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4/18/2006

Dear friends, family, and members of the community, welcome to the new email update. The past week and a half have been an exciting time for us, a time when we end our winter expedition and begin the preparation for the canoeing portion of our journey. We have done torrents of academic work, are half way through building our canoe, a presentation was given to a middle school, we have started pounding ash for our pack baskets, and wrapped up our old big jobs while starting our new ones. In the spring we have many of the same big jobs as in the winter however not as many big jobs are needed to make our new expedition happen. So we are presented with a very exciting opportunity to create big jobs unrelated to the expedition but which will lift our spirits and educate us. These bonus big jobs will be mostly research oriented science projects. There was a buzz of excitement in the air when we sat down in our warm tent before the long list of new big jobs written on the black board. We knew that the job we picked would be one of the main focuses of our time for the rest of the semester and so we had spent the previous day pondering the choices. Names, circles, checks, underlines, and arrows soon covered the black board-all aids in the process of figuring out who would hold what positions. We discussed, we weighed and we measured, and slowly, each one heralded by a round of applause, our new big jobs were decided. They are as follows;

Lily shall be the mistress of fermentation, and the caretaker of the wanagan, in charge of making yogurt, sourdough bread, and other fermented treats for the river. She will also care for our pots and pans, a responsibility passed down to her by Andy. Andy is the new medic man, he shall carry the beacon which Tommy held proudly aloft. Tommy is the meteorologist, astronomer, and digital photographer. He now wears the camera’s battery about his neck that Paul-Ivan kept warm during the winter. Paul-Ivan has taken up the responsibility of food manager, inheriting lots of leftover trail food from Evan. Evan now carries the slide camera we have become so accustomed to seeing Daniel peer out from behind. Daniel has become the navigator, he shall now scrutinize the very maps Hannah and Hans long kept safe and dry. Hannah is our bard and geologist, she will bring the arts into our lives through song and poems and will study the rocks on the way down the Connecticut. Our water cat Ilene will closely monitor the water quality of the rivers and streams on which we will be traveling. Sarah is our business manager, treasurer, and coordinator. She will be responsible for the bookkeeping which Lily and Colin shared. Colin is our food maker and historian, he has been making crackers and granola for the river and will enlighten us on the history of the land we pass through. Hans is our new gear manager, group gear will lurk in the bottom of his stuff sack just as it did in the bottom of mine. And I, Tom, am striving to climb the steep and treacherous stairs which my predecessor, Ilene, bounded so gracefully up.

Our life here at the North Woods Stewardship Center has been very comfortable. We rise as the sun is coming up and greet the day by running and jumping in streams and rivers. After breakfast and our morning meeting we begin the day’s work. A large part of our energy was expanded during our first week here wrapping up the winter journey. We created main lesson pages on winter camp set up, firewood and water, and the bough shelter and the Quincy. We finished our big jobs from the winter with a statistical logistical main lesson page on them. These pages will be very valuable for the next Semester Program. We also did a presentation to the rest of the group and a creative project about our big job ranging from a board game called Krokapoly, to a rap about pots and pans, to songs, poems and skits, many hand work projects and a mad-lib. The North Woods Stewardship Center has been very generous to us, welcoming us with open arms and providing space for academic work. One night we all trooped down to the “center”, as we call their main building, for their coffeehouse, a fund-raiser they hold once a month with music, coffee, and sugary treats. A jazz funk band called Viscus provided live music. “I let the music wash over me and before I knew it I was dancing with Hannah, Andy, Colin, Evan, Lily, Hans, Chris, and Stefan”. (quoted from Tommy’s group journal page).

On the evening of day eight at our northern base camp Adam Park came to speak to us about his trip down the Mississippi and his many adventures in Central America. Chris had met Adam serendipitously during our solo leg from Sterling to the North Woods Stewardship Center, and after a long conversation invited him to dinner. He fascinated us with his stories of giant hail and upturned forests along the Mississippi and showed us the vastness of the world through his tales of villages in Central America. He went to the native communities to teach and help but said he learned more from them then he ever taught. Adam opened our minds to long distance travel and showed us the importance of forming ties to people all over the world.

