Kroka Ecuador Semester 2015: Blog #3: Build that Barn!

Mercedes loving the wilderness classroom at Zoar Gap

Though adventures take hours like eagles take site,

Academics appear left and right,

New England timelines with skits to perform,

Ripping through a poem’s skin, counting every grain of corn.

Restless we may be it seems,

For backpacks need completed seams.

We work into chapters of the night,

Hannah’s birthday cake quenches quite.

We wake to greet history,

Of lakes, rivers, ponds and streams.

In inflatable vessels we glide across,

The Connecticut River, in gnus we waft

The air is thick with sewage fair,

For from a plant it drains right there,

What goes through toilets travels here,

Is chlorinated, shifted, and smeared.

We see faces carved in native rock,

Long before the dam or lock.

We welcome Lexington eighth graders,

Teaching them our ways and, later,

Ice cream in our watering mouths,

Liquid dairy sugar shouts.

And so begins adventure two,

Deerfield Expedition Gnu (an inflatable white water vessel)!

Pumpkin pie to start our ride

Connecticut River study guide.

There is no hesitation at all,

Straight to the rapids, ready for fall.

Catching eddies and surfing too,

Nothing forgiving as a gnu.

Flipping will happen: it can’t be uprooted,

If you think otherwise Misha will prove it.

Stopping, devouring bagels on land,

Eating whatever we drop on the sand,

Swallowing grapes that grow along the way,

To relieve the adrenalin of Zor Gap’s blaze (big white water rapids).

The current that’s sucking us in like a hose,

Must mean above water we keep our toes and nose.

We walk to our camp and Misha makes soup,

The sweetest soup you ever could scoop.

Our semester prepares for presentations,

A Connecticut River knowledge compilation.

Sleeping on the forest floor,

Without a tarp, for rain no more.

Joined by Pasha in the night,

The paddler artist to protect us from fright.

For SAL the sea monster rules the waters,

Abide by her rules or you will flip over.

Speed, angle, lean and hope that you’re clean,

Before you reach a rapid class three.

Zoar Gap may have been a success,

But now we turn back to flip on purpose,

Four rescuers save the poor paddlers,

Before they get bruised on the rocks where it’s faster.

We reach the van and begin on home,

But soon the drips of oil roam,

So we must drive as slow we can,

Until we reach Bellows Falls in our van.

There we are dropped to look through a tunnel,

But culture shock sucks us into the funnel.

Though nothing shocks us quite as much,

As scoop shop ice cream for the bunch.

“Ice cream this late in the season and evening,

is proof of climate change.” ~Misha’s revealing.

And again upon arrival it seems,

We’ve been gone much longer than just one evening.

The skits are now ready to perform,

humble scribe thanks parents for their kids being born.

Not a soul here on semester could deny,

Theatric abilities and wisdom inside.

Merrin, the dramatic reader of hunters,

Declan makes the perfect grandmother,

The Isiah Davis shouts in the forest,

Mercedes and Emily reading their chorus.

Hannah’s folks we love you so,

For the cake that you brought us with frosting aglow.

The community gathers to witness slide shows,

Of adventures in New Finland, Ecuador, and, Oh!

Inspiring eyes of semester students,

Cotopaxi seeming so close we can touch it.

A day of rest to manifest

Preparation of Solo flesh,

With lack of dinner in our stomachs,

The deep of the forest touches our buttocks.

We sit as solitary dreamers,

While some are visited by beavers.

Others watch the sky that pass,

From treetops or fallen leaves and grass.

Coyotes are wailing in the night,

Without our headlamps, the stars light our sight.

Now begins a week of structure,

When it ends we will be elsewhere,

South of here to be precise.

So we try to speak Spanish most of the time.

And start construction on the sides of the barn,

Our semester’s tattoo on the Kroka farm.

Power tools spin with noise,

Gouges and chisels, sawing of joys.

We prepare for Parent’s Weekend,

When such surprises await, you’d better attend.

“To laugh is to risk appearing the fool,

to weep is to risk appearing sentimental,

to reach out for another is to risk involvement,

to expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self,

to place your ideas, your dreams before groups is to risk their loss,

to love is to risk not being loved in return,

to live is to risk dying,

to hope is to risk despair,

to try is to risk failure,

but risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live. Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave, he has forfeited freedom.

Only a person who risks is free.”

~Seneca (nobody knows my name)