Spring 2026

We do an activity on outdoor leadership trips called heavy rock/light rock. First we ask students to look around and choose one of each. The light rock is typically a small pebble that signifies something the student has learned or gained on the trip that they want to bring with them; the heavy rock symbolizes something they want to leave behind them on the trail. We break one of the cardinal rules of “Leave No Trace” to let them take the small pebble with them as a totem – and then we get in a line with our heavy rocks, and as we chuck them as far as we can, we let out a primal scream of the one word that signifies what we don’t want to follow us out of the backcountry. 

Alongside my students, I often screamed “Anxiety”. “Self-doubt”. “Perfectionism!” 

Though if I’m honest, I’ve always been a lot better at taking things with me than leaving them behind. 

I’m not sure how much money I’ve spent shipping my possessions from coast to coast. I don’t mean that as a metaphor – I truly don’t know bc I never track these things and am not a huge budgeter. But I know it’s significant. As many of you know, before Midland, I moved every year for nearly a decade after college. Driven by what a friend of mine loves to call Desperate Aliveness – I wanted to see everything. Experience everything. One would think that all this constant motion would teach one to pack light. Alas – that is a skill I have finally come to accept I shall never call my own. Even when I was “living out of my car” working outdoor education in Joshua Tree – I had a leaning tower of boxes in my parents’ garage labeled “memorabilia.” 

My best friends say my “greatest kink is nostalgia.” My mom always said I’m the worst combination of sentimental, artistic, and sporty – meaning I have TOO. MUCH. STUFF. And I never want to get rid of any of it. My family’s favorite story about my absurd borderline hoarding behavior centers around two big Tupperware containers of animal bones I have collected on various travels. I always had dreams of what these bones would become – candlestick holders, vases, mobiles…any day now, I would really capitalize on my “artistic tendencies” (as my dad calls them) and start my own Etsy empire. I’d say at this point these bone boxes are worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars – if you’re measuring by the money I’ve spent shipping them back and forth everywhere I moved. 

It’s clear to me now that in living a life constantly on the move, these objects had become my home. They were stability, memory, a way for me to take a little piece of everything I’ve experienced with me. In my background of constant destabilization, I wanted to ensure I had EVERYTHING with me at all times. That I was PREPARED for anything. 

When the fire came through Midland a few summers ago, and I was forced to think about my go-bag – I laughed. Fit all of my precious things in one car!?! As I watched the flames lick over and down Grass Mountain, I panicked and grabbed – Surfboards. Passport. Sequins. 

You would have thought this would have helped me downsize, but really it just reminded me that Mari Kondo’s got nothing on me because everything I own sparks joy. All of my clothes hold memories. Every seashell has a story. Even my furniture that my sweet mother scoured Facebook marketplace and Craigslist to find so that I could have a dining table and chairs when I lived in my first house.

It’s now been 8 years here on Figueroa Mountain Road. A mirror of my prior days as a bird flitting from coast to coast – I’ve spent nearly a decade here rooting into place. The longest I’ve lived in one place since I was a child. 

All of this is part of why I knew that I had to make the choice early in the year to leave Midland – in part to do justice to this place I’ve come to love so deeply – but also so I would have the time I needed to disentangle, to be able to say goodbye. 

When I started at Midland – if you had told me I’d be here 8 years later there’s no way I would have believed you. My first year nearly killed me. I was hired to teach history – a subject I had never taught before (as a prior English and Spanish teacher) – and slept 4 hrs a night trying to learn the history of everything that ever happened to be able to teach it to students the next day. I got strep throat 5 times. Thanks to my neighborhood pusher, Dan, I started drinking coffee for the first time. I was lonely, exhausted, and ill. I’d work 6 days a week, and then on my one day off I’d go surfing alone. It certainly didn’t seem sustainable. But I came back to try it again. And each year was a little easier than the last. I started to build friendships. I came to love teaching history. When George Floyd was killed it felt like teaching about structural oppression was the most important way for me, as a middle-class white woman, to fight for social justice and equity. It was a call to action that gave me a greater grounding sense of purpose here in our little bubble on the edges of civilization.