Jayson Benoit of the Stewardship Center was kind enough to give us a lesson on the history of the land we were living on. He led us down the road and into the woods where he showed us a picture, taken fifty years ago, of the land we were looking at. In the picture we saw open farmland but what greeted our eyes was thick red pine. It was incredible to see how much the land can change in such a short time. Jayson has done an amazing amount of research work, and found out who has owned the land since the first settling. He told us about the forestry work North Woods Stewardship center was doing on the plantations of red pine. Having all of one species of tree doesn’t make a very healthy forest so he is thinning in hopes of creating a more balanced ecosystem. He is selling the lumber he cuts but it’s very hard to break even if you’re a small logging operation. Trees aren’t actually worth very much and the only way to make money at it is in sheer mass and clear cutting.

On the afternoon of the tenth day at North Woods we went to visit an old timer who Sarah knew. His name was Fred Webster. He was an amazing guy. He was a school teacher and dairy farmer but his passion is old farming equipment. After telling us some stories of his life in a one-room schoolhouse on his land he took us out and showed us his phenomenal collection of antiques. We didn’t really know what to expect when we were led into one of his long barns. There are about six big buildings all housing his huge stockpile of antiques. Cool, musty air hit my nose as we walked in and my eyes were bombarded with a sight I would remember for many years. A line extending further then my eyes could see of horse drawn carriages and sleighs. Words fail me as I strive for a description of what we saw. Not one antique washing machine but fifty, all lined up in a row next to a long table covered by planes, chisels, hammers, and other woodworking tools. Horse treadmills crowded closely in one building and a hoard of old tractors stretching out like a traffic jam at rush hour filled another. It was unbelievable. The pride of his collection was a beautiful stagecoach, which he made himself. He said that he couldn’t find one and really wanted one so he made one. He milled the lumber and salvaged the metal parts from his vast collection and created an amazing replica. He had eighty thousand square feet of space for his passion and had obviously immensely enjoyed filling it with the working tools of a bygone age. What he said to us that struck us the most was that he had decided to enjoy every day and that’s what he went and did. He was really happy in his life and he just took each day as it came and made a point to do something outside everyday. From Fred’s we went to Sarah’s family, the Champines, for dinner. The Champines gave us all their best food, lots of it from their garden and all homemade, it was delicious old style cooking. Excerpt from Paul-Ivan’s group journal page “Thank you Champines for your generosity and kindness, we had a great time and the food was super!” Never was a truer word said.

Our next order of activity was the parent visit. So we did all the necessary preparations. When everything was done we all went down to the center to wait for our families. As the time of arrival inched closer I saw more and more people peering hopefully out the window as they heard cars start to trickle up the dirt drive. The trickle increased to a steady flow and then all at once it seemed like the center was full of smiling familiar faces. A steady bubble of happy talk reverberated until, when everyone was accounted for we ate a wonderful lunch that the parents put on. The abundance of food was almost startling. After a rather long parent teacher meeting we were able to show our friends and family the presentation we had prepared. It consisted of some of the big job presentations we had done for our own group, a “Tracking the Wild Semester Student” skit, and a series of quotes we had put together from various places which we thought had wisdom to them. The evening was filled with food, music, and merrymaking. The next day everyone got a chance to go off for the day with their parents. We had the chance to go wherever we wanted but a seed was sewn in our mind. We wanted to go back to Fred’s. So we did, and had a lovely time wandering through the antiques, chatting with our families. At lunch everyone dispersed again and pizza, bad Chinese food, and ice cream were eaten. Over the afternoon the parents started to drift away. “It was so good to have our families here, it is becoming more and more like a huge family reunion.” Quoted from Hannah’s group journal page. Directly after the parent visit we welcomed two new people to our community for the week. First, Lisl Hofer, Stefan’s mother, came to experience our life, as she will be the coordinator for Kroka’s high school. She is a teacher at Kimberton Waldorf school and is moving to Vermont this fall to begin work on Misha’s dream of a four year Kroka high school. It was awesome to have her presence in our community. She is very knowledgeable and taught us about the big picture of weather, explaining the patterns weather moves in and telling us what we were seeing when we observed the skies. It was very interesting to see that perspective after observing the weather all through the winter but not knowing the causes of it. Second, Rollin Thurlow, a master canoe builder came. We are really blessed to be able to learn from Rollin. He spearheaded the modern wood and canvas canoe movement and wrote one of the most trusted books on building this type of canoe.

