Winter Semester 2018

Leaving Home Sluggishly sliding away I make my home wherever I am Lord willing and the creek don’t rise I am free ~Collective Winter Semester Program Parent weekend, which many of you participated in, was so fun for many of us. It was also emotional and a little hard to say good-bye for others. Since that time we have had fun, experienced new things, and have gone into full expedition pack out mode! Parent Day was a blast! Thank you families for all that you brought! The talented Bittenbender, Wasem, and Sanders/Mark families lead us in a fun song Liam and his little sister enjoying the warm day Watching the student performance Dylan brought a whole lot of his family! Ondy and Peter, enjoying the presentation Shai and Yotam, showcasing their talents             The day after parent weekend we took time to rest and clean up to prepare for the week ahead, which began with our first meeting with Misha regarding expedition

Since the last time I wrote you, our lives here at Kroka basecamp have gotten busier and even more exciting! Each morning holds a very special routine of everyone contributing around the farm and camp village, doing chores. Some of us who are lucky enough to be working outside often enjoy watching beautiful sunrises unfold over the Kroka campus. These chores include feeding, milking, and cleaning the animals and their stables, or spending time tidying the indoor human spaces and getting to learn how to light wood stoves. However, perhaps the biggest task in our morning is the firewood chore. We have been given the big responsibility of splitting and stacking 12 cords of wood before we leave on leg two! So far we have made quite a dent, but still have much work to look forward to. Another morning responsibility, and perhaps the favorite, is the job of cooks. This job requires that we hang out for a few hours in our nice, warm, cozy home and cook delicious food for our community members.

What is wilderness and what is a human’s place within it? The first time somebody told me to break a bough off of a tree I thought they were crazy. While in the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway, a wilderness, I never could have imagined disrespecting a tree that way- until I did. As the explanation of the process went along, it further revealed the rationale in using the broken off branches. Meeting the trees and thanking them for the gifts of their branches made me realize that trees are people; the trees aren’t there to look at. To meet a tree, you must touch it, be hugged by its branches in rest, drink tea made from its boughs, and be warmed and dried by the fire heated by the death of a friend. To learn what wilderness means to me, you must know the trees, meet them, sleep with them, and sit beneath them. The wilderness gives the opportunity to provide for yourself and be simple in living and needs. This philosophy may seem odd in the time of the wilderness community’s motto, “leav