Interning

When I was 21 I spent a summer working as an intern for the U.S. Forest Service. Throw out whatever version of me hiking in khaki shorts through the woods that the term “Forest Service” brings up in you because I, along with my fellow interns that summer, had the cushiest assignment one can get in the USFS. We were stationed in Milford, PA, a quaint town located in the heart of the Poconos, a mountain subregion known most widely for its two-story champagne glass hot tubs, and perhaps due to that unique acclaim, a very popular destination for New Jersey newlyweds. Milford, which sits right at the border of both New York and New Jersey, is a far cry from the outdated resorts that punctuate the Poconos - it’s full of adorable cottages, tree-lined streets and nary a drinkware-inspired water feature. I spent that summer at Grey Towers, a National Historic Landmark that functions almost as a centerpiece to the town, and known (among a very small circle of forestry enthusiasts) as the “ancestral home of Gifford Pinchot”.

Gifford Pinchot may not be a household name for you, and admittedly until I had a forestry class or two under my belt, I didn’t know a thing about him either. But Pinchot’s influence on public land policy in the early 20th century still permeates our lives to this day. He is credited with defining our modern view of “conservationism” and his philosophy of protecting and managing public lands for the greatest good resulted in the federal government’s acquisition of millions of acres of forests throughout the U.S. and landed him the job as the first-ever director of the U.S. Forest Service.

Pinchot was groomed from childhood by his parents to use wealth, education and connections for betterment of man. His parents endowed the Yale University School of Forestry and their method of wealth creation — importing and selling Victorian wallpapers in the States — was once described as having “…created no slums, fouled no rivers, corrupted no politicians, wasted no valuable resources and enslaved no workers.” That seems like a pretty good legacy to leave behind I suppose.

Grey Towers was the Pinchot family’s magnificent “country home” inspired by French chatêaus. It originally housed 43 rooms and featured two turrets, and to my untrained eye, looked an awful lot like a castle. Most of the grandeur of Grey Towers today can be attributed to the influence of Gifford’s wife, Cornelia, who modernized the home and fancied up the grounds in the 1930’s. It was donated to the Forest Service in the 60’s by Gifford’s son and it remains the only National Historic Landmark to be overseen by the Forest Service.

My job at Grey Towers that summer was to manage the absolutely stunning landscape that surrounded the house. For such a grand and proper house, the landscape was hardly formal. Vines crept up the side of the turrets and plants of all varieties sprung out along the base of the home with varying heights and textures and colors before melting out across the hills and into the forest beyond. There were several outbuildings and cottages scattered throughout the 102 acre expanse, each with their own cutesy garden surround. It was as if the Pinchots subscribed to my philosophy of design, which I affectionately call “Shit I Like”. It’s when you find something you like and you find a place for it. A more professional person might call it “eclectic” and a more honest person might call it “haphazard” but I think me and Cornelia Pinchot just like to tuck a few surprises around for folks to find.

It was a graduation requirement to complete an internship, so I wasn’t there out of the goodness of my heart nor was I there because I was the kind of student who pursued internships in order to impress a future employer. I was doing it because I had to and the only other internship I had been offered was to work on a landscape crew in Atlanta where the workday started at 7 am and the heat index varied between “miserable” to “unbearably miserable”.

The internship paid very little, but it did provide housing. Housing was a modern cabin on the grounds of Grey Towers and the other three interns I was to be spending my summer with were already there when I arrived. There were only three bedrooms, and as the last to show up, I was not so lucky as to be in a single. I met my roommate first, a girl named Nicki. She was one of those kind of people - they’re usually women - that appear to be trying to make themselves as small as possible in every situation. Just crossing legs and arms and retracting necks into spines until they are the most diminutive version of an adult human possible. Based on this observation, I figured she may be pretty hard to get to know. There’s nothing I love more than getting in deep about whatever messed up twists your life has taken but it’s tough to get into that headspace when your conversation partner folds inside of themselves when you ask where they’re from. No problem though - I didn’t need a new best friend - just someone who wouldn’t use my toothbrush.

Next to meet was the other landscape intern, a guy named Pete. My first impression of Pete was that he was awkward. Subsequent impressions solidified this assumption. I think Pete was just constantly thinking about something else, so when you’d try to engage him in conversation, it was like you had to knock on the door of his subconscious first. It always took a few moments for him to get to the door, and when he got there, he seemed surprised to see you. But overall, a nice guy.

A few hours after my arrival, the last intern emerged. Another girl, this one named Marisa. Marisa came across to me in this moment like a middle-schooler away at camp for the first time. She had been in college for a year or two, but hadn’t ever left home. She seemed to be very overwhelmed by the prospect of taking care of herself that summer, which was why she had been in her room for so long when I arrived. She needed time to process all the responsibilities she now had on her own.