We set up the canoe building shop at Bill Manning’s, who lives down the road from the center. Bill is letting us use his space in exchange for work. So we cleaned out his cluttered barn, shed, and workshop as well as helping him with various chores. We are very grateful to be able to use his space. He has a sawmill and a sugar bush and there is much we can learn from him. Wood and canvas canoes need a form for the ribs to be bent around. Rollin had brought a heavy form and we were able to see the shadow of our boat to come as we rolled it into our working space. We then set up a steam box to heat up the ribs so they could be bent over the strong frame. Bending ribs was a lot of fun, They can only be out of the steam for a minute before you can’t bend them so one person will grab a rib out of the hot box and call out the number written on the back. Then there would be a frenzied search for the corresponding number written on the form. The rib would then be bent to the graceful curve that would cut through three hundred miles of river, and nailed into place with little brass nails. After all the ribs were done, the planking went on. We nailed the thin wide boards that run horizontally along the boat on with little brass tacks. The tacks pounded in every inch and went through the planking and the ribs to hit the metal bands on the form where they bent over and created a hook holding the wood together. With most of the steaming done we all came together for the exciting process of removing the canoe from the form. We undid all the clamps holding our canoe to the form and positioned ourselves on either side of our boat. When Rollin gave the okay to free our creation from its mother we lifted and Crack! The sound that strikes fear into the heart of every woodworker was heard. The canoe was somehow stuck to the form and us pulling on it had started a split on the keelson. We tried to coax it off twisting and lifting but it was stuck. Rollin stayed totally calm. He jumped up onto the canoe and started surgery. By lifting the canoe at the front we were able to see where it was being held down and that’s where Rollin’s knife bit into the soft cedar planking. He cut away at the tightly fitted planks until the ribs of our giant baby could be seen through the gaping wound. When we were putting ribs on there were places where you had to undo a screw that attached the keelson of our boat to the form. It turned out one of the screws had not been undone! Rollin reached for the drill and aimed at a rib, hoping the fugitive screw might be lurking beneath it. The drill buzzed and we heard the second sound every woodworker fears but which hit our ears as the sweetest musical note. It was the sound of metal hitting metal. The drill bit had been aimed wisely and hit the screw. A few more minutes’ work with a utility knife and a screw gun and the screw was out. A chorus of cheers erupted as Rollin held the two and a half inches of metal aloft and then flung it triumphantly to the ground.

The next order of business on our big baby was the loud and exhausting process of clinching. Every brass nail which had not bent over properly when they had first been put in (which was most of them), had to be gone over again with two people bending them properly. One person was on the outside of the canoe with a hammer and another on the inside holding a heavy iron to the protruding nails so they might be pounded in better. It was an amazingly noisy operation with six people trying to yell out which nail out of the thousands of nails to clinch next, above constant pounding of three hammers all hitting the boat and the other teams hollering to each other. By the end my ears were ringing, my voice was hoarse, my arm was sore, and my heart was happy from a job well done. I slept well that night.

Then came a very important day for the greater Kroka community. The day of the hearing on the issues Kroka has been working out with the state about zoning. Chris and Ashirah were planning to drive down south to support Kroka and Evan, Tommy, Hans, and Ilene accompanied them. We loaded the van up with winter gear we didn’t need and sent them on their way. The hearing went well, the zoning issues have been resolved and all that remains to resolve is the state’s concern with our sawdust toilet. We were also able to get a lot of spring gear including the Kasha, the canoe last Semester built.

I now must bid you farewell but I ask you to hold your picture of us in you mind for a little longer after you stop reading. We have been thinking of you and by holding each other in our thoughts we are really not apart, we are only separated by physical distance and are truly together in spirit.

I hear a voice calling over the hills, it is morning, it is morning.
I rise, frost sparkles from the rising sun, I smile at the new day.

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