I found “balance” by jetting out of Midland every chance I could get to reconnect with my far-flung friendships on school breaks. I’d return minutes before our Sunday faculty meeting back in a cloud of dust. Ragged, sunburnt, happy. These post-vacation sads (or the Baja Blues as we call it) made me question whether this was a happy balance, or whether I was just missing out on life with my peer group out in the “real world.”

Then Covid came and forced what I think of now as the Big Slowdown. Looking back, I see that as one of my life’s huge turning points. Isolated in my own home, I began to invest in things that grow, not just things that are. I started to “see plants” for the first time. I also became an administrator. I became an adult, really. It was also the first time I truly discovered community here at Midland. 

In just 8 years, I’ve lived through plague, flood, and wildfire. I’ve stayed put long enough through these catastrophes to witness geological time. I’ve seen the Alamo Pintado change its course with flood. I’ve watched the mountains in flame from my back porch, and the green hills char to black. I’ve seen wildlife return to campus when students were absent during the pandemic. Each catastrophe brought us closer together. Together, we packed up the chapel board walls and Midland archive to keep our history out of flame’s reach. Some of us even briefly became summer roommates, seeking wildfire refuge in a strange Dunn dorm. We sandbagged houses and classrooms when the river beds spilled over. We took our temperatures a trillion times a day and stayed 6ft apart, and taught outside with masks on to protect each other from illness. It’s these hardships we’ve endured together that have turned this from the place I work into the place I call home – and have transformed this bird into some kind of tree, rooting down into place.

Like many students, I imagine, the whole time that I been at Midland, there’s also been part of me yearning to be part of the “real world.” A place where you don’t live where you work/ study. Where you get to be anonymous, invisible even. Where you can leave your house without worrying someone will need you for the health office code or a complicated parent conversation. Where your friends are just friends and not also people you have to hassle about getting their comments in on time. A promise-land bereft of late-night FODing and rampant mouse crap, where you don’t need to make a fire to keep warm or empty out other people’s maggoty overstuffed trashcans on a Sunday morning. 

And yet – it’s also unlikely that my future in the Real World will allow me to yodel out my window to my neighbor John as he piddles about his hugelculture – “To the river?” he’ll shout. “To the river” I’ll respond.  And join him and his tiny toe-headed progeny down to the creek to just quietly putz and beaver around. Where I can slink over like a stray cat at any hour and beg a meal off the endless generosity of Claire.

These are the memories I want to hold on to. To bring with me.

Waking up at 4am to Kubota around campus with Dan picking wildflowers to make lupin corsages for an emergency graduation ceremony in April when we closed campus for Covid. 

Dressing up in toilet paper rolls and soda cans as the Trashion Show Queen, or in gold lamee sweatsuit with Dan as Hanz and Franz for Covid-era early morning Zoom assembly entertainment.

Watching students getting fired up to lead and protest and fight for what they believe in – whether it was the right to put their bellybutton midriffs on full display in the dress code, or why we should update the student handbook’s policy around hate speech to distinguish it from foul language.

Long, tearful walks and talks with students about the stresses of broken hearts and missed deadlines and teenage friend dynamics –  and celebratory hugs when an advisee gets into their dream college or gets the courage to sing in front of 100s of people at graduation.

Learning to hold people capable and accountable with compassion and integrity. So many hard conversations that strengthened my spine and opened me up to different perspectives than my own.

Dressing up as George Washington to ratify the Constitution with my ragtag band of DIY ascot makers in Honors US History. 

That time we made a giant Oracle puppet out of one of the old water tanks on the soccer field – when I got to perform in my first ever play as Louise Squibb herself over MIDterm. 

When Dan and I would walk to the bouncy bridge for a 5 minute break to bob up and down and breathe in silence to regulate our nervous system around some annual scheduling insanity. 

The radical abundance of Thanksgiving every year – serving pie to 500 people, doing and undoing the porch decorations over and over with every new onlooker who appeared on scene with a vision and opinion.

