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Teen Ready to Spend the Winter Outdoors

January 22, 2008 - OTISFIELD - Just when the rest of us are cozying up to the wood stove, Jesse Logan Cottingham is getting ready to spend the entire winter outside. Starting January 5, the young man from Bolster's Mills will be hiking and skiing 300 miles, from southern Vermont to the Canadian border.

He and the 10 other students of Kroka Expeditions Vermont Semester Program, will then build a 20-foot wood and canvas canoe, carve paddles, and voyage down the Connecticut River, returning in June.

For many, this would be an extreme experience, perhaps one to avoid. For Jesse, it is one he has been heading for all his life.

"I've always had way more connection with the outdoors, like sitting 70 feet up in an old hemlock in January when I was 10, the wind blowing, my mom hollering for me to get down," he recalls.

Situated around the family farmstead where he was homeschooled are tree houses, solar electric panels, a big garden, and recently a campsite where Jesse has spent nearly every night since last April.

Long before global warming took center stage, Jesse found his calling in the outdoors. His family has made an annual journey to Baxter State Park. Every autumn throughout his childhood Jesse visited Mount Katahdin. He has volunteered for the Lakes Environmental Association for the past six years, where he built trails and tested the waters of area lakes and ponds. And he's an expert canoeist, capable of paddling or poling.

On days when he is not working a job, he can be found in the woods or on a river. He carries a small backpack everywhere. In it are a dozen or so items. With the contents of this pack, Jesse could: Save someone's life, spend a safe night in the wild, and communicate with the world.

The Kroka Program is extreme. Winter in northem Vermont can be brutal. Students coming to the program must be motivated, in shape, and prepared to learn as they go. It's not like college. Kroka Expeditions frames the journey in both practical and philosophical terms. The students, through this program, put themselves into a 24/7 life of inter-dependence, traditional skills, and self-reflection. With only a wall of canvas (which they sew together prior to beginning the walk) between themselves and the elements, the tests they take will be constant. But testing himself comes naturally to Jesse.

Throughout his life, he has pushed himself in other ways. He is the youngest second degree black-belt in Aikido in the country. His interest in traditional skills extends to being able to start a fire with a bow and drill. And he was invited to go on a moose hunt with members of the Penobscot tribe last September.

Some of his skills might be thought of as survivalist, but he says otherwise. "I've always thought of these skills as practical living skills. When I go out into the woods, I don't go with the idea of survival; I go with the idea of walking in the footsteps of our ancestors," he says.

For years, Jesse rehabed computers that were declared useless and then gave them away. Like many Maine youngsters, he drove tractors 10 years before he got his driver's license. He now explores ways of running vehicles on altemative fuels. He holds an international ham radio license, allowing him to assist communities during power failures.

The non-profit Kroka Expeditions program's significant tuition is off'set by scholarships, but students are encouraged to be as resourceful about fundraising as they are about outdoor living. Jesse has worked and saved for this program. He has also set up a website (www.wildwillows.org ) so that interested people might learn more about the program and even donate some money towards this winter's semester.

By walking and boating the length of Vermont, Jesse hopes to fulfill a promise he's made to himself: To tread as lightly as possible on this planet. When many young people are fretting over how to accumulate the goods for a comfortable life, Jesse is busy acquiring the skills for a simply good life, for himself, his community - and for the environment.


SOURCE: ADVERTISER-DEMOCRAT

DATE: 01-10-2008

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