Saturday, January 28, 2012

Update 3

The Trail has been calling for us.

Our Semester has spent the last three weeks at Kroka’s Base Camp, preparing for our journey. The snow has melted yet again, but we can all feel skis on our feet and packs on our backs.

Also our experience here has been changing.

Before we were learning how much time there is in a day, and it was new and the days were very long.

Now we are learning how hard we can work. The days are still very long, but now they are not long enough. We know we are capable of so much, but we have to fit it into the days that we are given. It is hard work to do hard work.

My sense of time has been wildly shaken. It is like I am developing a sixth sense.


We have knit, sewn, chopped, sawed, stacked, cooked, dried, repaired, run, hiked, skied, packed, waxed, mapped, organized, lifted, carried, poured, listened, and shoveled for this.

We leave on February 1st!

I am very tired, but I still want to do every little and big thing that I can.

We are all very tired, but we are so excited to be here that it does not matter.







I want to talk to you about another person that we have met. His name is Charlie Strickland.

Charlie has lived here in Marlow for 86 years, longer than anyone else around. When we sat down in a circle around his living room, we were talking to more than just Charlie. We were talking to the town.

He told us about the fire of ’41; chasing after horses in the wide open pastures; the bus lines that never worked out; the summertime traveling medicine shows; basketball with his best friends; most the whole town skating every Sunday; and hedgehog hunting for 50 cents a porcupine when it seemed that it was a nickel for just about everything. He told us how Marlow used to have a tannery, a barbershop, three gas stations, a power plant along the dam, three stores and four eating places. The town only had three hundred people living in it, but traffic poured through Marlow and the little town was a big town.

Marlow isn’t really like that anymore. There are no more eating places here. Neighbors aren’t near quite like family. The traffic changed with the roads, but the community was changing either way.

As the world got larger and larger, the small town got smaller.

Charlie was smiling the entire time. There is still a community and he is still a part of it. He hasn’t let go of that wisdom. 

He helps with the public Sunday breakfasts that feed around a hundred a so, and participates in spaghetti suppers thrown to raise money for local families if tragedy strikes. Three generations of his family live nearby. Some have traveled far away, but they are not out of touch. Adam asked if Charlie had any advice for us, and I asked him how to find community. He seemed taken aback. I wonder what it must feel like to have so much behind you. You might still believe yourself a regular person, but with time you have become extraordinary. You have become a window, reservoir, and teacher.

Charlie told us to enjoy life and to stay busy. He told us to get involved in things. There are so many things for young people. They don’t sound like secrets, but they are very important and you could hear that from the way that he spoke. Those are simple truths that he has been living by. I’d be proud to live like that.

I wish that I had more time to write, but I do not have a lot of it. I wish you could see, hear, and do what I see, hear, and do, or that I could send out an emotion.

One of the most satisfying feelings in the world is arriving at a place that you have worked all day to get to. It is at its most satisfying when you are not driving or flying, you are moving there with your own body. That is one of the beautiful pieces to a Kroka expedition. We have not left on our expedition yet, but we have had a few days to practice. 

The first day was the hike down from the top of Pitcher Mountain back to Kroka’s Base Camp. 
Malcolm, the Navigator, took us back both by trails and bushwhacking. I wasn’t sure if I could imagine doing the same thing with skis and a heavy backpack on, which is what our expedition is going to be, but we got to try it out.

We were driven out to Baine Road with our skis and, once again, headed back to Kroka through the Grassy Brook Wilderness. Baine Road is much closer to Kroka than Pitcher Mountain, but that was good because it took some practice to move through the woods on our cross-country skis. It was incredible! You have to pay attention to the land is such a different way than you do when you are walking. It was like being back on the elementary school playground when you were just a little too small for it. You don’t really get to move like that anymore and I am so excited to be here for it.

At one point we were gliding one by one across a frozen river. At another we were weaving over, under, and around an undulating plane of tree trunks, rocks and high yellow grasses.


We also got to climb a boulder and ski back down! We were all side stepping up the shallower way, but then Josia and Michal pioneered the vertical wall. That became the preferred route, because it was so much cooler. I wasn’t quite cool enough to make it the steep way, but I managed one ski down and it was really fun. Lisl has some serious moves and she was showing us all up. Then she hit rock and fell in the big tumble-y way that most of us have experienced by now. I think that might be the only time I’m going to see her fall this entire semester!



