Becca Berezuk: Student, Art, Music and the Outdoors
Interviewed in New Paltz, NY. May 9th, 2007
Born: 1989 in New York City, New York
— Calvin and Hobbes, in Bill Watterson’s “Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat,” Andrews McMeel, 1994, p. 14.
“Whenever we dream or have a vision, a
door is opening for us. If we learn something from that, that’s when we
actually know something. That is ‘knowing’…
“We don’t live in the real world here. This is a flesh and blood world, not the real world. The real world is where the spirit of osha comes and talks to me. The real world isn’t in technology or all those books. It’s in our visions and dreams.”
— Don Enrique Salmon, from “Plant Spirit Medicine,” by Eliot Cowan (Oregon, Swan-Raven & Co., p. 139)
BB:
How is learning important to me? I think we all know how to learn. It’s a normal thing. My curiosity really pushes me to learn. I like learning at my own pace: if I find something interesting, something I want to learn, I can learn about it.
I got really lucky with home schooling in math — I had such a horrible time with math, I could never do it — because I really got good at it when I did it at my own pace. I need to go at my own pace. When I was with a class doing math it was horrible torture, I didn’t like it at all. Now I like it.
LS:
What’s your schooling background?
BB:
I went to the school I’m actually teaching at now, Dayspring Community School, a Waldorf pre-school. I went there through 2nd grade and then they had to stop doing the grades because there just wasn’t enough people. Everyone who was in first and second grade from where I live started this big van pool to come up here to New Paltz.
Starting in 3rd grade I went to Mountain Laurel, a Waldorf school in New Paltz. Then for 9th grade I went to a community school that was around for two years. It had teachers from all over, and there were about 10 to 15 kids in the class. I liked it, but it was hard because I lived so far away. I never went to public school.
In 10th grade I went around the world with my grandparents. When I returned, I went back to home schooling. I tried to do home schooling while I was gone — while I was traveling — but that was really hard and I didn’t get much done.
LS:
What was the idea behind the programs at these schools?
BB:
In Waldorf schools you do blocks. A block is where you have Main Lesson for two hours each morning in which you study one thing for three weeks. So you might do math every morning for 2 hours for three weeks. And then you do history every morning for 2 hours for three weeks. Then the rest of the day you regular classes, like math a few times a week, English few times a week, and language every day. We followed that same rhythm. I liked it, but the school was far away.
LS:
Are there important things you felt you learned at the Waldorf schools?
BB:
The one thing that
I am so grateful for at Waldorf schools is that they had a huge impact on my
life. In nursery and kindergarten you play with silks and ropes and oddly shaped
pieces of wood. You play outside a lot, so it really makes your imagination
work. You don’t have computers at all, or those annoying plastic toys with the
buttons that make electronic noises. That’s why I’m teaching now, trying to
give back to that.
I always wondered why, when I compared myself to my friends who went to public school, I had way, way more of an imagination than them. Way, way more! Like I would say, “You guys are so boring! Think of something more interesting!” That continues throughout the Waldorf grades, not so much in the older grades, in 4th grade they start letting it go a little bit.
Something I learned from Mountain Laurel was art. I really focused on art a lot, and music, art with your body, and painting and sculpture. In Main Lesson you make your own textbook. If I was in the history block we’d learn whatever we’d learn about, then we’d have to write something about it, and we’d usually draw with it: there’s always some kind of art incorporated into it. You do that up through 12th grade in Waldorf school.
I was really glad to do the art. They teach drawing in a really interesting way: you can’t use outlines. In the younger grades you just use these block crayons. I learned how to make people that way. It’s just the way they teach art: I really liked it. I remember when I was younger and I used to drive with kids who went to public school. My drawings were really different compared to them.
LS:
Were you ever bored?
BB:
It’s really weird — and I think about this a lot — it takes a lot for me to get bored. I don’t get bored easily. I have to be stuck for hours with nothing to do. I think it was just how I was raised. I mean, if you’re bored you find something to do! So I was never really bored in school. I can’t remember really ever being… maybe there were times when I was bored, but…
LS:
Are you motivated? Is that the same thing as saying your not bored?
BB:
I am motivated. I think the reason that I don’t get bored easily is that I can find something to do relatively quickly. I just think of things to do. If I’m, like, sitting around with my little bother in a waiting room we have these weird games we play. If I have a notebook with me, then I write poems. I like to draw a lot. I like to watch people and their body language.
