Gap Year
A guided apprenticeship program
This program was born in 2023. Friends had twin boys who were graduating high school (in the US) and wanted to take a ‘Gap Year’ this period before college. They wish for this to be more than a ‘gap’ in their education and more of a spicy, rich, colorful, varied, intense, and beautiful exploration of our home planet. So we conjured a project that would take their young men to the edges of our understanding, to get a vivid and very real opportunity to ‘See’ before they commit to 4 (or more years) of conventional study.
This first year is 90 days:
30 in Hawaii,
30 in Ecuador,
30 in Mexico.
These 3 destinations will introduce the participants to indigenous knowledge, diverse cultures, and challenging feats of stamina and participation.
This play on words is a reference to the well-established educational opportunity afforded some privileged youth, taking them on a 6-month journey aboard a cruise ship to ports of call, far and wide. For some, I’m sure, it is a life-altering experience, for others, a party, for all, memorable. I was invited to steward some young men during the period between high school graduation and the entry into college. They kept referring to it as their “Gap Year’ which absolutely is inappropriate. I spoke with the parents and I spoke with the youngsters, I told them that in no way would I design a season of life preparation that would be referred to as ‘Gap’ so we ended up with Service at SEE, emphasis on ‘See’. Since I had never done this before I decided upon an epistemology that emphasized dynamic above content, experience above observation, participation above compliance and the sacred & profane above the safe and sound.
The itinerary began geographically. Hawaii, Ecuador, Mexico. Three destinations where I am experienced, and familiar and have friends who participate daily in the weaving of the ancestral, the current, and the future generations. In Hawaii, we will be received by Kimokeo Kapahulehua, cultural ambassador of Hawaiiana, founder of the Hawaiian Outrigger Canoe Association, founder of the Kimokeo foundation, star of the film ‘Family of the Wa’a’, and dear friend and brother. Here we will climb volcanoes, dive reefs, paddle canoes, practice ceremony, learn history, and participate in local events and rituals. The history of this archipelago is rich in celestial navigation and pelagic orientation as well as a deep understanding of our relationship with the spirits of the natural world, in particular the oceans. We will learn about the Amakua, the Kaduna and Kumu’s and Kuma’s
In Ecuador, we will enter into a variety of cultures and practices, including, but not limited to, many days in villages beyond roads, navigating rivers by canoe, exploring the indigenous genius of the jungle by foot, encountering the sacred and the practical among plants, animals, and insects while practicing the rituals and order cultivated through hundreds if not thousands of generations. We then go to the cloud-forest, a place of biodiversity even beyond that of the Amazon (because of its unique position on the flanks of the Andes, above the Amazon rainforest) more birds, butterflies, mammals, reptiles etc, than possibly any other place on earth. Here we will practice GIS, Art, and the study of its importance to the future of a generative and sustaining planet for future generations. We will be guests at the Maquipucuna Biosphere Reserve and explore the region and methods of regeneration practiced there. We will also go to the Andes, the longest mountain range on Earth and Home to countless active volcanoes. Here we will stay in an indigenous village, where condors soar above, take part in local traditions, integrate what we have experienced thus far, and settle into an environment both stark and beautiful and bountiful in a ritualized adherence to lunar, solar, and cosmic cycles. We then visit the Galapagos islands. Here we will be guided by a local ‘Colona’ or resident of the islands. Isabella knows how, when and where and why to move through this sacred land and sea-scape. Endemic plants and creatures that populate our dreamscape will be our everyday companions. Here, one of the most celebrated natural environments on earth will be our ever-present teacher, witnessing both the slow march of evolution and the rapid shift of this dynamic archipelago. This is a fitting finish for our Ecuadorean visit.
In the fall, the Baja peninsula will be our classroom. We will travel overland, on paved and dirt roads, on trails (senderos), and camp on beaches, in mountains, valleys, and deserts. Baja has peaks rising to over 10,000’ that few know about and the wildness, the wilderness, is largely intact even though it is traversed daily by adventurous travelers. A few miles of track and one will find generational ranchos, epic oases, deserted beaches, tranquil bays, hot springs, waterfalls, and archaeological evidence of the peninsulas’ original inhabitants. We will invite the wisdom of the people we encounter, from cetacean specialists to present-day ranchers to environmental stewards. This 90-day program is the first of its kind, though the interest in such a thing seems that the seeds of this will grow into a yet unimaginable tree.