Just yesterday we topped the rock at Duck Hole. We went downhill skiing at Granite Gorge, and although I was told they weren’t mountains, just big hills, even the bunny slope was very steep to me! I fell a lot and have a lot of work to do, but I was very impressed with all the others. Josia, Everett, Michal and Malcolm were especially awesome.  They skied down the steepest parts just like that! 

It was something else. You felt like you were on top of the world because the sky was the same color as the snow, and the world just dropped off in front of you and curved around the corner. I had never gone downhill skiing before.



 
We helped prepare Kroka’s Winter Camp for school groups with Hans and Leah.

Conor and Michal built the bathroom, and they could not help but explain that they had to improvise a whole lot every time they brought it up. I never got to see it, but I bet it was pretty interesting.

The rest of us either collected boughs or firewood. I went collecting boughs. Hans was telling us about how you have to have a conversation with the tree to make sure that both of your needs are balanced. He said that it is best to take from the bottom third, because those branches will soon be shadowed anyway. It reminded me of the Rule of Thirds. When taking from the wilderness, take only One Third: a Third for You, a Third for the Animals, and a Third to Come Back Again. I sang while collecting boughs and it was very calming to talk with the woods.

Nate came back to sing with us the other day. He brought in a pair of wooden skis that he had made and played the guitar. I’ve really been enjoying the songs here at Kroka.

I went down to the river to pray
Studying about that good old way
And who shall wear the starry crown?
Good Lord show me the way
Oh sisters let’s go down
Let’s go down, come on down
Oh brothers let’s go down,
Down to the river to pray

Our group is doing fantastic things. We stay very positive, even when it rains all the snow away and then seeps into our lodges. I think that if we keep that positivity, everything that we are looking for will fall into place.

I feel that the people here truly have my back. When I needed ski pants because mine have not yet arrived, I had several different people coming up to me to say that they could give me their rain pants or ask their parents to bring an extra pair. I can’t thank them enough. It’s only been three weeks and all we’ve got is time to grow.


I’ve got this everlasting light
It’s shining like the stars
And the more that I give
The more that I’ve got to give
It’s the way that I live
And it’s what I’m living for.



Monday, January 23, 2012

Update 2

To Anyone who is Expecting a Letter from a Semester Student;

We are all very sorry. It has been extraordinarily tough to find the time to write letters, even when we remember to look for it. A few have certainly made their way through, but there is always something more to be done for the group.

It is a powerfully good feeling to be kept busy with important work, work that makes the rest of your day possible. So we have a favor to ask of those still waiting. Please know that we have many half-written letters, and for now, please enjoy what I am about write and know that we are thinking of you all.

(I also want to say that I have received one letter so far, and that I’ve read it over and over again. I want to respond to it very much but I have not been able to. I hope these updates are read as my response for now.)

At 5:30 in the morning, one of our teachers walks to where the Milker is sleeping and sings a morning song to wake them up.

Today, Lisl was the one waking and Josia was the one Milking.
We rotate every four days.

Startled from wakeup, but still very warm & a little drowsy, Josia must soon get out of her sleeping bag and into the brisk cold air within the Gamme, the girls’ home. The fire that is lit every night is always out by morning. She quietly puts on her layers inside of her sleeping bag, trying to let Michal either stay or get back to sleep. Josia is worried she’s waking her up anyway, but she can now leave the Gamme and stop by the Big Yurt to fill her water bottle and grab yesterday’s empty milk jar. After she has done both, she begins the trudge up the steep hill towards the Farm House to meet Lynne. Together, they will prepare to milk Daisy.

It is now 5:45 and Lisl is waking up Adam and Willie in the New Lodge, the boys’ lodge. I wake up too but I get to fall right back asleep, which is even better than not waking up. For a few groggy minutes I feel bright headlamps moving around as the two Cooks get ready to leave, but soon I am dreaming and they are in the Big Yurt starting a fire in the big stove, boiling water, and preparing breakfast.

At 6:15 the rest of us are woken up. One by one we leave our lodges and stop by the Big Yurt before we spread out for our morning chores. Soon, we are at work.

Michal and Noah are beside the Big Yurt splitting kindling and gathering firewood from the drying shed. There is enough snow on the ground so they will load up their black sled and deliver a bundle of each to the five nearby dwellings. Sometimes they pull each other in the sled as well as the firewood! Each morning, they will also refill the Big Yurt’s woodbox and then begin splitting logs near the Carriage Barn that Kroka will burn a year from now.

