Suffolk, Boston

Making my way up Tremont Street today I bumped into Barry, an old Shackletonian who once worked in the Boston Office and was one of the last to walk away from the school. It felt odd speaking to her there outside the Suffolk buildings, dressed in my grubby suit jacket with a computer bag slung over one shoulder, a high school student no longer. We gossiped for a few moments before parting and, as I walked across the infernal wind tunnel to class I was struck with a sudden sadness. It’s the same feeling I always get when thinking of Shackleton, a sense of regret now the doors of Base Camp have closed and the busses finally put out of commission and left to rust in a junkyard somewhere. Though I am often overly sentimental when writing about my old home on spring hill it still seems tragic that no one else will have the opportunities the few of us experienced. I’m still only twenty-one and yet thanks to that school I’ve seen hundreds of miles of America, Central America and Asia, talked to a myriad of people and been given some of the most important life lessons one could wish to have.

Thinking back I remember Liz and Nikki standing laughing by a trail in Maine with backpacks on, Simon leaning against the temple of Angkor Thom with his camera out, Steve talking Spanish in Nicaragua with an complacent border guard. I don’t think I’ll ever again have the honor of working with such a committed group of educators and mentors, only a handful of whom I’ve mentioned above. Though I didn’t always respect or listen to them and was at times quite rude they were literally my parents away from home, my guides through the wilderness and at times both my biggest critics and largest supporters.

As I interact with students here and listen to what they have to say, I feel deeply that what this country (and perhaps this world) really needs are schools where the students are given an opportunity, whether they take it or not, to step away from everything they’ve known before and develop an expressed thirst for learning. Shackleton was by no means perfect but to this day I’ve never seen nor heard of any institution that comes as close constructively breaking the hard mold of humdrum normality and unoriginality as much as Shackleton did. I hope that somewhere there are other people like Luke O’Neil, making huge sacrifices so as to pursue their crazy dreams and that one day I’ll have a school like Shackleton to send my children to.

Interviewing a farm manager

New England U.S.A

It takes some effort for me to sit down, lean back and start to write again.
I had consigned myself to the fact that, with my travels over, there was nothing to describe, picture and tell to other people and thus no point in writing. So my writing withered out of me with sheer lack of use, when all I had to do was look around for things to look at, find people to learn from and start up my computer.

Think about my room

The floor lies covered in crumbs, fluff, several hats and a calling card to a Cambodian guesthouse, while the posters hang lopsided from cratered walls. A fake Hawaiian lei is strung from one bedpost while a collection of maps poke dejectedly from behind the broken chest of drawers. Quietly I heft my bags and turn out the light, leaving a dirty floor and an unmade bed as I close one door and open another.

Think about my friends

Ashley, yesterday rollerblading with a pink shawl and tinted Ray Charles-esque glasses, looking like some chain-smoking French artist called Fabian or Dominique. From behind closed doors there is Chris, nursing another soda-induced bout of withdrawal. Moodily, he consoles himself with a computer game while Communist Corey sits in bed and jeers the world in general.

Think about leaving

Carry bags in one hand, laptop clenched in the other. Swing up on the ladder and climb, balancing on the roof rack and tying things down with bungee cords as from above clouds open that emit fierce bouts of snow/rain. Stalk around the bus; check the lights, the fuel, the brakes. Start the engine and remove the chocks.

Think about our bus

There is a sound, a grumble almost; the dragons roar emminating from beneath feet that are curled up, together with the rest of us, on rickety green seats. Those that sleep have slightly screwed up faces, caused I imagine by stuffing your body into a space as small as a newborn babies crib.

Past the sleeping bundles is a mass of shelf, boxes and coolers. Somewhere within this wooden tangle stooped figures bump to and fro against storage bins, knives in hand as they prepare piles of lettuce, meat and cheese. Someone grips a seat and swings themselves forward towards the front, shouts the word “Lunch” and retreats back to their lair.

Think about arrivals

Sometimes I get off the Shackleton bus and can’t help but act child-like; nearly jumping with excitement when the door slides open and I can look around our new environment, whatever and wherever that is.