UPDATE 8/7/2024 Evidence…
As you may have noticed, I am in the early days of a 100 day Journey of Initiation with some 18 year olds from from Colorado. The idea was to explode them into foreign cultures, languages, traditions, lifestyles, teachings, mythology, service, ritual & ceremonies. I have been amazed at their abilities of adaptation. Today, Kimokeo announced “we go up Haleakala Friday”
“We leave at 3:00am?” I said
“No, we go early”
So it goes, here, in this context, 3am is not ‘early’
Routines that they have spent their lives accommodating, matching the rhythms of their families, school, calendars and clocks have almost disappeared, and two weeks in, they are LOVING IT. Today they left at 3:00, paddled an OC6 (6 man Ocean outrigger canoe) 2 hours, in the dark, before sunrise, to meet a group of guests (tourists) at the Ancestral Fish Ponds. Hearing them relate the story, about ‘Locking in’ or ‘the rays of the sun pushed the darkness away’ and ‘you told us to never turn our backs to the sea, and the moment we did, we got hit by a wave that took me off my seat.’ This is evidence. Their story telling has improved as they recognize and practice the truth that ‘moments create momentum’ I listen as their specificity grows, the cadence takes on a pattern similar to the oceans moods; swells, crests, troughs, intervals. It is a satisfying shift to the immature chronology that just days before was prevalent. Now they revel and describe all that they have done, while ‘most of the island is still asleep’
They ride to and from the farm in the back of a beat-up pickup truck, exposed to the heat of the midday sun and the drenching of squalls which come and go all day. They are sun drenched and shivering, scratched up and sore, often not returning till 9pm and making chicken and rice. I am getting the extraordinary gift of watching them stretch, their edges pushing out into unprecedented regions. They sit at tables with locals speaking ‘local’ in a voice almost indistinguishable to that which they have grown accustomed to. I have no interest in controlling them. I ask them what they want their relationship to their devices to be like. They tell me, and that becomes our attention mantra. They WANT to succeed at what THEY WANT. At most I’m a subtle reminder. They do not whine, or complain, or wish for something else. When they arrived they both told me that they have ADHD. I asked them in what circumstances DONT they have it. They listed the moments
“When I’m playing music”
“When I’m working out”
“When I don’t have sugar” (I was impressed with this one)
I invited them to imagine that the self diagnosis, was perhaps a product of convenience, when actually their attention was a choice. We came up with a term, LTFI, which was their idea. ‘Lock the fuck in’ is what it stands for and in a few short days I watch them use it on themselves and each other.
“LTFI” when we are paddling in the darkness and immediately I feel the Mana of the canoe change. And they do too! They are training in core attributes and they are experiencing the benefits to their peace, their positivity, and their impact upon the field in which they are operating.
It is a body of extremely satisfying evidence.
Day 14 of 100. Wailuku.
In the care of Kimokeo Kapahulehua, plus an extended family through the islands, we have been afforded the ability to participate in a way few tourists can (or even wish to). This involves supporting ceremonies and rituals which require early rising (3:30-4:30am), endurance (today the youngins’ left at 3:30am to paddle a 6 man outrigger canoe around the nearby island of Molokini, in support of an historic swim, which includes the grandson of the Hawaiian legend, Duke Kahanamoku).
There have been many days of ‘service’ to a variety of recipients, from institutional to personal, from gardening duties, to supporting traditional (off-shore) weddings & funerals. They are surely getting a view of this crazily blended culture (which is aptly the description of most all but the most orthodox of communities), in a way uncommon to the tourists arriving relentlessly from east and west. Of course, sadly and valuably, we get a view of the truth that these islands have been overrun by (mostly) well-meaning foreigners who on the surface respect and admire the remnants of a complex and majestic culture, which is struggling to maintain its reverence for the past, the ancestral, the sacred and the natural, while surrendering to the inexorable insertion of unconscious beliefs and habitual interests which parade as progress, freedom, liberty and ‘assistance’. This , of course, is a bankrupt strategy, bereft of any attempt at sacred assimilation. Perhaps this is the story of all colonization; unwitting behaviors which overlay and smother the minority, where the healing edges of the insult are celebrated, but the open wounds of dishonest promise & violent disregard cause generations of grief and shame.
Of course there are extraordinary examples of courageous certainty. Kimokeo is one such practitioner. He seemingly and demonstrably treats us all as brothers and sisters, helps the needy, implores the privileged & holds a lofty vision of the possible. He is not alone, many men and women are in training, maintaining a reverence for ancestry and an unwavering devotion to a future which not only teaches, but demonstrates the attributes of a well considered body of ethics and epistemology, not without warts, though genuinely lovingly conceived and authentically pursued.
We are not the ‘lucky ones’. We chose this. 🙏🏽🤙🏽
Perhaps you know that we have just begun ‘Twinitiation’ ‘24, the 100 day Initiatory experience with and for Aiden and Owen, who’s high school graduation just passed, and what’s next is not yet clear. Their parents and I agree that the term ‘Gap Year’ is a weak and obsolete name for the time of life when the breadth of possibility is perhaps as wide as it will ever be. We agreed upon a ‘100 day journey’ that would include exposure to circumstances which would test their endurance, resilience, flexibility and world view. When I imagined what and where and who could suport this, it began with my dear friend and brother Kimokeo Kapahulehua- we would awake at 3:30 am (like today) to paddle long hours to and thru sunrise. We would participate in weddings and funerals, work in fields, sleep inconsistently, learn Hawaiian words and meanings, practice chants, live ‘Aloha’ as best as us mainlanders might do, with the help of those we encounter.
I’m not sure how active I’ll be recording or reporting, because, many things preclude photography, and I am spent by evening. It is a test in surrender and improvisation for all of us. We have weeks more here on the islands and then it is forward to the equator.