Malcolm and Everett are at the animal pens where Josia milked Daisy, gathering hay and water for the winter pastures beside the Farm House. Today, Misha and his dog Violet will help them move Brita the horse, Daisy the cow, Dandelion the calf, and Miss Muffet & Bo Peep, the sheep, into the pastures. They will also have to scrape and shovel out each stall, but not Daisy’s. Josia had to do that before milking. Afterwards they will head down to the Chicken Coop to collect eggs and feed the hens.

By now the Cooks have boiled most of their water, so Conor is at the stream behind the Big Yurt filling two buckets with more. On colder mornings he has to re-break the hole in the ice with a stick, but not today. I am pouring out the grey wash-water from the breakfast’s extra pots and pans into our sump-hole, then rushing back to take one of the filled buckets from Conor. After we deliver the water, we clean and sweep the bathroom stalls by the bottom of the Big Hill, then head up to the Farm House for more.

Walking up the Big Hill in the morning is always beautiful.

Today the world is blanketed with grey and falling snow. The light is on in the Farmhouse and it is a bright white, but the forest is black and almost solid. When we reach the top we are dusted. The fog from our breath is deeper and lasts longer, and behind us we can see the Big Yurt’s own smoky breath blend into the black and grey forested mountains.

The snow is powdery so we know that soon every chore, save the Cooks, will be finishing up with a strong and quick group shovel.

Other days the sky is warm and washed by the red rising sun. Both radiate across the soft white earth and the dry grass. On days like those you don’t feel like you need a jacket, even if it is cold.

After everyone finishes shoveling the many driveways, Adam will play his fife to call us into a breakfast of millet, applesauce, yogurt, cheese, raisins, walnuts, and tea. As Camp Food Manager, he is responsible for making the yogurt. I love it!

I wanted to give you an idea of how we begin every one of our days here at the Kroka Village. I’m not going to include the evening or even the midday chores, but you can imagine how they intertwine as well.


We work all day, but when we are not doing chores we are often sewing on machines in the Farm House, skiing around the hilly fields, or doing more for our Big Jobs. We have more than enough to do!

Conor must dehydrate vegetables, meat, and make three hundred biscuits. Adam has to bring all of the food that we eat down from the Farm House every day and he makes us yogurt and mung beans. Michal must manage the sewing room when Lisl is not around and manage the electricity that we use at camp and on trail. Everett must gather, sort, and repair all of the gear that we need and I saw him painting saw handles just yesterday. Josia organizes kitchen cleaning, she’s created a chore wheel, and she handles our money, thank you letters, and more than I know about.

Malcolm has 33 maps to sort through and he has already led us on a full day hike through the woods! It was from the top of Pitcher Mountain back down and across to Kroka. We believe that it was over 10 miles. We got to drink like deer from a clear and cold spring about halfway through. There were some bumps in the road but we made it, I saw him get more comfortable with it, and it was a lot of fun.

Willie has to learn how to handle any of our daily injuries and he makes sure that we are on top of staying healthy with vitamins. I have a lot of ski work to do, waxing and replacing bindings. Noah is the Camp Manager. He goes on recycling runs, built bathroom cubbies in the Farm House for us, made and installed beautiful tile hearths for the wood stoves in both Lodges and the Gamme, and I’m sure he’s completed many more small projects that he hasn’t told us about yet.

Noah is hilarious and has countless surprising moments that will not stop being surprising. He’s a regular to call the pot, which is eating the rest of what’s in the bowl when it is basically finished. Today he couldn’t finish and he kept asking us to eat the cabbage. He admitted that he didn’t know why he called it, because he didn’t actually want to eat the rest of it! He slips in little jokes here and there that always catch us off guard, and he has moments where he moves really fast and I always do a double take. I found out that he was there when his family dropped off his sister to the first Kroka expedition that I ever did! We shook hands and said that we were glad to finally meet each other for real.

All of us here knew our Noah, and now we also know another. Noah Elbers is a baker, and we visited him at his house and bakery for the second time last night. We met him after 7’o’clock at night as he was loading bread into a massive circular oven and left just before 9. He would be baking bread until close to 3’o’clock in the morning.

It was amazing to watch the way he moved and baked. I thought it was almost like a dance that he had practiced and practiced until it was as smooth as he needed it to be. He had his long-handled baking paddle at waist height in the middle of the room and when he wanted to move by it, it came up and down again so quickly it was like he had walked through it. When the bread went in he floured and nicked every single one exactly the way that he wanted, and when they came out he could just pick them up before they cooled and set them on racks.

