Winter Semester 2018

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...

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 ...