thanks a lot, anita;) you are really helpful and encouraging, a true star that helps guide people;) I also borrowed a book on Eastern Forests by Ann Sutton and Reader’s Digest North American Wildlife (1982). in ap environmental science, you get to take filed trips and learn about the environment and also you get to grow plants and raise fish, so i may take that course possibly in college. field biologists often study wildlife so i’m looking at a lot of field biology books. in the last few chapter of Into the Wild, some researchers speculated that chris mccandless may have been a field biologist studying out in nature b/c most people were unsure about his motives for being out in nature until there was a documentary released on the strained relationships of mccandless’s parents. also, andrew said that often times field biologists have an advantage since they know about wildlife. i feel these days that i can just listen in class and pick it up quickly and also sometimes my intuition helps me as well. i tend to have developed a detached perspective of the world, where i let go of all attachments to material things. i feel like there is a film in front of me and i’m only absorbing the joy and laughter of life and sorrow and sadness don’t come in. there are times when i may doubt myself at times, but dave and andrew are great, they are both very knowledgeable dave in first aid and andrew in wilderness. i had a doubt about how in buddhism you aren’t allowed to kill things and i asked andrew about it since his mom is a buddhist and he said that buddhists are technically not allowed to hunt and fish, but since he and his father both hunt, she doesn’t mind. i think there are exceptions such as if you have to kill to survive. dave was talking about the universal soul and how everyone is connected in the universe and how that animal or fish that was killed would become part of my soul so it would still be living. dave, like me believes in angels and an afterlife. andrew and i were debating about the power of influential thinking such as if you tell a child at a young age that he has say been ice-skating before and he/she truly believes it (even though they never have), could it be possible that when they go for their first time that they would do well? I feel like the mind and body are connected and the mind affects the body’s movements so in the case of ice-skating, there could be a chance that the child would do well. but andrew and i debated another scenario that involved this case this time using the example of firing a gun. andrew was adamant in saying that even if the child truly believes he had the experience of shooting, when he goes for his first time, that doesn’t mean he will hit the target, but he may come quite close to it. the thing is if you really believe and think you have experienced it before, it seems to become a part of you and causes you to have more confidence and do better. then there is the question of whether people are born with natural talent or they develop it like rene descartes says through their experiences. i feel like people are born with instinct and sensitivity to the world around them (intuition), but they learn physical knowledge through experience. i feel like the people who truly believe they can and give it their all often have success, but there is also the idea of circumstances and your surroundings. What if you were born in a bad setting and your circumstances are hard with obstacles, then no matter what even as a natural genius you still have to work hard. dave rejects the idea of reincarnation b/c he says it doesn’t explain the fairness of the poor people in our society. he believes that everyone should have a good attempt to have a better life from their past lives, he thinks “If your prior life was bad, why wouldn’t you try to change it? What about people who are born into their surroundings who don’t seem to have control over their surroundings, how is it fair to them that they have to reincarnate from this life? Reincarnation doesn’t seem to give us much choice.” Yet, i think each one of us has the choice to take a chance and change our lives, but it can be hard especially if you have hard circumstances to work with. I think what dave is saying is that some people who were born into that life don’t have all the chances to make their lives better b/c they don’t have the resources and it’s not fair. Yet, reincarnation gives you a chance to reattempt the dreams that you couldn’t in this life. but andrew says that not all dreams come to fruition and sometimes it’s better to just leave them behind. andrew seems to scoff at reincarnation altogether b/c he doesn’t think that people have second chances to redo their life again, he thinks it is a bit selfish and that people should live with the choices they made in life and that sometimes even in reincarnation people still don’t change b/c they were shaped that way. yet, dave argues that there is an universal soul and it is shaped by our actions in life, so maybe it is possible that people are all interconnected and if they are go through the same experiences through their interconnectedness, would it be better if people could experience reincarnation so they could all make the world work. i think i feel a calling out in nature to me and many people seek refuge in nature to find themselves. andrew has become like a happy buddha these days, he always laughs and seems to enjoy knowledge and even though we still compete, we have a lot more fun than being fierce competition. we were laughing about gophers and prairie dogs and having them in our backyard. i think andrew and i both have a passion for science and pre-calc and we enjoy nature. my special friend seems to feel left out again. today, i was so busy debating and wondering that i felt bad for only offering a casual hello to him. i am getting less interested in ap english b/c i feel there is more than reading text and taking notes and just writing a few essays on rhetorical devices. i like pre-calc and physics b/c i learn about work, energy, cars and also the unit circle is fun esp. when calculating coordinates and applying the angles to a car on the road. i have been also been using the angles to measure how to make holes in lined paper so i can hole-punch them later and when i did it today, after letting andrew check them, i only missed by .5 inches;) i also have been learning different codes for forensics and having fun with them. i also find it easier to divide paper into even sections since my brain is mentally able to figure out where the lines of the paper cross.

here is another wilderness question: are hunting licenses state-transferrable? what happens if you come back from camping in the wilderness and your hunting license is already expired (nj licenses are valid until december) such as if you spend 3 years camping and hunting?