Playing the questionably educational “pin the counterargument on the Andrew Jackson” in US History, or allowing students to leave class 2 minutes early ONLY IF they danced out of the classroom to “Let’s Have a Kiki.”

Rhea’s screech of glee when she recognizes me from afar “Hiii ELLIEEEE!.” 

The first moment Sita chose me, floating out to sea together on my SUP. My little bowmaiden picking seaweed with the same mischievous curiosity that she now dangles her lizards high up in front of her grinning face proudly. 

Freya appearing at my sliding glass door, dressed in full astronaut gear, holding a basket of paper airplanes that I got to pick from.

Mimi biking over solo early in the year, standing in my kitchen with her helmet on, watching me try to heat up frozen potstickers, before she handed me a card of us holding hands. 

Sharing frothing stoke waves with students surfing paipos and inflatable alligators and boards up and down the Gaviota coast.

Celebrating Tomas’ birthday in the strawberry fields with homemade whipped cream. 

Jamming and singing from the gut for that internal massage therapy with Jaipur Chalupa- screaming Zombie and Creep and Dusty Trails from our porches. 

Covid-era Zoom dance parties and family cooking shows from our homes. 

Crepe clubs and bonfires in Charlotte’s backyard. 

Grabbing ceremonial bathrobes for hot tubs in the rain, cackling with my girls. 

Cold plunges in horse troughs to make it through the sweltering 14 hour work grinds in August. 

Meeting Stubby the lizard in my underwear drawer as he dropped his tail in my terrified hand, and watching his nub grow back slowly over the year as he appeared under the oven, on the window screen, by the computer… Only to find his perfectly intact shed skin, tiny little hand gloves, and all, under the TV one afternoon. 

Coffee corner mornings as Bella holds court and barista coach Chris chuckles, amused as he whips up cappuccinos-to-order with salacious foam art. 

Thursday morning twerkcycle bike gang rides down Fig Mtg road and up Ballard hill and back, wondering if I’ll ever be as fit as John Nygren. 

Collecting students from their solos, and listening as they shared their individual wisdoms gained and fairy gifts crafted from sticks and flowers harvested on a night spent alone under the stars. 

The annual pilgrimage into the sky of Grass Mountain, and sounding our barbaric yawps from the rooftops of the world like a 100-person paper chain. 

Drag nights that united an entire community in a joy bomb of magic and sass, fake money and confetti, mocktails and disco light.

Sunset chicken-in-a-bag picnics and dance parties on the banana in sequins. 

Falling in love with a farmer. Planting apple trees we grafted with students in our backyard and celebrating the first blooms. 

Sharing breakfasts on the kitchen counter with a scrub jay named Terry. 

Welcoming a furry slice of night named Void into my home and my life. 

Falling asleep to the frog orchestra, the cricket symphony, and the coyote crescendo.

I could go on and on and on… and maybe that’s the problem? 

You see, I want to swallow up the Alamo Pintado, Grass Mountain, the crickets and toads and owls, the lizards, and maybe even the relentless woodpeckers. All my plants, the disco balls in every window, the chalked up wood stove, the cottonwoods, and the Bowl and Bradley Mesa and Red Rock Springs trail. The foggy mornings and blastoff sunsets. The lupin, and paintbrush and poppy superbloom in my backyard. Every olive and fig and manzanita I planted too close together despite your clear instructions. And you, and you, and you, and you and you. 

I’d like to take everything and everyone with me… but that’s not how this works. 

As I walk through my house and think about what to take with me and leave behind, I remember just last week, squatting down with Wilton in the creek behind my house, passing tadpoles between our fingers. 

I dropped one sentient little black comma into Wilton’s tiny palm, and he squealed with delight. We watched it squirm – liquid magic. A slippery little miracle. Something precious and new and – for a moment – all his. 

As the sun drenched Grass mountain gold at our backs, I hear John call- “Time to go home, sweet boy.” 

I looked up into that perfect little elven face full of wonder, clutching his treasure.

 “Okay, Wilton, it’s time to let go now.”

By Ellie Moore