Day One

On day one everybody woke up early and drove over to the school, where we dropped off our bags and departed on a two hour ride to Cardigan Mountain via school bus. When we got there, we were instructed to put our bags in our bunk rooms in the AMC Lodge and head outside to the yard, where we played games and were divided into our hiking groups. My group's educator was Laura, who told us we were going on a nature hike. At the time, the landscape was smothered with the flaming colors of autumn, all around us, reds, yellows, oranges, and faded greens painted the fluttering leaves holding on for dear life to the branches they grew on. As we trampled along the path, scattering the woodland creatures with the loud crunching of leaves underneath our heavy hiking boots. A couple of minutes of hiking later, we arrived at an old bridge looming over a large stream, that ran smoothly through the forest. The river looked as though, despite the bridge, was untouched by human hands. Laura instructed us to put down our heavy hiking bags and explore the stream for a few minutes before coming back to sketch what we had found. I started up the river, hopping and clambering from rock to rock, every so often overturning a rock to look for any type of creature that could be living there. Finally, I had reached the bank, I stepped onto the mushy shore, my boots sinking into the marshy soil. I bent over and overturned a large rock, to my surprise, seeing what appeared to be the tail of some kind of orangey-red snake. I screamed and leapt backwards, the rock clattering back into position. The person closest to me, which was Amelia, struggled to my side and spoke.