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 Kroka Expeditions New Hampshire - Vermont Semester 2009 Updates and News Update February 27, 2009 Salutations from layover number two! I am sitting by the fire in the Maple Yurt at On the Loose, where
we arrived yesterday, the 26th of February. The last leg passed quickly
despite the many events that took place. First I would like to thank
Mary Stewart, a storyteller who came and worked with us at Farm and
Wilderness. She told us stories and then prompted us to tell stories
of our own. Unfortunately, she came after I had finished the update,
so she didn’t make it into the last one. We met him courtesy of the Vermont Folk Life Center. He has been logging the area since the age of 13, and his relationship with the land and the trees runs deeply. He walked among the trees with us, pointing out the stumps of trees he had cut a couple of years ago, telling us about how he keeps the forest healthy by cutting close to the ground and limiting the number of trees he takes in one cutting. His teaching was very much appreciated and we enjoyed meeting him very much. After leaving Larry we pushed 7 more kilometers to Blueberry Hill
for our first “live over” of the leg. The next day we visited the van and trailer and Misha handed over the torch to Chris. We butchered the deer and found that it was all very high quality, edible meat. We would have fresh venison for the rest of the leg. We also sent some back to base camp for Misha’s family. Brian LaPierre, an Abenaki man, hiked out to meet us at our live over camp to tell stories and sing songs traditional to the Abenaki culture. He spent a very windy night with us and left in the morning, as we were packing up for our first moving day with Chris. We only skied 9 kilometers, stopping in the middle for a social gathering with some trees, greeting them and getting to know them: poplar, sugar maple birch, then bedded down for another two day live over. In the morning we followed Chris up into the woods where he demonstrated
how to make a bough lean-to. This would be the beginning of our work
on bush skills. We divided up into pairs and headed out into the woods
to find suitable places for our shelters. When we had found our spots
we returned to camp for lunch. Then, with full stomachs, and backpacks
packed with sleeping pads, our stuff sacks, a meal to be cooked and
assorted cooking utensils, we ventured back into the bush. Each pair
of us made our own shelter: a lean-to with bough roof and floor, fire
pit and heat-reflector walls made of punky deadwood. We cut and carried
in long poles for firewood, then made our fires and settled in for
the night. Just us and our fires and our frying pans of pasta and
cheese, prepared to do battle with eight hours of darkness and cold.
And it worked! We all returned in the morning alive and well fed,
a little sleep deprived and clothes a little charred in places, but
all smiling with our varyingly blackened faces. Dear Fire
We spent the afternoon on a ski sans backpacks around the woods
to check out each other’s shelters and meet some more trees.
Among them were ironwood, beech and ash. Back at our campsite we took
baths and did chores. For the next four days we traveled toward On the Loose. On the 24th
some of us climbed Mt. Abraham, a 4000-foot mountain in Lincoln, Vermont.
And no, everybody, the name is not a coincidence. Although we did
not get to climb the entire mountain to the top, ski the ridge and
go down on the Sugarbush downhill ski trails on the other side as
we had intended, we did get most of the way up and got to look out
on some beautiful views of the mountains on a gorgeous day. Then we
high-tailed it back down the mountain and along the trails that the
other part of our group had taken, and arrived at the campsite long
after dark. |
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