Blog #3: Leaving Home


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 pack out. There is so much each person in our group is responsible for from food to planning our route of travel to making sure we have enough materials to repair gear that breaks along our journey.
We have been enjoying regular baths in the pond...

            Monday was the last day we spent skate skiing with Misha, as spring seems to be coming early this year and hasn’t left us with very much snow. So the following day we took a trip to Granite Gorge with Hannah and Oliver on our backcountry skis to practice telemarking. That evening was very special. We went to Orchard Hill Bread Works in Alstead, NH for a pizza night with another Kroka program called Fire and Ice, which was just ending. The best part, however, was that we got to go in groups across the street to a sauna! We spent some time there getting super hot in the sauna and running down to the pond below it to cool down, then back into the hot sauna.
Luke, getting psyched to practice his tele turns with a loaded pack on!

Luīze, enjoying the slopes on a warm day

            The next morning we all piled into the van and headed into Westmoreland for a day of learning how to ice climb! This was the first time for most of us, and turned out to be a great way to cool off as temperatures climbed into the 70s.

Thank you to the Monadnock Climbers Association for spending the day with us!

Havah- showing off her skills!

What a fun classroom to learn ice science!

Practicing traversing without ropes

Liam!

            As we continue to prepare for Monday’s departure, we look forward to a couple more evenings with guest teachers, last minute food dehydration, and finally the big pack out!

Group hug!

Luke, Emily and Lillian sharing their weather rap


As of Monday, we will be headed up to Gaspe peninsula of Quebec to experience the majestic Chic Choc and McGerrigle Mountains.

Stay tuned for my report of the next leg of Kroka Expedition’s Winter Semester 2018!

Many thanks and happy reading,
Emily Wasem J

A fun day with the local elementary school

Sledding with our penpals!

We had an awesome day meeting our pen pals from the local elementary school! Thanks for coming to visit us!

Hot cup of chaga (yeah yeah!)













Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog #8: Mountain Biking Home

Image
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
Read more

Blog #4 Gaspesie

Image
We began our second leg of semester around 6am on February 26th.  We all piled into a van with a trailer behind it holding all of our gear and food for our Canadian expedition. Our first stop was at Fort #4, very close to Kroka in New Hampshire, where the Roger’s Rangers plotted the massacre of Abenaki women and children of the St. Francis tribe (Quebec) in 1759. To our disappointment it was locked up, so Luke and Liam tried to find an entry way by climbing to the roof! This was a perfect introduction into our topic of learning on our van ride up, we read The Old American. This book follows the capture of an English settler from Keene, NH, Nathan Blake, by a native American, Caucus-Meteor. Not so coincidentally, their route heading north is almost identical to the route we will take, heading south in the spring. As the sun was setting that night and we were just arriving in the town of our hostel, Manor de Sapins, we stopped and ran down onto the beach of the St. Lawrence. This bea
Read more

Blog #7: Northeast Kingdom and Lake Champlain

Image
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
Read more