Ted on Stargazing and Telescopes
I’ve been thinking about Galileo lately because my son very generously bought me a telescope this winter. In 1609, Galileo constructed his first telescopes and eventually turned a 20x instrument on Jupiter, among other targets, to discover four moons, easily seen today with binoculars. I have a 20x spotting scope that I use for birding and starwatching and, of course, I consider the magnification to be barely satisfying and yet, Galileo forever revolutionized our concept of the heavens with such an instrument.
Anyway, this new telescope has become my new compulsion. It is far beyond Galileo’s imagination and allows me to casually view galaxies millions of light years away as though I am merely watching spring warblers arrive in my backyard. Technically, it is an 8” Dobsonian reflector, which looks like a cannon sitting in my study. It’s built by Orion and apparently is one of the most popular starter scopes. I’ve always enjoyed the night sky and I first thought it would be nice to see some stuff up there, just slightly bigger. Then I turned the scope on Saturn, which made me jump. It looked like a plastic glow-in-the dark figure on the bedroom ceiling, except it was in the sky, moving! I know this this sounds like I’m six, but it really has rings and it’s just floating up there!! And it also turns out there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of stars!! No, really!! So I rushed out and bought a star atlas, which is fun even without the real stars, and started plotting my next session. Galaxies, planets, moons, open clusters, planetary nebulae, supernovae, double stars, red giants, space stations, comets – it’s endless! Infinite! By the way, when I mentioned thousands of stars earlier, I meant in an area the size of a peanut held at arm’s length. It’s the same feeling I had when I learned that there are more bacteria than human cells in our bodies. So now I stare up at night and sound like Vizzini in The Princess Bride – “Inconceivable!”
Ted gazing into space with his trusty scope.
It turns out it’s relatively easy to find amazing things in the night sky. Even with binoculars, a dark sky reveals plenty of star clusters and nebulae and even galaxies, for example. The constellations provide the map to the locations of hundreds of mind-boggling “objects”. Hardly the right word considering you are looking back in time into the origins of the universe. Many of those stars no longer exist. Can you wrap your mind around that?
So, I encourage you to run out a buy a telescope. I really do. There are several good choices that won’t break the bank. Several good research sites online can help you select one, especially www.cloudynights.com. Mostly, you have a choice between a reflector and a refractor. You also don’t need a computer motor-driven model. Lots of amateur astronomers actually make reflector telescopes out of cardboard tubes and duct tape. That doesn’t mean you can get a department store cheapie or thrift store castoff – you’ll be frustrated and will most certainly yard-sale it without having had the “inconceivable!” experience. Just don’t skimp on the eyepieces – even inexpensive telescopes with excellent optics can work quite well. To get you hooked, I suggest you download the Stellarium planetarium software. The roller wheel on your mouse will let you magnify any section of the sky, see what’s visible tonight, and identify everything. Another site, www.cleardarksky.com will evaluate the weather, humidity, moonlight, fog, etc and tell you if it’s going to be a good night for viewing, or “seeing” as astronomers say. And, of course there’s an app that lets you merely point at any place in the sky, day or night, and identify the celestial bodies. A couple of starter books are Nightwatch by Terence Dickinson and Skywatching by David Levy.
Have fun! Amaze your friends! Sound like an astrophysicist at dinner parties! You too can become a raving lunatic! Join me, young Luke…
-Ted Wesemann
Spring 2012
“A guitar is more precious. Must learn this thing. Fingers of the left hand must have callus caps. Thumb of the right hand a horn of callus. Stretch the left-hand fingers, stretch them like a spider’s legs to get the hard pads on the frets.”
John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath, 1939
One of my favorite things about the current semester at the Outdoor Academy is music. You can hear it floating through the air on campus everyday; it seems you can’t walk more than a few steps without hearing music of some kind. It reminds me very much of my time as an OA student in the Fall of 2004, which solidified my love of mountain music and pushed my to write and perform my own tunes.
Ingrid started from scratch on banjo this semester and she's well on her way to becoming a great picker.
Most of the music that happens at the Outdoor Academy is handmade. It’s natural, organic, homegrown. It springs from the strings of Emily’s ukulele, Galen’s guitar and Ingrid’s banjo and it resonates from the skin of Ben P’s djembe. You hear songs fluttering through the Sun Lodge before meals and across Cabin 7 Field on weekends and during student free periods in the morning. Music serves as a constant reminder of how talented, creative and special our students are. Hearing them play brightens my day immediately.
