Remote and mysterious, the canyons and red rock desert of southern Utah offer a unique lens through which to view the natural history of the American Southwest.   Six hundred miles to the south, the austere Sonoran desert is bisected by the US-Mexico border, a political boundary that cuts across families, cultures, and ecosystems alike.  Our Roaring Canyons Semester is a 15-week immersion in place-based experiential learning, extended wilderness travel, cross-border cultural experiences, and climate-resilient community living.  As we travel through varied desert landscapes on foot and by canoe, we will immerse ourselves in the deep history of these regions and witness firsthand the complexities of life at the crossroads of Mexican, American, and Indigenous cultures.

Our classrooms include Desolation, Labyrinth, and Cataract Canyons, cut over the eons by the Green and Colorado Rivers.  Over the course of a six week continuous expedition, we’ll paddle, portage, and line our canoes through some of the most remote whitewater in North America.  Then we’ll go deeper, using technical gear to descend for days at a time into the Robbers’ Roost canyon complex.  Our guides and mentors are seasoned Kroka staff who have spent years living off the grid and under the stars, but our best teachers are the flora and fauna, the wind and the snow, and the people who have inhabited these canyonlands for generations.  This unique experience will both build our team and prepare our minds, bodies, and hearts for two weeks of service spanning both sides of the international border.

The Roaring Canyons Semester offers myriad possibilities for exploration, academic learning, self discovery, and, following in the footsteps of John Wesley Powell, Apache Chief Cochise, and Butch Cassidy, timeless western adventure.

SEPTEMBER:

Authentic Community, Traditional Crafts, and Sustainable Living at Kroka 

Students will make their home at our basecamp on the Kroka farm in Marlow, NH. Here our days will be rich with place-based adventures that weave together farming, service, study, crafts and community.  The rhythms of basecamp life will be balanced by a week-long expedition to prepare for the journey ahead. With a backdrop of brilliant fall colors, we will paddle and hike through the New England wilderness, building our strength and endurance, while learning from local farmers and craftspeople.  Throughout the month, each student will make a knife, sew a sheath, carve a spoon, compose a poem, and paint a landscape.  Around the campfire, we’ll read aloud from classic works of literature and students will write essays and daily journal prompts by hand.  At the end of the month, we’ll set our sights on the Canyons of the Colorado and the deserts of Utah and Sonora for our culminating expedition and cultural immersion.  We’ll travel west together, stopping to interact with inspiring farmers, community organizers and artisans.

OCTOBER:

Encounters with the Natural World on Remote Wilderness Expeditions  

We will paddle, portage, hike, and rappel through awe-inspiring desert landscapes, experiencing the warmth of the sun by day and the brilliant tapestry of stars by night. Our odyssey down the Green and Colorado Rivers will be complemented by forays up side canyons immortalized by Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire. We will study the geology, petroglyphs, pictographs, flora and fauna that we encounter.  From the abandoned Marina at Hite, which the receding waters of Lake Powell have transformed into a modern ghost town, we’ll venture on foot for three weeks into the hinterlands along the Dirty Devil River.  Here, in the shadow of the Henry mountains, the last range in the Lower 48 to be mapped, we’ll descend into a maze-like canyon system so remote that it was once used as a hideout for Butch Cassidy’s infamous Wild Bunch.   With little more than our judgement, some paper maps, and a few hundred feet of rope, we’ll explore seldom seen slot canyons that are amongst the least known of America’s natural treasures.

Our prior preparations will allow students to thrive in this rugged and beautiful wilderness.  Using our leadership curriculum, the group will work towards a week-long, student-led independent expedition.  We will draw on our strength as a community to support each other in transforming into our true and authentic selves.  Students will emerge from extended wilderness travel with a renewed sense of confidence and self-awareness, ready to confront the complexities of the Mexican-American Border in 2025.

NOVEMBER:

Meaningful Service and Social Justice in the Borderlands 

After a visit to the Navajo Nation, we will rest in Flagstaff and undertake a hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  We will then journey to two towns named Nogales, one of which lies in Arizona, and the other across the border wall in Sonora, Mexico.  Here we’ll witness the cultures and conflicts along the border as political changes in both countries transform the lives of millions.  Our partner organizations on both sides of the border include No More Deaths, Casa de la Misericordia y de Todos Naciones, and the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, whose former pastor, John Fife was a co-founder of the Sanctuary Movement. Students will have the opportunity to converse in Spanish, mentor migrant children, participate in food preparation and work projects at a shelter, and help with a water drop in a remote desert location. In between these visits, we will take time to reconnect with nature and recharge our spirits in Cochise Stronghold, where the Chokonen Band of the Chiricahua Apache held off the US Army for 10 years in the 19th century.  Today, the Stronghold is an unparalleled place to study the Sonoran desert ecosystem, learn about the human toll of Manifest Destiny, and, time permitting, sample some of the highest quality rock climbing in the United States.