LS:
I talk to a lot of kids in public schools. They usually phrase what they do in terms of what they’re supposed to do. They’re busy doing this, they’re supposed to be doing that… How did you decide what you wanted to do? What kind of goals did you have?
BB:
Well, when I was in Mountain Laurel I was really into music so I worked really hard at music. I was in three, sometimes four orchestras. In one it was really hard to stay in first, second or third cello.
I started music when I was in 4th grade. I know I had goals. I think they were short-term goals, like finishing something, or getting better at something, or learning to be able to speak more. I didn’t really have a long-term view: the rest of my life was sort of distant. When I was in 6th or 7th grade the thought of going to college, getting a job, getting married and having little babies… it was so far away!
LS:
How have your goals evolved?
BB:
I’ve just gotten
older and the things that seemed so far away aren’t so far away anymore. I know
older people who I thought of as my friends who are getting married now. They
were a lot older, but we were still a lot closer than I was to any adults. The
time is getting shorter and shorter. It’s like you realize that life doesn’t go
on forever [laughs]!
LS:
That’s a strange thing to suddenly realize. When did you realize that?
BB:
It’s not a sad
realization. Maybe it’s because you grow a lot when you hit your middle teens.
You make a big, big leap in growth. When you’re younger it’s spread out more.
So I’d think, “Oh, wow. I’m getting kind of old now.” Not that I’m getting
“old”, but I’m older than I was last fall! When I turned 18 I went, “Ahhh! I’m
really old now!” People told me, “You can vote, you can drive, and you can buy
cigarettes.” And I said, “What? I can?” I don’t go out and buy cigarettes
often! [laughs]
LS:
Tell me about this big trip thing because that seems so important.
BB:
I don’t really remember how it first came up. I had just turned 16 and my grandparents just mentioned in passing: “Oh, wouldn’t it be great if you went around the world with us?” I didn’t really think they were serious. It took a little bit of time to sink in. I think I decided to go with them because I was never going to get that chance again.
Some places I knew a little about — I was just really excited — and other parts of the trip we had to figure out where we were going to go. They had a rough draft of the places they were going to visit, but they hadn’t decided how long. I didn’t really have any expectations — I just wanted to learn a lot. I didn’t really know what it was going to be like.
The trip was about 6 months long. First we went to Singapore for 2 or 3 weeks. Then down to Australia, mostly Tasmania and New Zealand. When I was in Tasmania — my grandparents were planning on moving there — we just practiced living because they wanted to see if they wanted to move there. Then I went to Thailand and some countries in Europe, but I wasn’t in Europe for long.
The first thing was the shock of how different it was. We got to Singapore right when George W. Bush was about to be re-elected, and if we said we were American no one would talk to us. It was very strange to see firsthand how upset the world was with America. If we said we were from America they would walk away from us.
That really brought in to me just how different countries are from each other. They have these little strange differences too, like Singapore is very clean. Chewing gum is illegal, you can’t even bring it into the country. Everything is so clean — there’s like not a piece of garbage anywhere — even the leaves look like they were shined! If you jaywalk you’ll be arrested. You get fined for every infraction. I saw a T-shirt that said, “Singapore is a Fine Place”, and below it had lists of everything you can’t do. [laughs] The way people dress and talk is so different. The smallest things make a big difference when they add up.
We went bicycling around Pulau Lagoon and went to this Buddhist Temple in the middle of the jungle. I had this kind of scary experience where I climbed this tree — I had gotten way ahead of my grandparents — so that I could look back over the path that I’d just come. I was sitting in this tree, not really sure if I should be there, and I heard this crashing and thrashing that sounded like there was this really huge guy wandering around in the woods. It turned out it was just some Komodo Dragons. Five came and were playing around the base of the tree. They were really fun to watch, they’re really huge, giant!
Then we went to Tasmania where we were house-sitting for this woman. In the mornings I did school work, then had lunch, and afterwards we’d go see something. We didn’t have a car so we had to walk everywhere. We could take a bus, but we were in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, and the town was really small. It was nice to get to walk everywhere.
55% of Tasmania is reserves and parks and stuff. They’re really conscious about the environment. Whole towns would decide, “Oh, we’re not going to use plastic bags.” So if you go to the grocery store in one of these towns and you don’t know that, then they’ll just put your groceries on the counter and you think, like,… “OK…?” And you have to find a place to put them! There weren’t any plastic bags anywhere. I really liked how they all agreed to do that. They were a lot more laid back. It was so small — it’s a small island.