Galen and Ben P have a jam on the Cheoah porch.
Students come to OA with a variety of musical talent. Some are already accomplished musicians and some learn to play the guitar for the first time here. They learn from friends or in our American Folk Music Class, which I have had the pleasure to teach. In class, we look at music of the region and how it developed, tracing its European and African roots. We learn traditional methods and tunes from the region, like the clawhammer banjo style and fiddle tunes like “Cripple Creek.” Additionally we do critical listening activities, delving into the socio-political history of how folk music has been produced and consumed in the Southern Appalachians. The second half of music class is a student favorite and an OA staple since the first semester: West African Drumming. Students get a unique opportunity to study complicated and beautiful music from Ghana, focusing on both technique and repertoire. Head of School Mark Braun, who has studied West African music for most of his adult life, holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Brown University and brings a deep passion and understanding of the music.
Music is ingrained into each day at the Outdoor Academy. We sing songs to bless our meal before breakfast and lunch, and we sing our goodnight circle song each night to close our day. I personally feel that it sounds best on Monday nights after community meeting. The whole community is there in Cheoah, our music building. The acoustics are spectacular; the harmonies resonating through our circle. It is a powerful experience to sing something meaningful with people you live in community with. Written by former OA teacher Frannie Oates, one of our previous music teachers, the song goes like this:
May the peace of this valley around us, the warmth of the fire within, the shelter of the stars above us, the strength of the rivers nearby, guide us safely through this night, till morning lights the sky.
Give Thanks and Sing Sweetly,
-Josh
Gearing Up for Trek
In the last days before Trek the rainy weather fits the students’ mood: pensive, with an acute awareness to the homey comforts of honey ginger tea and scones. At the same time, the dorms are a flurry of fleece and wool as packs are cinched and stowed in anticipatory readiness. Packing lists are consulted twice and thrice. Extra batteries and more long johns are considered, then crammed into stuff sacks. The whole bundle is tested for weight.
This past weekend the OA students left for a trek on the Appalachian Trail. Over the next eight days the students will walk sixty miles up mountains and down valleys, all the while carrying on their backs everything they need to live the good life in the woods: filters and iodine for drinking water; food, fuel, and stoves for hearty dinners; journals, wool hats, cameras, and maybe a bit of chocolate for the top of Roan Mountain. Finally they’ll lace up their boots, now well worn-in after Orientation Trek, Paddle/Climb weekend, and Classes in the Field.
These boots were made for hiking...
A comfortable boot this is well acquainted with your foot is a prize possession indeed. Boots are repositories of memories. I bought my first serious pair of boots when I was fifteen; they bore the cattle and horse brands of Philmont Scout Ranch, where I took my first long trek. A week from Sunday, when the students take their last steps and triumphantly swing off their backpacks at the trailhead, they will have worked a whole topography of joy and awe into the creases of their boots. Even after that pair falls apart at the end of some other trail, they will never forget the bonds they forged with their friends in times of struggle and celebration.
If you talk to the students after trek, you should ask them how they became heroes. In English class we have been discussing Joseph Campbell, a 20th century thinker who recognized in the classic epic stories and folk mythologies a common cycle: a hero or heroine steps away from the comfortable and familiar realm of hearth and home out into the strange wilderness, contends with hardship and forces of opposition, and finally returns home to share the special knowledge they gained through their tribulations. This cycle is as present in Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings as it is in the Gospel of Matthew and Gilgamesh. When the students return from trek they will tell the story of their heroic journey—how they made dinner despite numb fingers and cold rain; how they cheered their companions up the final push of Big Hump’s windy bald. When the students imagine themselves as heroes, they will come to terms with the immensity of their accomplishments and the outer limits of their powers. Until then, they have only one assignment: Get out in the woods! Be a hero!
-Nate Sutton
Outdoor Programs Coordinator
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
-Walden, Henry David Thoreau, 1854
The first of our core traditions here at the Outdoor Academy is simple living:
A return to a simpler lifestyle where we live outside as much as possible, form honest relationships and really talk to people, and feel grateful for what we have: less clutter, less technology, less stuff, and more gratitude, more connections, and more time spending our days out in nature.
We try to unplug and focus on what’s important, replacing instant gratification with personal connections and intentional community. While we do this every day on campus, another way we support this mission is by traveling to other places to learn and practice our simple living skills. Two recent trips that help to fulfill this were our weekend at Buffalo Cove Outdoor Education Center and our week-long Classes in the Field base-camp.
