NHVSP 2010 Update 13

            Dear Readers,

            Since I wrote you last our group has been hard at work building a lodge.  A lodge is a traditional Cree building made of many small poles in a basic cone shape with sod on top.  We began on May 19th.  Ken Gagnon has come to help us with the construction and Hugh Landis is here as well to aid in the making of the door, window and skylight frames.  Ken sat down with us and looked at the lodge that had already been built—he believes that if someone has found a good way to do something, you should consider following in their footsteps.  We all gathered in the little building and looked around.  There was a short talk about why we were building the lodge and what it meant to us as a group.  Ken made it clear that this was entirely our project, a test of sorts, to see how well we could work together, and that he was there to answer questions mainly.  Slowly we gathered our thoughts and figured out from what we could see of the old lodge what we would need to get and do first in order to start work on the new one.  We will attempt to finish as much as possible in ten days.

            Several people measured the old lodge and designed a basic plan for ours that kept the original shape of the lodge.  We planned to make it more spacious by changing the doorway and to provide more light by having a larger skylight and by facing the window toward the northeast.  We needed to dig a foundation, as the lodge might otherwise sink and rot as time wore on, so we dug a trench and built it up with rocks and gravel, propping the poles up on rocks to keep them steady.  

The lodge coming to life

We needed to peel all of the poles we had collected at the beginning (about 240; we might have to cut more).  We needed also to collect and peel about 400 feet of young sapling trees, which later were lashed to some of the poles in a ring to keep the structure from twisting and warping.  The first to go up were the six support poles: long, thick poles with strong branches to cradle the short ridgepole.  We lashed them into place and kept adding on to this skeleton as we went.  The foundation had to be fixed several times and added to so that the poles would be on rocks and above ground level.  A couple of us worked with Hugh on the door and window frames and the rest peeled poles and saplings and lashed them in to the frame.  

          Lashing turned out to be a job requiring many people, specially for the sapling rings--we had to feed them in one at a time to create an even circle.  In the meantime we turned towards digging sod, so that when the time comes we can layer it on top of the poles. 

              While this was all going on, Misha came to tell us that he had a few suggestions as to how to make the lodge better suited to Kroka’s needs.  We discussed all of the things he said and decided what to change; the frames for the door and window have been altered and the foundation worked on.  We put in the chimney flange yesterday, along with many more poles.  Sod digging progresses, although we are not sure how much of it we will need despite the math-lovers in our group discussing at length the formula best used to figure out the surface area of our not quite cone shaped building.  All in all, the lodge is coming together nicely though there is still a fair amount of work to do.  

It has occupied most of our time but we have also been wrapping up academic work that will go into the Semester Book for each of us to take home.  The weather has been absolutely glorious.  Save for one day at the beginning, we have had nothing but sun and warm wind, which means that we have been making regular trips to Gustin Pond and spending as little time indoors as possible. 

            Until the next time,    Anna Soltys Morse

 Frame, window and door are all in place; all we need is more poles!

NHVSP 2010 Update 12

        

Congratulations NHVSP 2010! Back at base camp after the three and a half month long journey by ski and canoe.

Hello,

          It is May 18^th and we arrived back at Kroka base camp two days ago, having left it on the second of February.  Life is good here.  Everything is beautiful and well taken care of, and as we came in a smiling Lisl greeted us.  But before all of that, I will go back to the beginning of our spring expedition.  It was different from the winter expedition, naturally, but also shorter and easier—a good demonstration of why people would always choose to transport things on the waterways before they had cars and trains.  At any rate we enjoyed it immensely. 

            On April 24^th we left Northwoods.  Down at the river we met Kevin Slater, who runs Mahoosuc Guide Service in Newry, Maine.  It was sunny and warm all day.  We readied our canoes and started up the Clyde River, poling and paddling and occasionally taking the wrong route and going back.  Our first camp was mossy and green, with cedar trees all around.  It was surprising how quickly camp could be set up when we were using only the tarps and “spunhungan” for cooking.  We also dug a group latrine at every camp and they got more and more elaborate and creative as the days went by, thanks to Martin, our Hygiene Manager.  He made a rating system based on comfort, privacy, view, and environmental responsibility and we had a lot of fun with it.  Every day Melody would unpack the wanagan (a wooden box for carrying gear) containing our kitchen gear and repack it the next morning as we left.  Camp set up was finished before the sun was down most days, so we had time to learn from Nate and time to sit around the campfire.  Kevin, it turned out, has a great sense of humor and a number of stories to tell, so we were well entertained in the evenings. 