He talked and answered our questions the entire time he was doing this, and even some of his own family stayed to listen and ask a question or two of their own. He explained the way his oven worked, the way heat baked the bread, how he tried to capture some of the excess heat for his house, and the yeast and bacteria within the bread, but although I don’t remember every detail I remember just how thoroughly he put himself into every process. He would never give you an incomplete answer.

He sent us away with a loaf of bread, and when we got back home we each tore pieces from it and ate it before falling asleep. It was delicious. He bakes all of the bread that we eat here, but it’s something else when you are there as he does it.

We are all having a great time here and we feel very lucky. Not everyone gets to do something like this. I already feel like I have come a long way and it’s only been the first two weeks. If you really want to, set your alarm to 5:45 in the morning tomorrow. That is when I will be waking up, and when I begin my new chore as Cook with Josia for the next several days. You can fall back asleep. Maybe you’ll dream of what I’ve shared with you.

Ps. Mom and Dad, any idea where my ski pants are?

Work from Pushups and Poetry

One spot
Maybe lush, plentiful moss
Or rather hard, desolate concrete
Both are somewhere

But where?
Can it be described?
In one word, or many
Can a picture suffice?
I think not
Words can help
Images spark memories
But there are more senses than that
To really know a place, you must
feel it, taste it, smell it
Breathe in its life blood
Wallow in its imperfections kiss it for its beauty
Be there not only when the blossoms bloom, the ice shines clear
But all times
Know it after being washed out by rain,
Frozen
Dark
Sweltering
Yearning.
Everything is somewhere
It knows its righteous place
It is there, under sky,
Over the Earth’s core
Between its neighbors
Who it knows squabble every spring
Over the most nutritious soil.
When you get somewhere new,
Its an opportunity to meet a steadfast friend
All you see is the surface
But we all know
The best things are beneath,
Things you must work
Toil
Praise
To get to know

-Josia





When sitting at a sewing machine, close to finishing my second bag of the day,  I started to become more and more frustrated with the tangled thread.  Somewhere in the machine, there was one miniscule piece that was perhaps wound too tight or too loosely.  This one small thing made the whole mechanical wonder into a nonfunctional piece of annoyance. As I became more and more frustrated, I realized I was becoming a small piece of our group that was malfunctioning and that if I didn’t loosten up a little bit I would cause everyone else to stop working.  Without anyone using a wrench or a screwdriver on me, I fixed up my issue and continued working with the “infernal” machine.

-Everett


Creating a knife was a process I had eagerly looked forward to.

I was well aware of the great value a knife has, especially on the trail. Being able to possess the advantage a knife offers as a result of my own labors is an exciting thought, but leads to a problem – how does one make a knife?

I found the process to be much simpler that expected. Simple, yet demanding a lot of attention to detail and a collection of knowledge and materials. So much of others went into my knife: the knowledge and experience of others, a pig, wax created by many bees, the burl of a yellow birch, a blade.


Having combined all of these things, I have developed a connection to my knife. I hope to use it for many years to come and to pass on the knowledge of knife making.

-Conor


Everywhere has its secrets
and if you listen it will tell you
answers to questions you don’t know to ask
if you watch it will show you
beauties you never looked for

Without books and without teachers,
but with each breath it fills you with its knowledge

Every place has its secrets
if you open your soul you can feel it
feelings you can never touch
if you open your heart you can taste its love
a flavor no food can offer

Every place has its secrets
All you have to do is open up

-Malcolm


























Saturday, January 14, 2012

Update 1



Dear Readers,
I am honored to be your contact to our lives aboard the Vermont Semester.

Every day here feels like several. At night it is difficult to realize that what happened in the morning happened that morning! We are always in motion, even when we are seated. So you can imagine how, even if I am incredibly thorough, there will always be much more happening than I could possibly describe. This is an incredible place. With this in mind, I will do my best to share our story.

We are nine students named Willie, Noah, Josia, Michal, Malcolm, Everett, Conor, Adam, and Dean.

My name is Dean.

Lu and Lisl will be our teachers throughout the Semester.
Along the way, we will be guided by Andrew, Misha, Chris, Tom and many guest teachers, each with their own specialty and way of life. We are very lucky to be able to learn from all of these people. I hope that all of our personalities come out through my entries.