Nestled on 200 acres of land in a valley near Boone, Buffalo Cove is a very special place to the Outdoor Academy. For years, our spring semesters have taken educational journeys there and many of the folks at Buffalo Cove have connections to us. Buffalo Cove’s Nathan Roark, McNeil Mann & Kevin MacDonald have all been faculty members; Nathan was with us for the very first semester and was instrumental in starting up Morning Watch, McNeil was a student before she was on staff and Kevin was the Resident for current staffers Gary Sorcher and myself, as well as Head Resident and Art Teacher.
Gus practicing his stalking in the woods around Buffalo Cove Outdoor Education Center.
Our students and staff did a work swap with Buffalo Cove. We gave our work, putting up wire screens, digging drainage ditches and clearing out brush for the season in exchange for knowledge in earth-based living skills from Buffalo Cove Instructors. Nathan, McNeil, Kevin and Mark taught lessons on tracking, trapping and stalking animals, building and cooking over fires, flint napping and making cordage from inner tree bark. This was important for students, not only for the skill building, but to get to see and talk to competent people who truly practice simple living. Nathan, Kevin, and McNeil all homestead in Buckskin Holler. They live off the grid, they do not depend on running water or electricity, and provide much of their own food through farming, gardening, hunting and raising animals. Hearing from folks who choose to live their lives in a different way is a wonderful and eye-opening experience for our students and we are grateful for the chance to learn at Buffalo Cove.
Last week the students and teachers had another chance to practice simple living beyond our campus. Together, we camped out for a week at Cataloochee, a beautiful part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Our campsite was right beside a wonderful river and next to a large field, which offered a great “classroom” and meeting place during the daytime and out of this world stargazing at night. On this trip we empowered students to take on stronger leadership roles and get necessary tasks done around camp. We started this model for Classes in the Field in 2008 and it is a very important and memorable part of the semester for the students, as well as something staff look forward to every spring and fall.
Classes in the Field is a great opportunity to get back to nature and engage in a more community-centered approach to education.
While there, we spent lots of time in and beside the river. Our students made earth-art projects, sculptures made entirely from natural materials and afterwards returned them to the nature. In Math classes students calculated the height of trees and learned about orienteering, utilizing their map and compass skills. We hiked through beautiful trails and got our hands dirty in the woods in the daytime, and we gazed at the endless sea of stars from the grassy field at night.
Give Thanks and Live Simply,
-Josh
The Eagle’s Nest Garden: Springing into Action for 2012
Welcome to the 2012 growing season. Another year is upon us and as usual there are many things to get done in preparation for the summer. The first few weeks of the season are flying by and even with all the planning and ordering for the whole season somehow we are managing to get some seeds planted. Onions are in the ground already and we will be planting snow peas as soon as they arrive in the mailbox. Potatoes and carrots are also on the schedule in the next week or two.
Garden Manager Ryan gives students some tips on planting potatoes.
We are continuing to explore the use of the new High Tunnel with a spring crop of mixed salad greens just breaking ground which should be ready to harvest during the spring Semester so that the OA students who will help to lay the foundation for the garden also get the experience of harvesting from their hard work.
We are continuing to expand on our long time friendship with Holly Hill Farm this year by starting all of our transplants in their climate-controlled greenhouse. This will allow us to fully utilize the space in our High Tunnel and while also ensuring quality starts for the garden.
We have some exciting new tools in the garden cottage which will help to drastically increase the efficiency of planting and weeding. As well as the final components of our whole garden drip irrigation system coming in the mail any day now.
Ben G hard to work plowing in the garden so we can put in potatoes!
Composting is one of the most important responsibilities on any farm and it is even more so at eagles nest because of the large amount of kitchen waste we generate. As anyone who has ever tried to compost on a large scale knows it can be a lot of work finding the materials to achieve that perfect mix. Not to mention turning the car sized piles. This season we will be revolutionizing the compost system and hopefully setting up a vermicompost and compost tea brewing project to help meet the fertilization needs of the garden.
Grace and Eliza plant potatoes in the Garden. With the help of a few other students, they planted 80 lbs of seed potatoes during work crew this week!
As always at the beginning of a gardening season July will be here before we know it and there is a lot to take care of before we get there. With the help of work crew and our annual community work day coming up we should be well on our way to a successful season.
-Ryan Houghton
Ryan is our new Garden Manager. He has firm roots here in Transylvania County, previously working at the Morningside Farm CSA here in Brevard, at Camp Illahee and as an environmental educator with a local non-profit called Muddy Sneakers.
