Today was day 1 of our 10-week Earth Skills Semester Program. Each student is building a permanent shelter to use as a home base for the duration of the course. We’re building them to be large and comfortable one-person shelters with a raised bed, some storage space, and a small changing area. The design has an arched roof, and someone mentioned that it looked like a prairie schooner, a nickname for the old covered wagons in the pioneer era. So we decided to call them bush schooners.

We had a late night going over our naturalist curriculum and looking at resources, but we had a lot of fun and everyone is excited to be here. Tomorrow we finish the shelters and get into firemaking. And it’s supposed to rain, which is great because increases the challenge with firemaking.