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Vermont Semester
A 600 Mile Journey By Ski and Canoe (January-June 2004)

24 April, 2004

Moms, dads, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, second, third, forth, and long lost relatives, friends, special friends, and interested members of the community,

Howdy.

While regime change in the “real” world seems like only a distant aspiration, here, in a snow-melted, woodcock infested meadow at the Vermont Leadership Center in East Charleston, Vermont, our Kroka Semester Program Big Job terms realized their term limits. That’s just a long way of saying that we changed big jobs, and that Jane is now the “Director of Operations and Communications,” and I, Evan, have stepped into her surprisingly large shoes as Junior Scribe, and am no longer food manager. These ramblings, while I feel that they are somewhat representative of the group’s feelings, are entirely my fault. It is a hard balance to strike between saying what I feel much of the world wants to hear and speaking what I see as the truth. I can only promise to you that as Scribe I will speak my truth. My truth is all I know.

Food is now the responsibility of Stefan, but Joe, as assistant food guru, is in charge of making yogurt, crackers, cracked wheat, and, when the time comes, harvesting fish and gathering greenery for salads on the river. Joe will also retain his responsibilities as Photographer. Emily, the senior Director of Ops is now Medic, while Chris, our medic for the winter has become Chief Navigator. Saul has taken Stefan’s place as Gear Manager for the remaining time at the VLC and for our time on the Connecticut.

We had known for a few weeks that we were all going to change jobs, but when the time came to volunteer for new positions no one wanted to abandon their former responsibilities. I can tell you that I miss writing notes in my journal about the meals we were eating every day, and, when the Associated Buyers Truck arrived to deliver enough food for another two months of our insane consumption (two bushels of apples a week…), I had a hard time not being the one organizing it all as it was unloaded, even though I still feel like my input is valued by those who are in charge.

We arrived here at the Vermont Leadership Center in the extremely waning days of March, setup camp (a tent for the instructors, a wall tent for us students to sleep in, and a huge cooking, eating, meeting tent), and, once we’d gotten a jump on our firewood and had made a dent in the long process of putting to rest our winter gear, we buckled down to catch up on and complete the outstanding (that’s the overdue kind of outstanding) winter academics. We spent one evening celebrating our huge milestones (the end of two months on the trail, 400 kilometers exactly from Somerset Reservoir to the VLC), with a huge feast including two gallons of ice cream, a pound of popcorn, and at least four pounds of pasta. That evening we all preformed for the group, mostly songs, skits, and poetry. Misha sang us a song in Russian about two lovers parting at the end of an expedition as they turn towards home. While the rest of us have two months before we must begin to integrate our community into the wider world, Misha has already made that leap, turning south to his home and family. We still feel his presence and his undying commitment to this program every day. Thank you, Misha.

Chris and Ashirah Knapp, our instructors for the springtime arrived from Maine just in time to catch the beginning of the end of the flurry of winter academics (and the last snow storms), and firmly stepped into the shoe Misha was unlacing (sorry for the cliche but it’s late at night).

Before academics could even start to wind down, Rollin Thrlow from NorthWoods Canoe Co., arrived, and, two weeks later, departed, leaving us a 20 foot cedar and canvas, green painted canoe with a mahogany transom, seats for the seven of us, and (hopefully) enough room to carry all our gear as we paddle from our doorstep (not quite literally) here at the Vermont Leadership Center, up the Clyde river to the pond of Island Pond, then, after a short portage, we drop our yet un-named boat into the Nulhegan and continue our journey east and south to the Connecticut. Anyway, the canoe is done and is stunning to behold. Rollin devoted so much time, energy and love to the construction of our craft that it was nearly impossible for us all to be anything but thrilled with spending a good piece of each day in Bill Manning's wood shop with Rollin and our canoe.

While we ponder and weigh and invent choices for the name of our boat, we have again settled into a daily routine consisting of wakeup, chores, breakfast, and morning meeting, sometimes spiced up with a jog down the road instead of chores. With one week remaining before we set out on the river, we have immersed ourselves in a rotation of pounding Brown Ash logs with wooden mallets to separate the wood into strips along the growth rings, then cutting those wide, uneven strips into one or half-inch strips in preparation for weaving them into pack-baskets to carry our gear during the next month. Our other big, all-consuming project is our plan to turn a big roll of 6.3 oz. light green canvas into another tent to sleep half the group on the river. This new tent will be smaller, easier to fit between trees along the river, will be mostly waterproof, will have screens to keep insects out, and a floor to keep water out (or in, depending on how well our design works). This time we are not under the watchful eye of tent builder Peter Marques, but thus far our design seems like a good one, and although we are slightly behind schedule, we are committed to constructing a shelter for ourselves and we will prevail with a structure we love and that will serve us well.

Somehow in our schedule we find time to experience things not directly connected to preparing for our trip: we took a day-long food-finding field trip to the Cabot Cheese plant where we got a tour and lots of samples, and enough cheese and butter to last us most of the way down the river (100 pounds of cheese). From Cabot we went to Surfing Veggie organic farm where we dug carrots and picked up a bunch of dang good veggies from Louie, the owner of Surfing V. We then drove to Butterworks Farm to pick up black beans, whole wheat berries, fresh milled whole wheat flour (we watched 100 pounds of organically grown wheat berries turn into 100 pounds of organically grown whole wheat flour), 5 gallons of milk, and a bunch of yogurt and buttermilk. Em was craving yogurt the entire winter part of the expedition, and now we are making our own with milk given to us by cows that we saw, connected to, and that we know are happy cows. We have happy milk.

Our other non-preparation oriented opportunities have included a visit from Roger Haydock, a Dummerston- based geologist, Greg Sharow from the Vermont Folklife Center and Gert, a 70 year old woman dairy farmer from Mud City who, with boundless energy, told us a little about her profound and inspiring life.

One of the VLC staff members, Ross Stevens spoke to us about the Northeast Kingdom in which we are spending this month. He spoke about economic, social, cultural, ecological, and historical aspects of the area, and also shared tips about the water we would be paddling between here and the upper Connecticut. We spent a morning with Brian Lapierre, an Abenaki educator and traditional medicine specialist in his teepee and helping him to prepare a garden. He will meet up with us on the river to do a more in depth lesson on medicinal plants and natural remedies.

One last thing that should be mentioned is that yesterday we had our most formal presentation to date. It consisted of a slide show of our experiences this winter, a display of many of the items we made (knives, Main Lesson Pages, wooden spoons and bowls, our canoe and a paddle, and the yet to be completed pack baskets).

This weekend, when some parents come to visit us before we head out on the river at the end of next week, we hope to also show to them what we have learned, what we are learning, and try to somehow articulate what this experience means to us and how we have changed over the past four months. It's not an easy thing to put into words, other than, as Saul said during the slide show, through small examples like the profound waste of flush toilets versus composting our "secondary products," and our heightened respect for even the smallest crumb of food. Such examples, while true, cannot come close to encompassing the sweeping, mountainous, yet geologically slow changes that are taking place within each of us and the group as an organism. Each day we change. Each day we grow. Each day we move towards becoming the best possible humans that we can be.

Only then do we truly live.

For the Vermont Semester Program,
Evan Griffith