Austin Proctor: Math & Rock Climbing
As a teacher it is very important to have a well planned and organized lesson. After years of practice I am somewhat willing to say that I am alright at organizing. It does not necessarily come easy and I see students struggle to keep their work in math class, and their personal areas, neat and organized. Seeing this made me sit back and reflect on what I have done to help build my organizational skills. It turns out that, oddly enough, math and rock climbing came to mind.
Rock climbing is something I have done since I could walk and my dad could tie me into a climbing rope at the climbing wall in the basement of his toy store. I have pictures of me in my very first pair of lace-up shoes climbing with him at Looking Glass here in Pisgah. In high school I ran off with my dad’s climbing gear and started discovering for myself just how incredible the climbing in Western North Carolina really is. With this came some very nerve-racking moments.
Austin, shown here framed by climbing rope while teaching a math class.
I can remember climbing with about 20 lbs or gear and suddenly needing a very small, very particular piece of gear in this mound of “stuff” clipped to my waist. It was terrifying and extremely hazardous to my health (if I had fallen before finding and placing the gear I was so desperately looking for). This was the very first time that I wanted to work towards organizing something in my life, unlike when my parents would nag me to clean my room.
That night I went home and spent about an hour trying to figure out what order to clip all of my gear to me without creating a huge rat’s nest. To this day I am still tweaking the organization of my climbing gear, looking for more efficient methods with particular goals in mind. It was just the beginning of me finally realizing that some order is necessary if I do not want to spend all day looking for what I need when I need it. I have also found that there exists too much organization. This occurs when you spend all day organizing your climbing gear and it is dark by the time you get to the crag to go climbing.
So now I use my climbing experience to help me organize tangible and physical objects. Very helpful when: backpacking, paddling, cleaning my room, packing a suitcase, or trying to fit all of the breakfast food on the buffet table on mornings when all of the families are at OA for brunch.
The ability to complete mental tasks with out a scrap of tangible evidence amazes me. In my classes I call this “mental math”. Something that I am not vary good at but work to improve on every day. Being able to do mental math is great but when you get the problem wrong on the test and you “did it all in your head” I can not give you partial credit for the part you did correctly. The same is true when: completing budgets, creating recipes, remembering your grocery list or your friends phone number, or when you are trying to remember what to pack for 9 day trek. These are all possible to keep track of “in our head” but usually get much easier to manage when we write them down. That being said, often times in math most of the difficulty is knowing how to organize and write out the work. And if you do get the problem wrong and you show your work suddenly I can see your thought process and can help you see where you made your mistake and how to correct it.
In General, the following steps can help you show your work for whatever it is you want to think about, plan, or accomplish:
Step one for showing your work: Create a “Given and Find” list. My students see this every time I do a word problem on the board. I read some vague paragraph that most likely has some extra information that I do not need and make a nice neat list of the information given. This is the first step on translating to Math-lish from English. Then create a list of all that you want to find or accomplish. Often times you end up needing to find more then the problem asked for on your way to the answer so you can add that to your “Find” list. I really like the “Find” list because I can use it as a check list, and being able to check things off of a list is so gratifying. It also helps to ensure that you do not overlook any part of the problem. (How many times can you remember when you did not get full credit on something in life merely because you overlooked part of what you were supposed to find?)
Key thought: Given and Find
Step two for showing your work: Understand the thought process and list it out vertically. Often times I see work organized horizontally to try and save paper. Unfortunately it is much more difficult to see the “thought progression” and it seems that people waste more time and paper just trying to keep up with what they had written. However, when we progress vertically it is much easier to see the progression. For example: we were all taught to do addition and subtraction by lining up the number. If you try and add 124589 and 9742 without lining them up it is not as easy and spending the extra time and paper to rewrite the problem vertically. I believe that if you wish to communicate something clearly it must be listed out vertically as opposed to put fourth in a paragraph.
Key word: Vertical (… hmmm, maybe math and rock climbing are more related then I thought)
From here we get to move onto problem solving. Typically, in class or in your workplace, you have some sort of chart or formula to reference when trying to solve problems. It seems to me that most of the difficulties arise when you try to apply that chart or formula to a particular case that is not exactly identical to the chart or formula and you need to find some pattern to link them. Some common methods from here that you can try are: look at previous problems and how they were solved, ask someone a question and collaborate, or you can further research it; the list goes on and on.