We ran into a little trouble portaging from the Clyde to the Nullhegan, which is part of a different watershed and on which we traveled downstream.  We ended up taking a long time because we were looking for a road that had long since become overgrown—we eventually bushwhacked through.  On the Nullhegan we encountered a large number of beaver dams, shallow muddy patches, oxbow lakes, and LWSs, a term  Ari discovered in his research as water manager. It stands for Large Wooden Debris and is the term hydrologists use to describe floating logs.  Ari cheerfully said that it seemed like everything that is healthy for a river is bad for canoeists, because the debris, swampy areas and sharp bends create protection from the elements, habitats for the wildlife, and keep the river cleaner, but they make it a lot more difficult for boats to get through.  The Clyde and the Nullhegan are both very healthy rivers, which was the good and the bad news.

            As we moved down toward the Connecticut a few rocks here and there, along with some shallow areas necessitated that we line the canoes down instead of paddling.  This we did, but due to the rain and the fact that we were inexperienced we all were wet by the end of the day.  It started to turn cold and just as we got out of the water to start our portage around a gorge and to camp for the afternoon it began to snow.  This continued as we carried the gear and set up camp.  Scott and Erica started a fire and everyone helped each other find and put on dry clothes. That evening Kevin left us, wishing us luck and leaving us his tarp, lining ropes, and an extra layer or two.  Lisl and Lily came with food, milk and mail, and Lily stayed on as our guest teacher.  After an intense day it was a wonderful treat.  Yarrow left us to go back to base camp and reflect on the struggles he had been having within the group, and later, after being at base camp for a week or so he decided it was time for him to go home.  We were sorry to see him go but were glad he was able to do what he felt was right.  He came to visit and say goodbye to us later on the Connecticut.

            The next day it was still snowing when we woke up so we decided to portage the gear to the Connecticut, which was a few kilometers downstream. It went past a shallow, quick moving part of the Nullhegan and we were afraid we might have to line down if we attempted it with fully loaded boats.  The long portage took us most of the day. At the end of the day we got our food resupply at the Bloomfield general store, where the owners had kindly stored our food for a week.  We warmed up while eating pizza at the store before continuing a little way down the Connecticut.  The snow continued the day after that but with sporadic gusts of strong wind and odd patches of sunshine as well.  Eventually it cleared up a bit and we had a liveover (a day during which we do not move camp) on May Day.  We worked more on the hides we had begun tanning for moccasins and learned some basic botany from Nate. With Anne’s help we drew a lot of the plants we learned about.  On the river, collecting wild edibles was a daily job: some of the plants we ate were wild oats, fiddleheads, trout lilies, sedum, Driad’s saddle mushrooms, Japanese knotweed, young beech and basswood leaves, groundnuts, dandelions, and stinging nettles.

             Once the more clement weather moved in we had a couple of days of paddling on the slow, flat Connecticut, with a few short portages here and there.  We could relax a little and dry out our wet clothing.  Sometimes Mistral read to us from the Connecticut River guidebook some of the odder passages, mostly meant for tourists, that were amusing because of the flowery descriptions of our surroundings.  Our next challenge was a small group solo, followed by a full group solo, during which we paddled past and visited farms along the way; we could not pass up the opportunity for fresh and local dairy, jam, and honey.  We had breakfast on the floor of the farm store at Robie Farm when we went to visit and get milk because they generously offered us a place to eat out of the rain.  Thanks to Melody, who kept track of the group money and Eliot, our Farm Food Guy, these visits went off without a hitch.  Eventually we joined up with the teachers again and floated on downstream, and sadly after that Lily had to leave us.  Lisl came to stay with us, and the next day we met Ken Alton at the Wilder Dam.  He explained to us a little about the dams along the Connecticut, how they worked and what legislation is affecting their output and their construction at the moment.  He said that he thought renewable energy sources would be great to have in the future but that more innovation is needed because none of them (solar, wind, or hydro) are entirely reliable or controllable all of the time.  He thought that we could either find some sort of base line power to back them up, or we could get used to not having power some of the time—fascinating, coming from a man who works for a power company.

