens. Big horribleness. 

But mostly it doesn’t. The monarchs here in California somehow make it to Jericho Street in Vermont every year. Life mostly is good (though not for so many in Ukraine right now…). 

The planets and their moons stay obedient to some gravity. An invisible force tying us all together.

From yesterday’s hike in San Simeon

Stay safe out there! ❤️

Most of us who made the choice of spending our professional lives working with young people did so because we simply loved being with them. Their energy. Their fresh take on the world. Their impulsive moments (both good and bad). Their idealism. Their willingness to open themselves up to trusted adults. All of those things gave us energy and hope and optimism. And maybe made us feel younger.

Yet few of us anticipated how those relationships would evolve and mature – and this week in the Bay Area has been a wonderful reminder of how meaningful those bonds formed years ago remain.

Sarah and I love going to Nobles alumni receptions. Seeing former students “all grown up” and gaining snippets of their current lives feel like gifts. Yet being able to linger over coffee or dinner with Morgan Henderson N’11, Chris Gaither N’93, Molly Dwyer Martell, Lucy Minott, Annabel Lippincott, Abby Mayer (all N’06), Lauren Kelley N’20, and Gigi (N’12) and Noelle (N’14) Anderson was, well, different. All of us have friendships that endure over many years – where we seem to pick up where we left off. Each moment with these folks felt that way. Sharing our collective life journeys – including vivid memories from high school (ie; Annabel falling off her bike in Vietnam and then ultimately getting back up and finishing the tough ride!), professional frustrations and opportunities, and personal victories – was a gift beyond compare. Each of these wonderful people is crafting a life with purpose, with care, with deliberation, and with deep appreciation for the relationships built because of Nobles.

So 30+ years ago when we arrived at Nobles we never could have anticipated what these relationships would turn into. Yet our time with these incredible people was another reminder of how lucky we are to have gotten to know them – and so many others – and we can’t thank this group enough for carving out time with us.

And the beauty and the weather and great time with close friends from college, all of that here in the Bay Area.

There have been so many things to be grateful for on this trip, and not a day has gone by where we haven’t reflected to one another on how fortunate we are on so many levels. Yet perhaps what has been the most moving is how meaningful some long-term friendships have been and what a gift it has been to incorporate them into this adventure.

A question we have often asked ourselves is “What couples would we be compatible with to travel given the kinds of things we like to do and the kind of values we have?” And while there are surely others, over the course of the last thirteen weeks we’ve spent time with friends we would do anything/go anywhere with.

The last week has been spent in Montana with Ernie and Kim Parizeau – Nobles friends who have simply wrapped us into their family for over twenty years. Their generosity, sense of fun, humility, spirit of adventure (including being pioneers on the first Nobles EXCEL adult adventure to Southeast Asia), and appreciation of those who do important work in education makes our time with them invariably full of laughter, relaxed yet meaningful conversation, hours in the outdoors, and opportunities to learn and grow together. This week has been all of that – and more. 

Our month in Chile with Alec and Susan Lee was also reaffirming lifelong friendship and opportunities to build on that in the coming years. Alec and I were thrown together as first year college roommates and while he, Susan and Sarah were in grad school introduced me to Sarah (thank God!). We have lived on opposite coasts for over 30 years and fortuitously stepped away from long-time jobs (he founded Aim High in the Bay Area which has served thousands of middle school students from under-resourced communities) at the same time. While we have stayed in touch over the years, our month together simply picked up where we left off 30+ years ago – an appreciation for one another and the beauty of Chile, a shared commitment to young people, a bit of noodling over what comes next (although Sarah and Susan are fully immersed in the next chapter!), and excitement over what is surely ahead. 

Oh, yes – and let’s not forget the Barnes and Taylors (written about and appreciated earlier in the blog). Go anywhere, do anything with these friends of a lifetime. 

Finally, a bonus of these last few days has been (again fortuitously) to connect with Reis and Steph Alfond (Nobles grads), Jeff Schwartz (Nobles grad/trustee/parent), and Denise Dupre and Marc Nunnelly (Nobles parents). What a gift all of these friendships are.

Be safe out there, everyone ❤️.

Apparently, I am a downhill skier again. It’s been seven years and two new knees since I stepped into boots and clamped into skis and zoomed down a mountainside. I love being on the snow and making turns again, carving into what has just fallen. Here there’s no sound of ice scratching, just the shoosh of snow and that chair lift rumble of metal and cable and the bar you pull down. I’d forgotten about walking in ski boots and wearing a helmet and goggles. But all of it feels familiar and fun. Today is the first day of spring, and it’s full of snow and skiing. The sky is blue, the sun is out on a mountain of snow and my feet are locked in ski boots on skis. How my quads burn, new muscles forming or maybe they are remembered muscles of years ago when I had a body that moved down mountains with ease. Something new is ribboning through me, some kind of opening to what I can do that I thought I couldn’t. First the backpacking and trekking in Patagonia and now downhill skiing again. Something forgotten seems remembered and sheds years from me. Skiing down a steepness means I’m watching the snow, seeing each indentation and moving my body and the attached skis. I become a wave, a shallow shovel, scribbling new arcs in the whiteness. Skiing is another way of being right here. How grateful I am.

Happy spring, everyone! Stay safe out there. ❤️