So the two thoughts I focus on when attempting to organize thoughts or other non-tangible items are “Given and Find” and “Vertical Lists.” It is amazing how many students answer their own questions just by doing those two things.
-Austin Proctor
Austin teaches Math & leads wilderness trips for OA. He studied Secondary Math Education at Appalachian State University in Boone and holds an American Mountain Guides Association certification for rock climbing instruction.
Alumni Corner: Getting Together in Denver, CO
This is a blog post by Jennifer Walton of Semester I, reflecting on a recent get together of alumni living in Colorado.
It’s been an awfully long time since I woke up in my corner in Sun Lodge, but I still maintain a rolodex of clear mental images from my time at OA. When Susan Conley (OA’s Development Director) asked me to blog about why I pulled together an alumni dinner held recently in Denver, Colorado– the first regional such event to my knowledge – one image sticks out in particular: Ted physically stuffing me in my parents’ car on the last day of school.
I’m sure other people had a rough last day too, but did Ted have to actually put you in the car to get you to leave? I bet not.
For some reason, I’ve always felt like having to be carted away from OA against my will, followed by several months of way too many calls to Ted and Jane at odd hours, put me in a special category of the high maintenance variety of student. Perhaps that is the case (I’m sure my parents will tell you it still is), but no matter what kind of person you are, leaving OA is hard. It’s not easy to leave a community that has given you the airplane, the runway, and the lessons to take off and fly.
I’m very clear on the difference OA has made in my life, and the link between what I learned when I was there and the person I am now is extremely powerful. As illustrated by the amazing stories surfacing on alumni going out into the world and doing incredible things, we leave OA with gifts: increased clarity about ourselves, understanding of our impact on the planet, tools for being a force in our communities, and more. But we also go to college, have hobbies, work overtime, get busy with life and family – and those gifts may dim as we cope with whatever life brings our way.
Given that there are now over 670 OA alumni out in the world, the potential to reinvigorate our own energies and bolster our impacts through gatherings, networking and relationship building is staggering. I’m certain that although we don’t wake up in Sun Lodge or Cabin 10 anymore, we can continue to support, energize and inspire each other just as we did during backpacking trips or work crew.
During the last OA reunion, I learned that I was in good company out here inColoradowith approximately seven OA alumni living within 2 hours of me. As an experiment, I decided to try an alumni gathering to see what would happen; to test my hypothesis that alumni in numbers can be even more powerful than they are by themselves.
OA Alumni met in Denver this past November to talk about the Outdoor Academy. They are (clockwise from the left): Denton King of Semester XXIII, Cassie Smith of Semester VIII, Jennifer Walton of Semester I, Alyssa Panning's partner, Alyssa Panning of Semester XIII, and Denton' King's wife Lauren.
Our dinner, held in early November 2011, did not prove me wrong. Of the four alumni that attended, two had gone to the same semester but the rest of us were strangers. Despite this, from my perspective it was clear there was a conversation to be had. We discussed the people we had become and the links back to our time at OA. We discussed our vision for our group in Colorado and how we could make the biggest difference as alumni. We talked about the things that fascinated and impassioned us: med school, business, skiing, journalism, even taxes. We didn’t invent an alternative green power source, but I left feeling rejuvenated – like I was part of something much larger than myself that was already in motion.
One dinner attendee remarked that she had approached the dinner with some trepidation since, after all, we weren’t her OA people and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to meet anyone outside of her semester. But then, she realized that even though we hadn’t shared her specific OA experience with us, it didn’t matter – we all knew exactly what she was talking about. From my perspective, that common thread was what turned our dinner from a group of strangers making small talk into a community learning about itself and planning for the future.
And therein lies the potential.
There are now so many great ways alumni can connect, inspire and support each other. I don’t yet know if our Colorado group will do great things, but the foundation has been laid and I hope other regions may follow suit. In addition, more alumni recently started a mentoring program for recent OA grads, where older alumni are paired with younger alumni and are offering friendship, sympathy, and college and career-related advice – whatever the mentee needs. And the OA alumni LinkedIn group is utilized for a variety of needs, including as a forum for recent grads seeking advice on rejoining their home communities and asking questions about college.
I know that the person being put in that car 15+ years ago would certainly have benefited from all of the above, and I often wish I’d had a mentor to talk to during those times where things after OA just didn’t feel right. That’s why I’m just as thrilled to serve as a mentor now myself and to facilitate theColoradoalumni group.
I can’t wait to see you all around the regional circle soon!
Give Thanks,
-Jennifer Walton, Semester I
