Greetings, friends and families! We’ve got news from 2017 and exciting ideas for 2018. Wishing you all health, and some time outside feeling gratitude for “the all and the everything.”
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Koviashuvik 10 Year Anniversary!
It all began one spring: a young couple with a new baby, standing on the edge of a swollen river speaking a ceremony of intent….A decade later Koviashuvik is ten years old! Since its inception, this school and its land have felt the footsteps of hundreds of school kids experiencing the gifts of the earth. The school has cradled sleeping families, welcomed apprentices for months and seasons, and given many a student a happy day gathering wild food, carving a spoon or weaving a basket, learning to plant a garden, or identify the trees. And, somewhere along the way, each of these “wilderness experiences” has popped up again in everyday life. People go home and make a dandelion salad for lunch, carry school books in a packbasket, create a compost pile, heal a cold with tea from the white pine, or serve up soup with a hand-made spoon. These old skills support physical needs and feed folks' spirits. We are so grateful for having found this path to walk down…
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The 3-day Immersion for Schools: Educating for Confidence, Gratitude, and Friendship
Koviashuvik’s 3-day School Immersion is gaining momentum. A New Jersey homeschooling group came for a visit last November, and The School Around Us from Arundel, Maine came in early February. We are hoping to work with more schools and/or groups in the coming year. Working with young people over the course of a three-day overnight is a powerful opportunity for conveying some specific life lessons:
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Confidence through competence, 3-Day Immersion for Schools: A young girl’s face twists in concentration as she focuses on the chopping block. She swings… whack! The wood blows apart! She smiles but does not look around for congratulations. Instead, she looks eagerly for the next piece of wood! There is a hunger inside her, inside all kids, to enact real physical change in the world. Competence inspires confidence and supports the statement “I can!”
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Gratitude through necessity, 3-day Immersion for Schools: (Picture credit to Nicole Bianchi!) We meet in the classroom at 6:45 on a winter morning. Outside, daylight is only just coming. Inside, in the big cook-stove, the fire gently roars. Kids grab a slice of apple and split into groups for their chosen chores. Soon pieces of firewood are being carried through the door and stacked in the wood-box, a bushel of apples comes back from the root-cellar and a team of choppers begins making applesauce, then the water jugs appear full of cold spring water, while outside, through the window, some kids can be seen dragging a load of hemlock boughs to the goats… At 7:45 we circle up for breakfast. It is a good meal to be sure, acorn pancakes, home-made syrup, fresh applesauce, yogurt… but it is much more: it is a celebration of the gifts of the earth and an experience of gratitude.
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Friendship through experiences, 3-Day Immersion for Schools: (Picture credit to Nicole Bianchi!) Day one of our time together finds us needing a floor for the earth lodge; we must go out and meet our friends, fir, spruce and hemlock! We get to know them, learn that fir boughs make the best floor, say thanks, and do some harvesting. Later that night, kids lie down on a sweet smelling bed of balsam. One boy says he feels like the earth is supporting him and wrapping a blanket around him. “Sounds like you made a friend,” I say. In the same way, through daily work, the kids support each other, and friendships form in the human realm.
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Camp Koviashuvik!
After years of offering summer camps through other organizations, we are excited to be offering Koviashuvik’s own first sleepover camp! The week will take kids ages 10-13 through a journey of earth connection: making shelters, drinking from hidden springs, carving bows and arrows, bowls and spoons, baking acorn bread, finding the North Star…. We will sleep in our earth-lodge for the first several nights, then take off on foot to live as wild children, wandering the nearby mountains and streams, gathering food and making fire from friction. Our intent is for this experience to be available to kids regardless of income, and we are starting a scholarship fund to help make this possible.