Let’s begin.

Our journey began with a ceremony.

We and our families gathered in the Big Yurt, where we shared food and stories and began to realize that what we had been dreaming of for so long was finally about to begin.

After the food was eaten, graduates from previous semesters put on a performance for us all, and they succeeded in making us laugh. They demonstrated the many possible uses of hand axes, mostly ones that we will not be using our axes for, such as slicing up huge blocks of chocolate.

The performance ended and the end of the ceremony began. One by one the future Semester Students were called to the center of the Big Yurt.  We knelt on one knee, head bowed, while a Graduate used the back of an axe to tap our shoulders and our head. When the metal touched me, I could not help but shiver. We rose and were presented with the axe.

This was now our journey, and this was our first tool.

We walked our parents to the top of the big hill and said goodbye. My mom and I hugged each other and said “I love you very much”. She is a wonderful artist and I know she would love to be here as much as I do right now.

Coming back down the hill, I kept looking back. It was a little sad, but it felt right.

We collected back at the Big Yurt and wrapped the top of our axe handles with cord to protect them. Behind us it began to snow, and by the time we turned around, it was truly winter outside.

We couldn’t believe what was happening.
It was the beginning of it all and the world had taken notice. So it was a shame when the snow melted the next day…

We have many projects at Kroka.

Lisl and Lu taught us how to knit down in the Big Yurt, and it is a small joy to experience your fingers flying through the yarn when before they were a thousand times too big to handle anything. Lu was also knitting her own hat and, at Lisl’s suggestion, started creating a tube for an earflap. That was much more advanced than what we were doing!  I think she’s still working on it.

We might even be adding ears to our hats as well as earflaps. Josia has a brown hat with rabbit ears that Misha loved so much that he wants us all to have different animals. Lisl wants to give him pig ears! I hope that mine are removable.


Tom, who is the true definition of an old soul in a young body, taught us knife making in the Workshop up the hill.  He shared with us a special understanding of what it means to create. He told us how he found the burl that most of us used for handles while canoeing, and reminded us that our sheaths were once a running and snorting pig. He told us of the bees who made the wax for our sheaths. We heard about the inner motions of the Earth grinding minerals into formation, and we gave recognition to those who developed the epoxy, oil, and thread we used.

 
To honor what Tom taught us, I named my blade Time to remind me of what every process must take and the story that each object has behind it.

Without snow, but needing to practice skiing, Lisl thought we should bring ice skates and hockey sticks down to the Beaver Pond. Most of us didn’t bring those things though, so we ended up playing Ninja on the ice. In an attempt to slap each other’s hands before both of ours were out, we all ended up on our backs trying to fight off laughter. Michal won that round. She rolls and tumbles around and is always in the thick of it. She can do a cartwheel on the ice. We also did relay races.  Our noise and cheer must have woken the whole night up.

On the Fifth Day we made a group decision to step outside Kroka tradition. We would sauna boys and girls together, and wear swimsuits. It was outrageously fun. We all ran to the Orchard Hill sauna. Adam, Conor, and I pushed each other to run a little too fast. Although we had some impressive footwork over the icy, rocky terrain, we missed the group fall into a hollow ice puddle.

It was close to three miles until we hit the sauna, and Josia, Michal, and Lu wasted no time in upholding a different Kroka tradition. In front of the sauna there is a small iced over pond and the tradition is to saw a hole in it and jump in. The saw we used was over five feet tall! Michal jumped in before we had removed the two squares we had sawed out, so she went through a trapdoor and came back out with a few cuts on her legs. She was fine, but she felt bad about bleeding inside the sauna. We all teased her for it.

Lu told us that she heard that in Norway when you sauna you are supposed to jump in the icy water seven times, so the next hour was an almost constant chain of rushing in and out and cheering at the small window where we could see the plunges. Willie, who is from Texas, came close but couldn’t do it yet. It was just too cold! We all know that he will.

Adam & Andrew invented a quick game where you must answer an historical question before you are allowed out of the water, which we all fell in love with immediately. It’s a game that only they would have thought up.

Adam knows a vast range of history. He knows a relevant story for almost any occasion and he hasn’t had to truly say “I don’t know” to a question yet. When he does, however, he just means that he has less to say. When we were studying the expedition novels that Misha had asked us to read, Adam was immersed in his more than any of us. His explanation of a Pacific Ocean crossing only through indigenous tools and techniques was very knowledgeable and easy to listen to. I hope that I can learn a lot from him along the way.