            We moved along until we came to Sumner Falls, around which we portaged our gear.  Sumner Falls is a substantial rapid, and we waited for Misha to come with white water gear to paddle it.  He arrived the next morning, bringing wet suits (lucky, as it had gotten cold and rainy again), helmets, flotations and white water canoes.  Though it was a gray day we had a great time in the water, learning more about paddling and some of us even ran the rapids twice—we ended the day in high spirits.  Thank you Misha for taking your Saturday to teach us on the river. Onward we went, now with Polly Mahoney, Kevin’s partner as our guide.  We stopped by the Garden of Life, a large outdoor garden with the different stages of life each represented by an artistic exhibit.  Around this time we realized that in the confusion of all of our portaging and breaking down of camps we had lost some of our buckets containing food (one of them was half full of sauerkraut) as well as some other pieces of gear.  This posed a problem, as we realized we did not have many vegetables anymore and there was no way to go back for the stuff we had left, though we were pretty sure we knew where it was (we did go back for it once we had returned to base camp and managed to recover it).  Kendra dealt with the constant shifts in her planned menu very gracefully.  So we resolved to be much more careful when we left from a camp or a portage and to pick more wild edibles to make up for the lack of greens.

            Polly helped us deal with the miniature grain overload crisis by teaching whoever was inspired to learn how to bake properly in the Dutch oven we had brought with us.  Until she came we had been burning all of our baked goods, but with her many years of experience we were able to turn out some really excellent apple and Japanese knotwood pies and crumbles.  She also brought with her animal tarot cards that we all picked from and then read about; a lot of them fit quite well.  One morning while she was with us we woke up early while it was still dark, broke down camp and floated down a few kilometers.  We ate breakfast in a field and walked up to meet Roger Haydock, from Brattleboro Vermont, at the trailhead of Mt. Ascutney.  Roger turned out to be a charismatic geologist with a young spirit. As we hiked up to Cascade Falls, Roger taught us about the rocks and the history of Mt. Ascutney and how that affected the plant life and forest on the mountain.  Apparently it was formed when a volcanic eruption happened under some bedrock, formed originally out of slabs of mud where Brazil is now, which had previously had several micro-continental collisions. Today it is standing alone not far from another mountain formed the same way, Mt. Monadnock.  While we hiked, the changes in the forest became apparent and Roger told about the species of trees that indicate rich or poor soil, which is in turn an indication of the type of rock underneath it.  He was engaging and dramatic and our group really took a liking to him—it was a great day.

            Further on down the river we had another liveover and Nate showed us how to put together and use bowdrills to make fires without using matches; some of us made our first bowdrill fires, including Erica and Oliver.  

We also sewed hides together in preparation for smoking them.  On a sunny morning we began our portage around Bellows Falls.  This was the longest portage we had done, so it was a practice run for the end of the trip.  Polly helped us organize and it worked pretty well.  At this point we had been discussing for a while whether we should carry our own canoes or send them back on a trailer, and after that portage we were mostly in agreement that we should carry them.  We were not sure how long we would be able to line them up the Cold River, with the water being so low this year, but we started up it anyway.  Thankfully it stayed sunny and warm for the most part during the couple of days we were lining the boats.  After saying goodbye to Polly we were on our own for the first time on the trip, with just Nate and Anne with us for the last push to Kroka. 

We were able to line up the Cold all the way to Alstead.  Sometimes it was slow, but some enjoyed it—Paul especially; he lined a canoe by himself most of the time.  From there we had to portage about seven kilometers to Lake Warren, where we stayed that night.  We did it in two trips; the gear went first and one canoe, then the rest of the canoes went, with people leading them, two to a boat for the most part.  Iyla carried the kitchen wanagan almost by herself the whole way. It was a difficult day, but everyone was in high spirits.  A lot of people stopped to check on us on this day:  Misha, Lisl, Tom (a Vermont semester alumnus), Ari’s sister Leah, and Paul’s family.  People stopped along the road to ask us if we needed help and everyone was very friendly.  We got to camp as the sun was going down, paddling to the island we were staying at in semi-darkness.  It was quiet and very, very pretty with only a few lights from the houses and the stars shining above.  It was warm.  We made camp and talked for a while about the trip and our goals, and then collapsed into our sleeping bags. 

            The next day we made it to base camp!  Our last day on the trail was a beautiful spring day (the weather finally was cooperating with us) and the portage was a relatively short one.  When we got up the last hill and were able to see the farmhouse we realized we were actually almost done.  Lisl greeted us with chocolate and as we circled up after the second trip, which brought our canoes back to base camp, there seemed to be a tired but contented feeling in the group, and a little bit of surprise that we had actually made it back to where we had started.  We are happy and are relishing these last weeks together as we start to clean up and get ready to build our lodge.  Thank you to everyone who helped us on our way. We have met some amazing people along the way, on and off the trail.  It’s great to be here.

-Anna Soltys Morse