Dear Boundless Families:
The poets Woodsworth and Emmerson couldn’t begin to describe how gorgeous it is up here, this Thursday morning.
Like your teenagers, the Canadian Shield and the Boreal Forest are in their splendour and oozing with potency. The combined water and air temperature is regularly 56 degrees, making the elements feel like one grandiose spa.
It’s just the bugs – God’s way of not letting you have your cake and eat it – that taint the purity of this paradise.
That, and, of course, the demands of English curriculum. But let’s paint a picture of the zeitgeist around here first.
I trod by the precocious scholars during their breakfast. The student Shay, the official Ambassador for the Young and the Restless, is my first target. I am told he is a martial arts dude. So I challenge him to some fisticuffs.
He assents with a kind of confidence that suggests he thinks he is about to duel with a toddler. I try and get a shot in. He deftly avoids. That’s all he ends up doing – parrying.
Knowing I have no chance to get even close, I switch to a verbal assault – the last refuge of the vanquished,
“Oh, Shay, I guess this means you have the humility of a master. Such a BIG SHOT”. He won’t take this bait either, and suggests I harass the girls instead.
So, I do. Three of the femmes are headed for their pre-class preening ritual. I accost them with an absurdity,
“Whats the difference between diligence and vigilance (the latter being the word of the day)”? Madelyn attempts a response that deflates me because it’s pretty good. So I switch gears,
“Okay then, how is it to be the personification of pure evil?”
They chuckle without breaking stride. Nothing shall deter them from their mission to be presentable.
I hang out with Tony, getting a sense of how’s things are coming along. He reports there was a lot of stress around mid-terms yesterday. “But they got through it,” he proudly declares. “The next stress point will be the essays. Oh, those essays”.
Lest you think that your loving progeny are suffering, have a gander at the attached photos, showing the extent of their misery as they toil through a session in storytelling and some writing thing.
I have not forgotten the Goonies, who are in this moment intrepidly descending the 58 rapids of the Dumoine River garden of Eden. If they survived yesterday’s challenges of Canoe Eater Rapids and Big Steel waterfalls – and I presume they did because the Sat phone has stayed silent – the rest shall be a piece of cake. Until they get to Red Pine Rapids on Saturday, where I shall be with them helping to pick up the pieces.
Just kidding (maybe).
The last I saw them was Monday night. That group was still finding its way. A few are tough nuts to crack. They are not used to this focus on selflessness.
KK was determined to have a reckoning. On Monday night he had the group try and define itself. Who are we now? Who do we want to be? What is our purpose? They answered with alacrity, defining three key principles.
Before Kevin ventured into radio silence territory, he texted me saying the group starting getting silly and that things were looking up.
I have been down the Dumoine 100 times, and I know exactly where the group is right now. They are winding their way down Cobblestone Freeway – a 3 kilometre river stretch of class one rapids (super easy), that just begs kids to jump into them and float the whole 3k as the rivers wends its way around eskers and various escarpments. It is, perhaps, the most exquisite moment of the trip, as it culminates in a waterfall that you can take a shower under.
I will have much more to report on this crew as I will join them Friday night and half of Saturday through Red Pine rapids..
May summer never end.
Steven