Maybe a field, a thousand shades of possible green, maybe a lake, textured water, a sunset-clad afternoon fresh with the noise of birds. There could be a dirt-stain of a backpack slung over one shoulder, a laptop grasped under an arm. This is one of those times, as rumbling slowly, the bus circles a grassy knoll and I see a small whitewashed cottage ahead.



Think about changes

Bags in hand, running for the “best” bed, opinions differing with each Goldilocks like session of experimentation.

Swap a block for a house, dirty for clean, lonely for company.
Swap a dorm for a room, the difference in personality and warmth, a room a sacred thing, the dorm a necessity.
Swap cooks, from a professional conisure of asparagus and hollandaise sauce, curries and hams, salads in a dozen varieties to a student with a bowl of pasta at their disposal.
Swap A school of 35 for a crew of 9, a community for a microcosm of the later.

Think about class

A farmyard, muddy with car use and cow dung, hurried looking workers shuffle, forming a small stream of humanity which flows into a sea of bovines, cows, dozens lined like some farce of an army against the steel fences which hold them. “My sword is my pencil, my shield my notebook”, taking notes here, scribbling rants there, trying to focus on the speaker. “Be a sponge” absorb information in preparation for P.O.L’s, the time for squeezing that information out and soaking others with knowledge.

Think about an educator

Ask Nikki and Nelia, find out information from smudged reference books and photocopied sheets of paper, listen. Hear what a cow farmer is saying, don’t take things at face value and write notes. Take advantage of experts in the field; literally so at this point, find someone and speak to them with the purpose of adding to what you already know.

Think about asking questions

“How many people do you employ?” “What’s your definition of sustainable agriculture?” “What is A.I?” “How long have you been farming?” Scrawl down illegible notes, keep eye contact, try to appear like you know things when the replies come “Twenty five” “a system of growing plants that will last for our children”, “artificial insemination” “eight years”.

Think about endings

At the end there is the bus, engine humming gently in the chill air. Through a corridor of hands waiting to be shook, giving out tee shirts as I walk. Swing, up through the doors as the bus rolls forward and picks up speed. From somewhere inside there is music, the tinny kind from laptop speakers, the bus dwindles and is gone.


Getting close and personal with automatic milking


Dinner with the crew


Circle of chow


An automatic head scratcher for cows


Donated accomidation and bath, Vermont


Endings

Cloud Forest, Costa Rica

Sweating in the darkness, wandering the rain forest at six in the morning, the crew halt. Above us though the trees, faint rays of sunlight are slowly appearing. Lindsey pulls out binoculars and focuses on far away trees—our teacher lost to the wilderness for a while. Behind me, Chris is asleep on his feet, swaying slightly as we glance around.

There is a second of peace among the trees as the group spreads out with our notebooks drawn. Then, as soon as it began, a howl reverberates through the creepers. The ghostly sound forces Chris’s eyes open as binoculars swing around in search of the culprit.

Through the bush we see movement and a lone howler monkey appears and vanishes among leaves far above. These creatures, with the loudest cry of any animal on earth, are soon serenading us en mass, putting off my attempts to take notes. As Cory creeps past, camera out and ready, I jot down as much as possible.

The howler monkey is small black and racoon sized. They inhabit the upper reaches of trees in Costa Rica and other rain-forested states along the equator. They live in tribes where the younger male is made dominant by killing all the other young. To attract mates, the males have developed their roar, which now brings me back to the jungle and the end of this entry.

Bourtie House, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

I am rewriting the start of my story, during which I spend five months traveling in Australia and Southeast Asia. The goal of my expedition is to return to a school in the United States from which I was asked to leave for inappropriate behavior. To do this I have been traveling with my mentor and teacher, Simon, who has coached me though things I thought were impossible.


From watching pig racing in Australia to Thai boxing in Bangkok, to teaching orphans in Cambodia to rafting down rivers in Laos everything has been an opportunity to learn. I have not always taken advantage of the opportunities I am presented with, but am beginning to recognize and enjoy them. When I first started traveling I believed that the reasons I got expelled from school and didn’t have many friends were all external. From my writings you will see that I grown to see things differently.

Please read on and follow my journey.

Tom Remp.