I’ll admit I was a bit disappointed at this point. I was coming from a southern party school and I was kinda hoping to make some bad choices with my housemates that summer. Stay up late, drink too much, make some memories. That fantasy was fading fast. These kids all seemed like squares.

I spent the next few days after work exploring Milford to see if I could drum up another crew to hang with that might be a little more my speed. The town seemed to cater to wealthy retirees and aside from registering to participate in the Ladies Garden Club Dried Flower Competition at the end of the summer (the theme was Wizard of Oz), I was no closer to finding any new companions. I did find out that you can only purchase full cases of beer in Pennsylvania - no chance for a 6-pack - and discovered that you absolutely CANNOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES pump your own gas in New Jersey. I was also greatly disheartened by the sheer number of stray shopping carts in the parking lot at the local grocery store and allowed these factors to convince me that everything about the northeast was patently terrible.

The divide between my expectations of this summer and the reality of it slowly formed a gulf that I filled with a bitterness that was then projected on my housemates. I found myself less and less enchanted by their idiosyncrasies, but no one more than Marisa.

One night, Marisa offered to cook for everyone. The menu was tacos and she insisted that she didn’t need any help. When we arrived to the meal, it consisted of cold flour tortillas, shredded iceberg lettuce, store-bought salsa and some very white and very dry chicken. It has been nearly twenty years and I still remember this meal with vivid clarity.

You see, I was raised in a household of culinary excellence. The first bite of many meals was followed by a discussion of how it might be improved upon the next time around. Perhaps more salt, more acid, a little less done. Recipes had notes in the margin, particular substitutions or minute improvements. Not once was I served an unwarmed tortilla. We were total snobs. I just didn’t know this at the time.

So when I decided to engage Marisa and my other roommates in a discussion on how Marisa’s next taco night might be improved, I was being pretty insensitive. Middle-aged Amy realizes that this was a young girl, away from home for the first time, trying to gain a new skill and do something nice for her new friends. But 20-something year old Amy didn’t see it that way. 20-something year old Amy wanted to fix everything she saw wrong with Marisa. And it started with asking her how she cooked the chicken.

“I boiled it.”

BOILED IT? YOU BOILED IT?

She might as well spit in my face. I had never heard of such a thing. Not once in my life had I seen anyone put a chicken breast in a pot of boiling water. Isn’t that how you make chicken broth? By taking chicken body parts and putting them in hot water so as to make the hot water taste like chicken body parts? I was so confused. Horrified. I couldn’t let it go. I don’t know how long I ranted about it, but it was long enough that Nicki told me to chill out, which probably took every ounce of her courage to project.

I wish I could say it stopped there, but it didn’t. I became obsessed with all the things Marisa couldn’t do. Laundry, driving, basic money management. It was if her lack of life skills was a personal affront to me. Like she reflected poorly on the women of the world by being so woefully inadequate. She should’ve told me to stop being such a bully, to go easy on her because she had overprotective parents and why do I even care what she does? But she didn’t. She tried really hard to impress me. And that’s what sticks with me twenty years later. Is how hard she tried.

A few weeks after taco night, she asked to cook for us again. I remember Pete telling me that day during work to “Go easy on her.” I didn’t wait for her to call us down for dinner this time, I wanted to be there when the sausage was made. And on that stove, in that little kitchen, was a pot filled with a boiling orange liquid and several bobbing white chicken breasts.

What is THAT?

“That,” Marisa explained, “is orange juice. It is flavoring the chicken.”

I reacted poorly.

A couple days later I was riding in one of the utility carts with Pete and I tried to engage him in yet another venting session about Marisa’s shortcomings as a young adult. He listened without comment until we stopped and then turned, looked me dead in the eyes, and said, “You’re just being mean to her. She’s trying her best and you’re just being mean.”

I felt about 1 inch tall. I felt like a complete asshole, because I was acting like one. I’d love to say that I left there and immediately gave Marisa a heartfelt apology, but I was terrible at admitting fault when I was that age. (I’’m actually pretty great at it now. I’m wrong like ALL THE TIME.) Instead, I acted uncharacteristically perky and helpful towards her every chance I got. Laughed extra loud when she barely cracked a joke and offered to share every meal I had. She was a kind person and she gave me another chance, despite my inability to own up to my own faults. We actually spent the last few weeks of that summer as sorta-friends. She invited me to her room one night to listen to her play guitar and sing a song she wrote. I showed her how to use a grill. And I managed to convince all of them to loosen up and join me at a dive bar I found in the next town over.

So who cares if someone boils chicken in orange juice? At least we made some memories that summer.