It’s day 4, our challenge today was to make it from our base camp to Paonia High School, home of the Eagles and only 220 students, without being seen by any person on foot or in car.
We began by trekking through dry brush in the hills surrounding camp. It was beautiful with the valley beneath us. Eventually we made it to the farms beneath the hills, and made some sheep friends, as well as found some teeth of their unlucky skeleton friends. In the farmland we snuck five apples off an untended orchard and paid for them with a little money ($2.50) and a note on their front doorstep.
The next obstacle was the road. We had to be hyper-vigilant here, diving into ditches anytime we heard the slightest sound of tires on pavement. Finally we could see the high school in the distance, we decided to book it the rest of the way as it was nearly impossible to be unseen at this point.
After we reached the high school we gave ourselves a new challenge: How Far Could We Infiltrate Before Getting Kicked Out? Not very far… We walked directly into the busy cafeteria at lunchtime. In such a small school, we were immediately recognized as outsiders. It seemed that all eyes were on us. We only managed to speak to the students for a moment before being confronted by the Vice Principal. From there, we spoke to the Principal, claiming to be students hoping to shadow a class or two. He said today would not work, but that we could attend the bonfire party that was happening that evening.
After all this work, we decided to go for Ollie’s Ice Cream in town, it lived up to all the hype. From there it was a comparatively short walk back to camp, in blazing heat. Once we got back we reflected and laughed at our absurd day, happy to be back.
Photo Credit: Aubrie