The Superior State

U P P E R   P E N I N S U L A   O C T O B E R   2 - 4

The seventh and eighth grade will voyage toward points north in early October for academic work, exercise, and community building in a beautiful Great Lakes setting.

We will leave for the Upper Peninsula at lunchtime on Wednesday, October 2, and will return by dinnertime on Friday, October 4. Your children should come to school as always for collection at 8:45 on Wednesday morning; we will have our morning of school before leaving at lunch. Be sure to pack a lunch that doesn’t need to be heated up in the microwave.

Rachel Goldberg, director of camps and extended learning, will also chaperone the trip.

We will be staying at a house located in Gros Cap, a small not-quite-village just west of St. Ignace, about five miles from the Mackinac Bridge. The drive from Ann Arbor will take about four-and-a-half hours. The house property is a wooded lot on the shore of Lake Michigan. The kids will have the option of sleeping indoors or pitching tents on the property in view of the house. I will assign groups for tents; the kids will also have the option of sleeping alone in a tent instead of with a group. Rachel will be staying indoors and I will sleep outside.

Our activities on the trip will be threefold.

First, we will travel to three locations within an hour’s drive for some physical activity: Tahquamenon Falls, the North Country Trail in Hiawatha National Forest, and Lake Michigan Dunes. We may also visit Whitefish Point and Les Cheneaux Islands, depending on time and inspiration. We will not travel to Mackinac Island on this trip.

Second, we will engage in some community-building work. This aspect of the trip will include conversational sessions, led by Rachel and me, opening up our health curriculum, in a setting that will allow us to take our time and remain free of the distractions and tumult of the average school day. In addition, we will undertake the organic collaboration required when fourteen people have to cook for themselves and clean up after themselves.

Third, we will touch upon the Explorers of the World curriculum through reading, writing, and sketching about the rich history of the Straits of Mackinac. Our material will be taken from the great Civil War historian Bruce Catton’s book Michigan. Catton grew up in Benzie County and pulled some of this excellent book from his memoir, Waiting for the Morning Train. We will take in the lakeshore setting for some bonfire-and-storytelling sessions as we consider the meeting point of cultures that occurred at that site in the 1600s.

The house is being graciously offered for our trip by my parents, William and Sheila Sikkenga. You better believe we’ll be taking good care of it.