36 Hours at Chewonki

During lunch announcements on Friday, Ted stood up and gave an amazing speech to prepare us all for what we would encounter during our outdoor activity program (OAP) that day. He told us to gather on the tennis courts at four ready to play some dodge ball. From this point on, my mind was filled with my excitement to dodge, dip, duck, dive, and dodge for an hour straight. When it was finally four, everyone began to show up at the courts. We all found a partner of equal skill and playing ability and separated out into two teams. Because of this, the teams were pretty even, even though in the beginning one of them had Cory, Ted, and Ben (the three adult male dodgeball veterans). In the end, my team very narrowly won when it came down to a one on one battle between Collin and Nick in game 5. Luckily, the games ended with a minimal amount of tears and very tired arms,

That evening we had round table meetings with college counselors from schools across the country, which many people found to be very helpful, but I also know that many of the students (including myself) here had already had a similar experience at their schools back home. In my opinion, the individual meetings that we had the next day were much more helpful because I was able to look at a broad list of colleges that my counselor believed I might like.

Another thing that took place was the sustainability conference yesterday over in the Center for Environmental Education. Unfortunately I was working in the morning, so I could not go over and hear the keynote speaker nor participate in any of the workshops. However, in the afternoon I walked over to the parking lot and drove an electric car down Chewonki Neck Road. It was amazing how quiet the car was, and I also found out that the brakes were very responsive when Grady made me slam on them in order to let him out to chase a pack of wild turkeys. It was also probably good that I looked at our battery level and realized that it was time to turn around because if I had not, we would not have been able to reach the high speed of 14 mph while going up a hill, much to the dismay of the truck behind us. Overall, I think it’s pretty sweet that we can run cars off of batteries; it’s just too bad that most of them cannot go fast enough to be a reasonable method of transportation.

When I think about how many cool and interesting things that I did in just 36 hours of my time at Chewonki, I realize just how lucky I am to be here.

-Danny Forrester, Washington, DC