I was really excited about how different everything was, like the trees were different and that smell of eucalyptus everywhere. I had never been to anywhere really different from where I live. The vegetables where HUGE in Tasmania. Celery was, like, 3 feet high! This was normal celery: you could eat it for a week! I think it’s because of the fertile volcanic soil.
I learned a lot about animals, I got really good at identifying birds because birds are really different there: purple and blue and bright pink, with these bizarre calls so it’s not that hard to recognize them. And I bought a bird book, and a plant book.
I met this really nice guy who worked at an animal rehabilitation shelter who taught me about all the animals, like wombats. Wombats are so cool! And I got to see Koala bears a lot, and Wallabies, which are smaller relatives of kangaroos. They’re kind of like what rabbits are here: they get in people’s gardens and eat things.
He showed me Tasmanian Devils, which are really cute and cuddly: really small, black and white with pointy ears. They’re teensy, teensy, teensy but their jaws have the strength of a Great White Shark. They have this bizarre cry, which is how they got their name. When the islanders first came to Tasmania the Westerners thought the island was haunted by the lost souls of the Aborigines that they had, like, mass murdered. They have this really eerie scream. If you heard it you’d picture a completely different animal.
I got to hike a lot, really long hikes. My grandparents were very fit, but on the really hard hikes, the all day hikes, I’d go by myself. The trails were pretty well marked and you’d sign in and sign out at the bottom of the trail.
LS:
You went alone? Did you know how to read maps?
BB:
Yeah, I knew how to read topographical maps. I’d learned that in Vermont Wilderness School, the survival school. I’d been doing that since 7th grade.
I learned a lot about history there. Tasmania is sort of the Alcatraz of Australia. I went to a women’s prison there, it was really horrible what they did to prisoners. The Aborigines were really wiped out when Westerners first colonized Australia. All the buildings are still there, in ruins. And people seemed really sad about what had happened there. I read books and articles, visited a lot of places and talked to a lot of people.
LS:
How did you reach the point of
studying it at that depth, were you encouraged to do that?
BB:
Yeah, I was
definitely encouraged. Some of it was really accidental, it was just cool to
visit these places and my grandparents would talk about it a lot, because they
knew Tasmania really well. They would tell me stuff. They gave me a lot of
books and they really encouraged me.
LS:
It’s unusual to have a direct experience of something that you’re learning about. That makes it lot more personal, especially if you learning by talking to people.
BB:
I really found myself wanting to learn more about all the places where I spent the most time. It was interesting; I really liked it. The people were really cool.
LS:
What do you think you took away from this experience? Did it change you?
BB:
The greatest effects happened when I left New Zealand. I didn’t gain that much from the time in Tasmania. I was having a really hard time for the first 3 months. I was homesick. I didn’t have any friends. I wasn’t able to keep in touch with anyone. And the age difference between me and my grandparents… in some ways we just couldn’t quite connect. Maybe that just wasn’t my place.
In New Zealand I was much happier. It’s really beautiful there, and I really liked the Maori culture. They just seemed to be my kind of people: totally down to earth. They don’t ever want to go inside: they’re jumping off of bridges and hiking all the time! I could see myself living there.
My grandparents didn’t know so many people in New Zealand, but they’d meet people, they’re good at that. It’s harder for me to meet people, I’m just shy: it takes me a while to warm up to people. I’ve gotten a lot better at it, but at the time it would take me a long time to know someone well enough to open up to them. It’s something I’ve tried really hard to fix.
LS:
How did you work on that, did you
force yourself?
BB:
I didn’t try too
hard. When I met someone I wouldn’t feel comfortable talking with them
—just talking is all that’s really required — I’d have to trust
them. Then, after maybe a week, I’ll know that person a lot better than any of
my friends will know them, friends who are really outgoing. It’s just the way I
am, but it does make it hard for me to make friends in a short period of time.
LS:
Tell me about the wilderness school, how did you get involved with that?
BB:
That started in 7th grade. One day my class was talking together, trying to think of something that we all wanted to learn, and we all wanted to learn how to survive in the woods. My teacher overheard us and knew about the Vermont Wilderness School program. At the end of the school year my teacher said, “Hey, we’re going to go on a field trip on the first week of school!” It was the first of this three-part training program at the Vermont Wilderness School, and that was the first week of 7th grade.
In the first program they just teach you the basics: how to make a fire, how to build a shelter. They didn’t teach us that much about food or water because those aren’t really that important: the important things are first shelter, then fire, water, and food, depending on your situation.
