Day One at Cardigan

By Angelo.C

September 25 2022

On day one when our bus arrived at the Cardigan base lodge for our field trip my friends and I were amazed by what we were seeing and I could feel the excitement for how cool of a trip this was going to be. Getting off the bus we were greeted by Mr. Woolner who took attendance and excitedly led us around the grounds to play get to know each other games like YeeHaw and others. Then we went into the dining hall where we had a quick briefing about how things work at the AMC Lodge by counselors Shawn, Heidi, Max, and my AMC Guide Erin and learned who would be in our hiking groups. Next our hiking group went into the library for another briefing where Erin and our group talked about our goals and what the small groups were for. After this it was finally time to go on our orienteering and nature hikes! While orienteering we practiced using our compasses to find headings and our GPS units to mark way points of latitude, longitude, and elevations to find things on a sort of scavenger hunt of natural and man made features. After the orienteering, as it started to rain, we went on a nature hike where I think Erin was evaluating what kind of hikers we were. When we got back to the lodge, wet and cold, we debriefed and got settled into our cozy rooms. It was now time to eat a dinner of pasta, salad, and brownies. Once dinner was over we had a bit more free time and did an outdoor activity called "Our Eyes in the Dark." To wrap up the evening Mr. Woolner gathered us for storytime at the fire before we went to bed. As I went to sleep I reflected on our day and realized how exciting it was to be in this space with so many good people around me.

Movement We moved from Hopkinton to Cardigan and took the gps units with us along with the idea of sketching.The garmin gps's probably come from kanses.The idea of sketching came from my mom who learned it in Derry.On our trip we learned that one of our guides was going to move to Boston and be a Geographer. One time Mr. Woolner saw a Cool bird migrating.While I was there I learned how to use splotches of ink to sketch a decomposing leaf.