theParagon

up in the UP

_23:27

Right now i’m sitting in a dorm room with Ben, Jason and some friends. Jason and I got up here to Northern Michigan College last night around 20:00 (8:00 EST) and haven’t been bored since.

Last night we just walked around and took a small tour of the area, but today we had a blast doing everything. We ended up seeing the sun around 10:30 and went to Sugar Loaf Mountain and did some hiking.

Sugar Loaf isn’t a crazy hard hill but it’s pretty good for being in flat old Michigan. I can’t really explain the beauty one encounters but something I would suggest for anyone looking to find a place of peace.

After all that we decided to tobaggan down the easy hill. For no reason other than to cheat death. After a couple near death experiences (which we documented on film) we finally got to our car.

We were already a couple minutes late for this “direct action meeting” that started at noon and decided to not go back to the dorms and change. O- so you’re wondering what a “direct action meeting” is?

Wow - how do I explain this? To be short - it’s a group of people that learn how to act in protests. Figureing out who your groups are, who is responsible for what factors, and what to do when/if you are ever rushed by the police and have to go to jail.

We spent 4 hours learning all this crazy stuff and could have easily spent more time just soaking everything in. We had some great teachers and I might end up doing a small paper on all this later. You’ll honestly love it.

If all that wasn’t enough we then stopped for a small bit for food and then went see a band called “LOGJAMMERS”. Not going to even try to explain these guys other than just imagine 10 people jamm’in on some bongo drum while a ton of people dance like their on hot coals.

I’ve been taking pictures and hope to have all those up when I get back. It will probably explain everything alot better - I’m just having alot of fun up here and never want to go home.

posted on March 31, 2002 | 12:03 AM EST