Later that day we met Nate, one of the previous Semester Teachers, who gave us many stories and songs, as well as an apple crisp. He takes a tracking class for one weekend every month, and it is a long drive away. On his way there the other night he realized that he had forgotten the dessert that he was going to share with his group. His mind occupied, he barely skipped a beat as he slammed on the brakes and swerved to the edge of the road, just missing the enormous moose that had been standing in the center of the lane.  He came back to the right side of the road and thought about how quickly life can change, and how it almost just did. That was the story of our apple crisp, and yes, I do believe that he was as calm during the event as he sounds as I write it!

There were beautiful songs that night and I truly hope to sing strongly and powerfully on my own at the end of the Semester. I accidently volunteered myself to lead one of the dinner songs and I was so nervous that I couldn’t find the tune. It was embarrassing, but hilarious. Most of us started out shy with our singing, but the voices are coming out. It is really something to listen to and be a part of every meal.

We sang one of Nate’s songs during our knife completion ceremony. Tom asked us to use it because it is meant to be sung on special occasions. We cannot help but hum it during our free time though! It’s a song about remembering others and others remembering you.

We sometimes have trouble not bringing up subjects from home. During a Community Guideline meeting Willie suggested that we use the word Albatross when we leave the here and now. It caught on, but it has turned into just making screeching sounds. Malcolm produces a guttural call that would terrify everyone if it weren’t clearly coming from our goofy friend, flapping his arms in broad daylight.

We’ve skied four times so far.

Grafton Ponds Cross Country Ski Center makes their own snow, so we drove there for a little under an hour and spent a few hours more there. For many of us it was close to our first time on skis! I had half an hour of previous skiing experience, and that was many years ago. For others, it was the first time back on in a while. If they were rusty, I couldn’t tell!  Everett, Josia, Noah, and Michal were the ones who stood out to me as the most comfortable.  Conor and I face-planted on the hard packed snow when snowplowing down a hill. Once our egos recovered, we took pride in the distinction.

Malcolm says he went airborne for a full second yesterday when we were finally able to ski at Kroka. It snowed this beautiful soft powder! It was just barely enough and it was amazing. I felt so much more comfortable on the second day, and on our own skis instead of rented ones like at Grafton. We did three races while Lisl took pictures, and I don’t know about anybody else, but I was definitely trying to get into the lead so I would be a major face in a picture! Even though I am still a pretty slow skier, I was able to run with skis on fast enough to be up there with them! Look for the bright blue hat if there is one there, that’ll be me. 
Everett won two of those races. I always think that he looks more typical of Kroka than any of the rest of us. I want to know more about how he grew up. On the first few days he had this long flowing hair down to his chest, but he had just made it into dreadlocks that he didn’t want anymore so he had them all cut off in the Big Yurt just the other day. His hair now points out in every direction, and it suits him well.

Several days ago we chose our Big Jobs. These are incredibly important jobs that each of us must take on and, when put together, they make our Semester Expedition a reality. It is beautiful to see everyone working as hard as they can every day, even when we have so little time to make it happen, and still making true progress.  For example, I was walking through the Kitchen last night to do group laundry and there were these reddish-brown chunks of meat strung up high to dry over the oven! I knew that our trail-food manager must have done it, but I had no idea when. It made me smile.

We are learning to use up every moment of the day and that is why I’m here. I wanted to do something incredible and I wanted to be a part of something here at Kroka on the Vermont Semester.  I can tell I will be an older mind when I leave here, and am just a little more already. I don’t want to stop making things happen. I love all of the people here.

I hope everyone back home understands just a little bit more about why I had to come to the semester.

There is so much more to say, but there is even much more to do! My current tasks are to write this update, make my ski gaiters, and wax the skis, because I am the both the Scribe & Ski Manager. Everyone is working nonstop to keep on top of his or her Big Job. They are all doing a fantastic job, and I can’t wait to write more about what we are all doing and who we all are.

Thank you for following us!

I hope you enjoyed it so far.

Dean – Scribe & Ski Manager
Adam – Camp Food Manager
Conor – Trail Food Manager
Everett – Gear & Repair Manager
Josia – Kitchen & Logistics Manager
Malcolm – Navigator
Michal – Sewing & Energy Manager
Noah – Camp Manager
Willie – Medic
Lu, Andrew, & Lisl are by our sides