By Nick Bickford

Poland Regional High School

During the week of March 1-5, I went on my second 5-day trip as a part of Quest. Quest is an outdoor education program where you learn how to survive out in the wilderness. On Sunday I got all my stuff packed for the big trip, then on Monday we were ready to go. Some of the people who went on the trip with me include Adam Petrie, Ashley Gauthier, Liz Hubbard, Mike Ogden, Carrie Greenleaf, Caroline Ricco, Corey Carter, Zack Stover, and of course our leaders: Mr. Pat Damboise and Ms. Lesley Herschlag.

We took a school van and Lesley’s truck to Newry, which is where our campsite was. Newry is up by Bethel if you did not know where it was. We got to our campsite at about noon. It was a pretty cool site, and had a woodstove, a kitchen table, two rooms and an upstairs. The rooms had two sets of bunkbeds in them and the upstairs had four mattresses laid out on the floor. The boys had to sleep upstairs and the girls got the bunk beds… lucky them.

The first day was not bad. We basically just got settled and unpacked our stuff and for dinner .We had spaghetti, which was pretty good, all the food was good really. The second day was our first hike. It was not a huge hike but it seemed like it because my legs were hurting when we were done.

The third day we did some community service. We did things like scraping the ice off the bridges that were around the camp, and chipping the ice off so nobody would slip and hurt themselves. We also checked the outhouses to see if they had toilet paper in them; if they didn’t we stocked them. Finally, we cleaned the camps that nobody was using. That day was my day to cook. Ashley and I cooked lunch that day – macaroni and cheese with hot-dogs – which was pretty good if you ask me.

The fourth day, which was Thursday, was the hardest day of the week because we went on our long hike and trust me it wasn’t any cakewalk – it was pretty hard. We hiked a mountain called Bald Mountain. It was hard getting up but when you got to the top the hiking was worth it because the view was awesome.

The fifth and final day we got up at eight o’clock, which was good because most of the week we had to get up at five thirty, which really stunk, but besides that we basically just got our things together to go home. We had a short meeting and returned to the cars and back to the school.

When we got back to the school we called our parents to get a ride and we also got all the stuff from the truck and brought it inside. I was happy to be back because I had not seen civilization since Monday. My mom came and got me and the first thing I did when I got home was take a shower because I did not have the luxury of one all week and trust me, it felt really good.

I learned a lot on this trip, such as how to cook. I also learned that no matter how hard something is stick with it because something good always comes out of it. That was my trip from day 1 to day 5 and I have to say that the people in the group were awesome. I think I communicated to all of them at least once on the trip so in my eye the trip was a huge success and I hope more people will join and make Quest an even bigger success in the future.