Meet Mia!

What are some of your favorite things about being part of AC?
The people. The things we get up to when we are together. The boats themselves: the beauty of the wood and the way it feels under your hands and creaks in the wind and waves. The feeling of my body strengthening and moving as part of a whole with the boat and all the other oars. Those moments when we lock in and we can feel the rhythm of the oars pulling the boats, and it feels like you are part of a pair of giant lungs breathing, or like you are flying in 3/4 time over the surface of a whole other world that is teeming with life. Those moments when a song takes on its own new life and becomes something new. Shared meals. Restful moments in hammocks with the most beautiful view known to eyeballs. Getting better at things of all sorts. Tunes on the island.

How did you become involved with AC?
If you count the unofficially-AC sing and rows of 2016, I became involved by falling in with a crowd of goofballs I knew through music who liked to get into boats and row and sing. In other words, I started going on singing rows shortly after I moved to Belfast in 2016, and went on the first AC trip I was able to in 2019, having already become hooked on a diet of ocean+music+boats.

Have you had any other sailing/rowing experience?
A bit here and there! I grew up in a place where it was rare that there was enough water to float a leaf boat upon, but I managed to find some anyway, and spent some time as a wee person sailing with a friend and their father on a small sailboat on Heron Lake in NM. I know this more from photo evidence than anything else, however, as I don't remember doing anything useful and don't know if I actually learned anything about how to move a boat around. But from the photo evidence I look very happy, and who knows, maybe that got me started! Then when I moved to a place that had more water than NM, I plugged into it where I could, beginning with ogling schooners and occasionally stepping on board them, and progressing to an 11-day adventure sailing a 24-ft Sabre with two friends (including the infamous D.Ladds) from Kingston, NY to Belfast in 2021. 

Where do you currently live?
Belfast-ish, ME

What are some things you do in your professional life or study beyond AC?
I quit being a barista at a coffee and bike shop! Now I’m leaning into being a musician and music educator full time, as well as some freelance work as an illustrator, printmaker’s assistant, and apprentice fine woodcarver. All arts all the time baby! Hire me to be artistic for you! Also following threads of study in dance, and in the past, have studied architecture, ceramics, and experience of built space. I continue to be passionate about the integration of social change and cultural healing work into all of these threads.

What are some of your hobbies?
I dance, I bake cheesecakes, I sew clothes, I make ceramics sometimes, I listen to a mountain of audiobooks, I love poetry even though I don't read it very often, I adore the presence of books and plants, and I am passionate about the power of beauty to expand and focus the human experience, esp. via the aesthetic experience of architecture and built space, music, conversation, light, nature, kind acts, and a billion other things.

If you could wake up with a new skill tomorrow, what would it be?
Fluently speaking every language! Or being a world class hip-hop dancer.

What animal do you feel a kinship with?
The moth. And the horse. And the lioness. And many types of sea creature, including but not limited to the whale, otter, beluga, octopus, dolphin, and seahorse. Please don’t make me choose.

Favorite meal/food?
Rasperries! Pupusas! Pomegranates! Things involving cheese! A perfectly cooked sausage.
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Favorite song to sing while rowing?
The ones that are total nonsense, but have solidly great and ever-evolving rhythms and lyrics.