Yesterday, a warm and rainy Thursday afternoon, was my first ever off-campus field lab of the semester! Right after lunch my group piled together into two vans and played music, sang, and drew smiley faces on the foggy windows all the way to Morse Mountain. When we arrived at our destination, it was windy and cold, but we all smiled and sang our favorite Taylor Swift songs as we started our hike. Halfway to the summit, someone spotted an American Red Squirrel, one of the species we had been studying in our Science classes. It was so exciting for all of us to see and identify one that was right in front of us.

When we got to the summit, the wind had started to pick up, and the whole group was amazed by the breathtaking view in front of us, of oxbows and the beach in the distance, and birds flying overhead. Lucy taught us the history of the ice sheet that once covered Maine, that melted to give the coast its shape. We drew sitemaps  of the view, and our teachers surprised us and told us there was time to go to Seawall Beach by the bottom of the mountain! The path down was snowy, but Dani and I kept singing and telling stories as we sloshed through the snow. The fog floating around the forest made us feel like we were in a fairy tale. 

The foggy beach was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. We couldn’t see far in front of us, but the air was fresh and the waves were crashing on the shore, all of us running to the water. I can’t remember ever seeing such a big group of people in which every single person had such a big smile on their face, especially when Meghan brought out the Blueberry Buckle(cake) that was left over from breakfast. After exploring the beach, each of us went on our own for a few minutes, finding individual species to draw in our yellow field journals (which are luckily waterproof!). 

When it started to get dusky, we hiked back to the vans, where we warmed up on the ride back, and turned up the music and sang. As soon as we got back, I remember making a piece of toast with Phoebe, having warm soup for dinner, studying, and finally falling asleep later that night after such a fun and fulfilling day of being out in nature with my friends, and learning so many new things about the land that was around me. 

Maddie Weinstein, Princeton Day School, Hopewell, NJ