Week of February 15

It has been such a long and exciting week and I've done some of the best activities yet! On Wednesday, my work program was spinning wool and it was so cool! I learned really quickly and got to help teach the other students. It's so cool to see the entire process of how things are made. I've seen sheep being sheared, I've skirted wool (cleaned it), pulled wool, spun wool, and knit. The only things I haven't done are washing it and carding it. It's truly amazing to know exactly what went into a final product and it's rarely thought about outside of Chewonki. Here, all processes are questioned, whether its our food production, different forest growth patterns, or specific products (like a hat).
This week I also completed one of my goals - I got to use a chainsaw! It was as amazing as I thought. At first I was a little nervous because of the precautions I had to take, but as soon as I started, I realized it wasn't too difficult to stay safe and in control. That's another process that we get to see here. We see the trees being felled, help pull them out of the woods with horses, cut them with chainsaws, split it with axes, then burn it in our woodstoves.
Then, Friday we played capture the flag with no limits! Chewonki is on a peninsula of 400 acres, and the only boundary was the trail between the two sides. Two of my friends and I were decoys so we ran screaming through the woods. It was really exhilarating to realize how little of the area I had discovered, but knowing that no matter where I ended up, I would still be able to find my way back to campus. In the end, neither team won but it was still an unbelievably fun game and I think we are planning on playing an afternoon long game again soon.
Finally, Sunday I woke up at 4:50 in the morning, had breakfast then we drove to Saddleback Mountain to go skiing! In the morning I skied lots of blues with my friends. We are all experienced skiers so we got to go really fast. It was a beautiful day and I expected it to be super icy because we haven't gotten much snow here, but there was surprisingly a lot of powder. Lunch was fun to hang out with everyone and hear about what runs they did. After, there was a big group of us that were going to do a long run, but we were all at very different levels so we got separated. I ended up completing the run with a friend who I hadn't gotten to spend much time with, and she is an intermediate snowboarder so I got to spend time going on very controlled runs with her. We had a long bus ride back to Chewonki and the whole day left me exhausted, yet it was an amazing end to the week!