Day 279

Low tide.

I wake to rain pelting down on the world.  I eat, grab my pack and leave in fairly good time, but of course everyone had the same idea today and the roads are jammed with shiny chrome and lights on wet wheels.  At the allotted time I am supposed to be sitting on the bus, I am still probably 15 minutes away, so get on the phone to the principal who panics a bit because of all the parents waiting in the rain to wave goodbye to their children.  We decide that I will go back up route 93 and find a big parking lot where the bus can pick me up and turn around, and she will jump on the bus and then drive my car back to school!

Chewonki is about three and a half hours away, where kids have to turn in their cellphones, etc. and really BE in the bush for three days, well, two and a half.  But it is raining when we arrive, drizzling on our mile-long walk to the campsite shouldering our heavy packs, and pouring down lavish buckets of water while we put up the tents, so that when we put down our little sleeping mats, they are just about floating on the water collected in the bottom of the tent!  

I am miserable.  I can deal with rain as infrequent showers, but if it goes on for days my psyche starts drowning in it.  As an older person I also am not fond of being wet and cold for long periods of time.  Plus the fact that I have no waterproof clothing, so had to borrow Tim's, which make me look a bit like the Michelin Man, and this sort of poor self-image also doesn't go far towards raising your spirits.

The children are really wonderful though, they jolly themselves through it all, and although some tents and sleeping bags are soaked, they manage to share blankets and clothes and whatnot, amazing!  I wake up just before dawn with a massive headache, and manage to go and perform my ablutions in the nearly-light forest just before everyone else wakes up. 

There are no pictures of this day, I have no rain-gear for the camera.  This one is from an animal studies class on Thursday afternoon.  The fascination of skulls.

What I remember most about this day is wet children and trying so hard to make a fire with my crew of three, who I instruct to make up a fire-song-and-dance to attract fire, like a rain-dance?  They willingly oblige, under the dripping tarp, so that as I try to get a spark to grow under the wet twigs and small pieces of wood we have gathered, I am accompanied by a kind of rap song encouraging the fire to grow, grow grow!  They are so excited when their song takes power as the fire flickers on to the larger pieces on the fifth try!

On the last day we all sit around and have to think of something we loved or something we learned while we were here.  Also one thing we learned about ourselves.  One kid mentions making the fire with me as the high point of his stay at Chewonki!