“Hitting Halfway”

by Caciques Clay Bales and Hunter Foote

Today was a big mile marker for the community. We hit day 50 of 100. For those of us on our 8-day academic rotation, it felt wrong celebrating with only half of our Island School community. The 23 of us here are missing our other halves on kayak and Down Island trips.

As caciques, we wanted to make hitting 50 a special day. At the same time that we feel we’ve been here forever because of the friendships we’ve made, it feels like we haven’t been here for long at all. At dinner circle, we had the community go around and say one word that describes their past 50 days here: change, growth, gnarly, adventure, and too short, were all words that came up. We then had the community go back around and share one word that describes their anticipation for the upcoming 50 days. We heard words like: possibilities, endurance, half marathon, solo, Down Island, and kayak. All of these words represented things, events, or themes people want to experience during their remaining time here. We’ve gotten past the feeling of “let’s just get through this semester” to “let’s make the most of this semester.”  For some of us, the “official” turning point was the day of the Wemyss Bight homecoming. That was the day that we knew that we had absolutely no desire to go home. We just want to stay here in our new “home” with our Island School family.

As a celebration of the new tone of anticipation and need to make memories, we had a special dinner on the upstairs deck of the dining hall. We had music playing in the background until Daisy, Meaghan and Aly performed live music commemorating and celebrating that we reached this day. It was like a mini Coffee House during dinner. Although it was weird that we could actually fit everyone on the upstairs deck, it was a bonding experience to have the K3 and K4 community come celebrate together.