In the freshman year of high school, one of our writing assignments was to compose an essay about ourselves, or an object that represented ourselves. Most of the students in my class wrote about "how I am like a rainbow" or "how I am like a boom box. I am like a boom box because I like to talk a lot." Not me. I am not so simple as that, I'm afraid. I love to discuss things, but I don't talk just to hear myself, yet I love words. I exist in a verbal world; the way I define things—for myself and for others—is through the use of words. I love the way words roll resoundingly from the depths of one's throat, or drip thickly like sap from a forested page.

Well, if this were a freshman English assignment, I would recite for you a long and involved list of my hobbies, pets and family members, but the litany doesn't, I'm afraid, give much insight into my nature. I live in rural Vermont, have two cats, a dog, one salamander (Ambystoma maculatum), four breeding pairs of bettas, and an unruly younger sister, which tells you much more about my family's tolerance of animals than who I really am.

The only item on that list that might tell you something important about me is the salamander. A pet project of mine is "save the salamanders," which is a program that I have started to help a species of local salamander. Even though I am really an introvert, I have designed a website for the project, (www.savethesalamanders.org) done presentations, and gotten articles in some local newspapers. This particular species is the Eastern Spotted Salamander, and one night of every year they have a mass migration from higher to lower ground that usually involves crossing roads. What I am doing is trying to organize people to go out on this night and help move the salamanders across the roads. I think that it is a lot of fun, even though it involves going out late at night in the rain and picking up wet, wriggling amphibians.

Even though I talk about rescuing amphibians from cars, it doesn't take that much traffic to decimate them. I live a long way from the nearest city, so there are only small public high-schools near me, which is part of the reason that I am a part-time home schooled student. If I went full-time to school, I wouldn't be able to study Japanese, as it is not offered anywhere near me. I had to find a private tutor to study the language. Home schooling gives me freedom to study what is interesting to me in more depth, and lets me learn at my own pace, while the high-school lets me take things that I couldn't do at home. I even joined my high-school's alpine (downhill) ski team this year, which was more work than I expected, but also more fun. I had always rather joked about people who enjoyed sports for the social status, but I discovered that being part of a team is a surprisingly good feeling.

What I am really passionate about though, is writing, my artwork, playing blues and jazz improvisation on the piano, and learning Japanese. I write both poetry and prose, and even once in a while can enjoy writing an essay. I am part of an after-school poetry group (we have been together for six years now) and we have gotten to the point where we can perform our pieces, and sometimes we even get paid! When I write, it is a way for me to release all of the tumultuous thoughts and ideas that eddy about in my head. I hope that I have conveyed to you how I see myself, a true description of the self being one of the most ephemeral and difficult things to capture in writing.