Hello. My name is Katie. I’m back this year for my second summer in Manzi Village, Camp Augusta, Planet Earth. I can’t wait for new friends, bathhouse sing-alongs, inspiring feats on the high ropes, and to let my imagination go on a spirit run with yours in a Land Apart.
I crawled from the sea at Santa Cruz in 1993. My family and I went back there every summer when I was a kid so I would learn how to swim in the ocean like any normal sea creature.
As a kid, I spent a lot of time outside with my brother and our grandpa, picking blackberries, building forts, and roaming free. I fell in love with my home in California and developed a passion for the outdoors.
Nothing like a good climbing tree…
Fast-forward through 17 years worth of skinned knees, flannel shirts, and riding things backwards and upside-down… I spent the summer of 2010 as a volunteer with Amigos de las Américas in the mountains of Matagalpa, Nicaragua. It was the most challenging and moving experience of my life.
This day was the dirtiest I’ve ever been in my life—apart from the Camp Augusta oatmeal fight!
I love sports and running around. Really, I’m game for anything, but I have a soft spot for soccer. I also ran track for eight years. It was thrilling, terrifying, and beautiful.
“I WILL CRUSH YOU, HURDLE.” I can’t not make that face when I hurdle.
I’m pretty obsessed with hurdling.
I love hats, and you may see me wearing a variety of them! (CHALLENGE: How many different hats am I wearing in these pictures?) I loved the color blue so much as a kid that my parents called me Smurf, and you may also catch me in my trademark Smurf pajama pants!
I have 23 cousins. Tessa is one of them, and one of my best friends. Here we are having a grand ol’ time in the Barton fatherland. Tessa can even make breakfast an adventure…
It was all fun and games until Fred and I crash-landed on the quad in 1937…
At Pomona College in Southern California, I studied everything I could! I majored in environmental science and minored in English, and I was able to explore interests in earth systems, natural history, social studies, Spanish, and French. My most inspiring semester was the one I spent in Monteverde, Costa Rica studying tropical biology.
My favorite thing to do in Costa Rica (and one of my favorite things ever) was going on night hikes with my host dad through the neighboring farms in search of bats, cool trees, and adventure.
No, that is not a toy. It’s…an elephant beetle! Whether it’s more closely related to an elephant or a beetle, I forget.
I spent the entire month of September 2014 wearing the same two outfits (one for school and one for cross country practice) as part of a minimalist social experiment. Nobody noticed, it seems, although many comrades noted I wore those giraffe shorts and that purple shirt an awful lot. For Halloween that year, my friend Kaya and I were each other. I went around talking about my various bandaged wounds while she obnoxiously played the harmonica all the time (Get it? That’s what I do best!).
Her own mother didn’t recognize her!
One of my favorite memories at Pomona is of staying up late and making up food-related puns with Kaya. Here are some of the best:
- Sorry to tell you acorn-y joke, but…
- Kiwi hang out sometime?
- I carrot bout you.
- Honeydew you like fruit?
- I’m having trouble thinking of any grape puns.
- Thanks for pudding up with me.
- Omelet me go please!
Got any good ones up your sleeve?
Here I am with friends at the Kelso Dunes in the Mojave Desert (Note: This was one of my two outfits during my minimalist phase). If anyone finds this shirt on eBay, I’m actually missing it now…
“Second star to the left and straight on till morning!”
In the fall of 2015, I moved to France to spend the year teaching English at a lycée, or high school, just north of Paris. I adore teaching, and I’ve come to appreciate how much harder it is than it looks! During my time abroad, I also had the opportunity to visit many different European countries and friends.
Happily, I received visits from a handful of Augustans, including Isis! Here we are at the top of the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral, looking east over the River Seine. What a view!
I aspire to dedicate my life to education, creativity, and nature. Exactly what form that will take is, as yet, gloriously unclear. Now that I’ve tried teaching, maybe I’ll do some writing and tiny house-dwelling.
Here’s to an incredible summer of growth together. The feeling of being in a place where the possibilities are always infinite… is indescribable.
KB Trivia:
- My favorite color is blue.
- My favorite reference work is a thesaurus.
- Other than Smurf, some of my nicknames have been Katie Ice-Skatie, Super Wilderness Girl, KB, K Bart, and Kator-Gator.
- My favorite color is blue.
- My favorite human innovation ever is the library.
- When I was a kid, I wanted to be a veterinarian.
- I can wiggle my ears.
- I have a phobia of needles.
- Besides hurdling and food puns, I’m obsessed with wolves, California native grasses, ocean circulation, and the PODs (Camp Augusta’s high ropes course)!
- My favorite color is blue.