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Blog #8: Mountain Biking Home

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Ready to ride Greetings all!         I wrote this blog sitting in a sea of green leaning against a big spruce tree. In front of me Liam was tending a crackling fire. Edie sat a ways away peacefully journaling while Ma’or was silently reading. A little tired from our long days Emily was napping. Georgie was cheerfully cutting vegetables and Havah and Luke were telling jokes. Dusk was settling and slowly I could see the flickering light of the fire on my page. Hannah and Seth had biked the 6-mile ride to Kroka so that we could have our last night alone in the woods together. Lillian with Champ, the goose We just finished our final expedition of the 2018 winter semester program! Biking for twelve days, we went from Fort Ticonderoga to Kroka’s basecamp in Marlow New Hampshire. Throughout the twelve days we visited amazing farms and did service work. We traveled a lot on single-track trails, which was a new kind of riding for our group, and it brought an e

Blog #7: Northeast Kingdom and Lake Champlain

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We Begin The Journey Home: Northern Vermont Biking and Lake Champlain Paddling After an amazing parent weekend filled with an abundance of food and humorous talent show productions, laughter, and workshops, we said goodbye to our families. Early Monday morning we set out with our bikes, loaded with all our gear. We brought minimal food so we could buy the rest passing through towns. The day was warm, all of us had our short sleeve shirts and bike shorts on and it was a positive introduction to our seven-day bike leg (apart from the 3k uphill!). Over the next days we biked 30-60k per day. Our semester loves snacks so we jumped with glee when on our third day we quickly stopped in town to get cinnamon rolls. There is something so special about traveling with bikes. You get to go fast enough to get around but slow enough to notice things around you. One of my favorite things was getting to ask people to refill our water bottles. The homeowners would often be so excited about our

Blog #6: Koviashuvik

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Of Baskets and Acorns:  Adventures at Koviashuvik Welcome to Koviashuvik! Home of the Knapps On April 5 th , we said goodbye to Oliver and Hannah (our Uapishka teachers) and we left rainy Northwoods with Nora, eastward bound to Koviashuvik in Temple, Maine. After a foggy four hour drive we found Koviashuvik at the end of a windy dirt road. Excitedly, we unloaded our barrels and walked the path over a rushing brook. Chris greeted us with open arms and showed us to our dwelling. We got to meet the Knapp family we had been hearing about for months (Chris's wife Ashira, and children Bonnie Bee and Owen). The next morning, Chris gave us a grand tour of his beautiful Maine homestead. We were shown the garden, the running spring, the ice house and the root cellar, which was filled with apples from the previous year’s harvest. Later that day, Chris told us the meaning of Koviashuvik-‘a time and place of joy in the present moment.’ In the classroom (a large, hand-built house made