Natures Classroom by Tess

Nature’s Classroom is located in Becket Massachusetts. I would describe it as a sleep away camp, but it’s a little different. At Nature’s Classroom, you get to do all sorts of things like hiking, different fun activities and just hanging out with your friends. To get there, my class left at 1:00pm from school. We all fit on a giant bus with many different seats and even a bathroom. We arrived at 5:30pm, everyone was exhausted from the long 4-hour drive! We were all assigned bunks, and later on, we got to set our stuff down. This was pretty much our first day, there was not a lot going on because there wasn’t a lot to do considering it was so dark.

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Photo by Tess

Every day we would wake up at 7:00am. Everyone would get dressed, then go out for breakfast. Some people who needed to take meds or people who were Waitrons would leave a little early. After breakfast, we would have a break time to get ready for field groups. Most of the time my field group was out hiking, so we would be walking in ankle deep snow. Every day I would wear 3 pairs of socks, two pairs of pants and two shirts. It was that cold! We also played a game in field groups called camouflage. The leader of my group (Kelly) would scream Camouflage and she would count down from 10. Everyone had to hide and over time, she would find people.

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Picture by PDS

I think my favorite moment at nature’s classroom was a class I took called Hucking stuff. I arrived in the class thinking we would just be throwing things, but once we got there, it was so much more. It was a meditation class. I felt my body melt away into nothingness as my counsellor Kelly told us a story that made me go the deepest into my mind I’ve ever been. The story went a bit like this…

 

You walk into the dark forest. Everything is silent, the only sounds you can hear are the crunching of snow beneath your feet. You walk passed the water, and the trees. You soon come into an open field. You feel an emptiness inside you eating away at your courage. In the middle of the field, you see a black stone. It’s the heaviest thing ever and no one could ever lift it. You walk over to the stone and you lift it with no problem at all. Your feet carry you back to the river and you stand looking off into the distance. You throw the stone into the water. It shatters into a million pieces. You start to walk out of the forest, that spot in your stomach fades away.

 

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Picture by PDS

 

After doing the meditation we went outside into the dark cold woods and took an object we found. That object represented something bothering us in our lives. After finding the object we went to a high up deck and threw the object off. This was representing throwing away our fears, insecurities etc. A friend in my group’s item was a rock. He said something that will change my life. He told us about how his object was a rock and how it would never break, but somehow he could try. I don’t exactly remember what he said, but I know it really made me think. I hope you visit Nature’s Classroom sometime because it’s so much fun and I know you’ll like it!

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