Taking a break along the perimeter trail hike
Few places were left unexplored this past week during our outstanding program with students from the Epiphany School in Boston. We were joined by 16 energetic students and three chaperones for a four-day program that included a little bit of everything, from learning about the natural history of the island to fun leadership activities and rock climbing and sailing in Penobscot Bay!
We started the program learning about the ways that Hurricane Island operates off the grid, and showed students where our power and water comes from as well as how we deal with our food-waste and generate new soil for our gardens through composting.
The second day was a nice mix of learning about the birds on Hurricane with bird bingo and a bird hike (we spotted warblers, sparrows, eider ducks, and eagles throughout the program!), a history hike, and time spent out on Two Bush Island exploring low tide and flipping rocks in search of fun invertebrates. After that we enjoyed a big sailing day: the wind was blowing 15 knots out of the North all morning and then out of the West at 6 knots so we enjoyed full sails and sunny weather--a perfect day to spend on the water.
The rest of the program was packed with rock climbing adventures, learning about lobsters, and going on a botany hike. Rock climbing is definitely not just about the climber: all of the participants took time to learn how to carefully belay each other and communicate between climber and belayer to keep everyone safe and challenging each other to scale up the granite rock face.
It is always fun to learn about the lobster industry, and students played with herring bait, learned about the lobster life cycle, and went out on the boat with Oakley to watch him haul his recreational lobster traps. Unfortunately, we ended up throwing back everything we caught because the lobsters weren't legal sized! So we had to take a rain check on a lobster dinner, but I suppose that means we will need to get all these wonderful students back out to Hurricane again!
Bird bingo in action
Enjoying sunset after a busy day