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Donate to the Camp Scholarship Fund: Donations go directly toward Camp Koviashuvik tuition. $275 will cover half the cost of a camper's program, leaving his or her family covering the remainder of this high-quality week of wilderness education for just the price of a basic day camp! Any amount, even $5, will add up to a savings for those families who need financial assistance. Please, if you can, give the gifts of confidence, gratitude and friendship that this program offers. (Checks should be made out to Koviashuvik with the memo "camp scholarship." Mailing address: 71 Lake Drive, Temple Maine, 04984. We are not a nonprofit, so donations are not tax deductible.)
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The Family Sustainability Stay: four-season date offerings!
The Family Stay continues to be one of Koviashuvik’s most popular programs. Sharing the homestead, cooking great food outside, learning new skills…and, in those odd moments when the kids are busy shooting bows and arrows or petting the baby goats, the adults can connect as parents, swapping stories of laughter and struggle. New in 2018!: We are opening the door to fall-through-spring Family Stays, in addition to our scheduled summer dates. Chances are there will be less plums and blueberries to indulge in during November, but venison cooked in the backcountry while snow drifts down is special, too. Just inquire about the time in which you are interested and we can go from there. Also in 2018, we encourage families to attend together. A Combined Family Stay is a great way to vacation with friends, and means a savings of $200 per family.
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Koviashuvik Apprenticeship Reenacted!
After a two-year hiatus, during which we were focused on several key infrastructure projects, we are again seeking long- term experiential learners to come live and work with us. “Welcome to the Koviashuvik Apprenticeship! If you are hungering to be in a place where people live what they teach, a place rich in traditional skills yet unafraid to try new ideas, a place where the surrounding land provides the food, the buildings and the fuel, where gardening, wild gathering, handcraft, primitive skills, and appropriate technologies all come together to support daily life… If you want to be a part of this place, this apprenticeship is for you…”
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Other News
Jack Mountain: Last fall we connected with the Jack Mountain Bush-craft school in Masardis, Maine, working on tool sharpening and acorn processing with the school’s semester students. We look forward to future connections between our schools; keep your eyes open for a collaborative snowshoe lacing workshop in January of 2019!
Kroka Expedition’s Winter Semester: Chris continues to join Kroka Winter Semester students for two weeks of bush skills, meteorology, forest ecology and all-around winter rapture. The same students will be coming to Koviashuvik for a two-week crafting and homesteading block in April.
Grandfather Ray Reitze: Master Guide and wise teacher Grandfather Ray continues to play a role in our lives. He helped install windows and nail boards on the new house and we hired him to teach with us for the Three-day School Immersion. We look forward to many more years. In gratitude…….
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Big Thanks!
We’ll say that again: Big thanks! to those who made our home-rebuilding possible, to so many who put aside their own projects to give us days here and there, and to Grant Hawkes and Oliver Mednic who gave several weeks of their time and work for measly pay! We could not have done it without all of you! The house is shining with all your good energies.
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Family News:
After 8 months of overtime, the Knapp family has moved into its new mansion. From 250sq.ft. to 500sq.ft.! The tiny house movement is great, but where do you put the 400lbs of winter squash, onions and garlic that can’t be stored in a root cellar, not to mention those five defunct computers that your son is determined to dismantle? Ashirah continues to work “out of the homestead” doing elder-care, and this tax season she is full time in a CPA office. Owen had a great winter with the Farmington Nordic Ski Team, is lovingly memorizing the sound-tract to “Hamilton,” and is treating us to it continuously! Bonnie Bee is struggling with her respiratory health, about which we are learning a great deal with the help of specialists and modern medicine. We hope to have her feeling better eventually. Meanwhile, she is a bright and beautiful kid who is incredibly insightful and empathetic. Per Bonnie Bee’s interest, our quest for an indoor pet that does not aggravate her brother’s asthma has resulted in a beautiful corn snake, “Ember,” coming home to live with us a few weeks ago. We are enjoying learning about a new species and expanding the boundaries of previous comfort zones! Chris is excited to be homestead-dad and teacher and still learning.
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