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Weekly Update.

This week was packed with learning experiences. We have got to know each other better, broadened our view of what is possible, witnessed a death of an animal and learned artistic skills.

We started off the week with a drawing lesson taught by Janet Gordon. In her class we learned to see the world in shadows. Her classroom was filled with exquisitely drawn faces of indigenous looking people drawn in shadows, illustrated I presumed by Waldorf students. I was taken aback by the realization that these artworks demonstrated considerable skill. The Kroka troop proceeded by doing drawing exercises in which we started thick and dark, then gradually shaded lighter and lighter to the center of the page until we had a bright white circle in the middle. Then we went on doing the opposite of starting dark in the middle and gradually getting lighter towards the edges of the page, creating the illusion of a vacuous black hole. Janet was passionate about seeing the world not in sharp contrasting lines but subtle shadows and glints. She spoke with power of seeing the world in dark and light (literally) and told us of how our visual boundaries could be expanded and how our artwork would be implemented in reward. After a week of practicing these techniques we went to Janet's house for another art lesson. Her house was filled with beautiful tiles and pieces of art. We drew pictures of our hands, but we were not allowed to look at the paper, and tried to capture the life of trees or plants outside with simple essential strokes. Janet grinned and talked enthusiastically about art and how it put depth into her life.

Later that day we had a nutrition lesson with Chris. We talked about the foods we ate and what impact they had on our bodies, on our world, and on the people. This nutrition talk was an introduction to a lecture we were given later in the week. That night we had a jovial gathering with members of the Kroka community. A pick up band of the more musically inclined students played happy and soothing folk tunes. The rest of the group danced and pranced around chopping vegetables and putting them on drying racks to be placed above the stove. All the while we sung along to the words we recognized of the few songs we knew.

Sunday. We had gourmet breakfast of sourdough pancakes and sweet, sweet maple syrup along with freshly stewed applesauce. YUUUUUMMMY! The day proceeded slowly and after finishing our projects such as sewing mittens and making main lesson pages we were free to spend the rest of the day as we pleased. The finality of finishing my projects sent me a wave of relief and talking to my parents on the phone made me think of home. My mom's worried voice made me look back with regret at all the grief I had caused her with my stubbornness to do what was needed as I realized how much I was missed. I know many other members of the group felt much the same on this reflective day.

On Monday the nutritionist Sandy and her two teenage daughters Mandy and April came and told us of the nutritional studies done by Weston Price. He was a dentist from the 1900's who in order to unlock the secrets of health studied the diets of secluded villages and tribes untouched by the processed and manipulated eateries of Western Culture. Weston Price found that these native peoples had near perfect health and concluded that many modern diseases were, in fact, a result of overly refined and processed foods. Sandy spoke to us of the health benefits of whole animal products such as whole milk, butter, animal fat and organs She deplored the health effects of highly refined foods such as some vegetable oils and soy products. According to Sandy these animal products enable humans to digest essential fat-soluble vitamins, which the American population is lacking.

On Tuesday, the group visited master leather worker Russ Bigelow, an old man with a rusty voice and a long cigarette protruding lightly from his chapped lips. His shop is filled with leather and tools, saddles and antique swords. His domain was filled with relics of the past. The air was stagnant in the cramped compartments of his workspace and laden with stale smoke that had been accumulating and seeping in to everything with every Pall Mall Russ had smoked in his leather laboratory. The Kroka kids made beautiful leather notebooks using Russ's materials, and were guided by his considerable expertise. Russ's wife came down and talked us about past dates and intricate family webs in razor sharp and crystal clear memory. We are very grateful to be able to learn from these wise and friendly people. Later that day we had a lesson of how weather was created with Lisl and drew some clouds.

On Wednesday we had a downhill skiing lesson with Misha. After learning the fundamentals on how to stably slide down the hill Misha decided it was time to build a jump. We grabbed shovels and packed down a ramp with hopes of three-second flights. Going off many fell, few managed to pop off the lip of the jump properly in order to increase flight and no one got injured.

At 1:30 we left for Paul Harlow's farm to slaughter the pig that would provide us with energy for our long ski voyage. When we arrived at the farm, Paul informed us of what was about to take place. Then he took his .22 and pointed it at the selected pig's forehead, but before the bullet was shot another pig intercepted the line of fire. The rustic farmer raised his barrel once more but the pig seemed to duck behind the feeding troth. The farmer stumbled over the plastic cord electric fence and once more aimed at the pig’s forehead. "POW" a bullet to the third eye and the pig is down. The farmer bends down one knee, his position still and strong. With the swipe of a knife he slits the pigs throat. The pig goes into a fit of writhing, it breaks through the fence that has kept it captive and proceeds to kick and wiggle violently. Blood is spurting out of the gash in the pigs neck in hardy squirts like one of those hoses with a trigger attachment. As blood comes out the pig’s writhing decreases in vigor and ceases to a mere twitch before becoming completely still, completely lifeless. We hoisted the dead pig onto a homemade wood platform and proceeded to separate its skin from its body with our pocket knifes.

We hung it up, its two legs tied to a forklift and sliced down it’s middle, penetrated into it's stomach with our arms and pulled out its organs, saving some to eat and leaving the intestines and other inedible stomach components behind. Bone-saw in hand, Krokans, with stomach enough to do the deed, sawed through the spine all the way down, separating the pig in two halves the long way. As I looked at the skinned and halved late creature hanging on the forklift I saw only pork, utterly lifeless and like something you would see in a slaughterhouse. It was strange to think that this carcass of meat had been squealing and shuffling around in the sloppy mud 45 minutes earlier. The next day we boarded the Kroka van and again went to Paul's farm. In a small-scale concrete butchering room with a big wood table, we parted 150 pounds of meat and fat from bone. For hours we chopped the hunks of raw flesh into inch-sized cubes, which were spiced and thrown into the sausage grinder. Sausage oozed out in small tubular streams and was neatly packaged in white paper. The process from pig to sausage was complete, and we were engaged in every step.

That night a spiritual speaker came to our yurt named Bill White. In a casual manner, he came and told us of a mystical experience he had encountered and talked to us of possibilities there are in the realm of things unproven by science. Later into the evening we had another merry vegetable dehydration party.

The next morning was another ski lesson with Misha. We bush-walked through small evergreens, up and down crevasses, making our own trails if it seemed more tactful than the previous tracks. We glided across thin ice over shallow water, moving quickly with fear that it would crack beneath us, and then unhooked our skis and climbed up a rocky face in order to complete the loop to reach base camp.

On Friday we had a snowball fight/group-wrestling match and smashed each other with sheets of crusty snow. That night we had a discussion on understanding each other amongst the group, and later, yet another vegetable dehydration party.

On Saturday night we made supper and had a meeting without Chris, Hannah, or Tom. In the meeting we revealed of a bit more about how we were feeling and what conflicts were being felt in the group I think this meeting brought us closer and signaled a turning point in the group’s communications.

This week has been one of improvement in maintaining an organized lifestyle and seeing deeper into people’s personalities as well as getting ready for the ski trip.

On behalf of the Vermont Semester, this is Joey Becker.