They taught us a lot about just being in the woods. There is so much difference of being in a house and living in the woods. I know, because now some of my teachers tell me, “Becca, you complained a lot when you first came!” [laughs]
Sleeping outside for 3 or 4 days was hard enough. We did a lot of this physical stuff that I thought was, like, torture, but now I’m glad I did it. They would make us run around this huge field with water in our mouths. Running, running! It makes your lungs work really well; I actually liked doing it. And just crawling around on the ground; all this stuff that we thought was kind of weird, but actually had a point to it.
The second time we went was at the end of 7th grade. We did group survival things. When we got there they took away all our electronic stuff: our Walkman CD players, and our watches. Then they took away our primping stuff, like our hair brushes.
I actually really like it when I don’t have my watch: time is so important in this world but there, when you’re hungry you eat, when you’re tired you go to sleep.
We slept in the tent that night and the next day they said, “OK, pack up your stuff.” We packed it up and left it under a tree. We took our knives and our water bottles and the girls and the boys split up. We did a group survival thing where we had to build a shelter, get a fire going. We did do some basic wild edible things, but they brought us food and water.
The third program, which was in 8th grade, was the solo. You spend the first 2 or 3 days getting ready for that just making sure you’re comfortable with your skills and then they sit you down and say, “OK, you’re going out for 36 hours. What do you think you need to bring?” And you say, “Well, I don’t think I can make a fire with a bow-drill set, can I bring some matches?” And they’ll say, “Why don’t you bring 2 matches so that you push yourself.” Or you might say, “I hate bugs, and I don’t want to sleep in a debris shelter! Can I bring a tent?” And they’ll say, “Why don’t you just bring a sleeping bag, build a debris shelter, and sleep with your sleeping bag inside the debris shelter.” If you didn’t think you could get enough food or water for 36 hours — but you don’t really need anything for that short amount of time — then they might tell you to bring a potato, which you’ll have to get a fire going in order to cook, and a water bottle. So it really depended on what your skill level was. You just work it out for who you are.
Then you go out and spend that time alone, and when you come back there is a celebration honoring your journey. And the last day you just eat a lot [laughs] because you’re really hungry!
LS:
When did that program have an impact on you?
BB:
The first second I put my foot onto the property! [laughs] I actually did this nature camp when I was younger that was taught by two Native American women. I was really little. When people see someone make a fire out of a bow-drill set for the first time… there’s something about the impact that that has… you can see it in their faces. So I’d had a little of that and I just liked it; I just like being outside.
We all have it in us, that’s sort of their philosophy, everyone can go out and live in the woods, we’ve just forgotten how. I like being with myself, not having anyone else to rely on. I honestly think I’ve made the best friendships at that program because of having nothing but yourself. It’s really raw, the whole thing. I was there for 3 summer camps, and at the last one I was actually a counselor, not as a camper. The distance between when I first came, just building a shelter with a bunch of girls, to being by myself for a few days with nothing… I really liked that.
LS:
Can you describe that? Most people don’t know what you’re talking
about.
BB:
As you learn more you get more difficult challenges. From going on a 36 hour solo with matches, a potato and a water bottle, to going for 3 days with no matches, food or water, or just fasting. There are different levels and there are different kinds of solos. There are solos to survive, and there are solos that are vision quests where you do more inner work than survival work.
When I did the vision quest I was comfortable that I could go and make a fire and have a nice, big breakfast from stuff I’d found, that I wouldn’t get dehydrated, I wouldn’t be cold at night, and I wouldn’t get wet if it rained. I definitely can’t to that for a long period of time; if I was out in the woods for over a month I think I’d be pretty thin but the time I came back.
LS:
When you say you’re pretty comfortable with what you can do, what
would you bring with you?
BB:
I just bring my
knife, shorts, shirt, and maybe a hat.
When I went on my vision quest I brought a blanket, because I wasn’t really trying to test my survival skills, and maybe some water, I can’t remember. I was fasting for two days, but I couldn’t get a fire, it was really frustrating. The first thing you do is build your shelter because if it starts raining and all you’ve got is a fire, then you’re still going to get wet. But if you have a shelter and no fire, then you’ll be dry.
I have to say that before, in my survival solos, I would build really elaborate shelters. I really liked building debris shelters: they’d have shelves inside, these really cool doors, and they’d be totally waterproof. I spent a lot of time making them really good, spending a lot of energy, putting on tons of leaves.
But when I went on the vision quest I built this really crappy lean-to: really bad. It was a beautiful sunny day out, a clear sky, 70 degrees. “What could go wrong?” That’s what I was thinking. I just needed a shelter so I built this really bad lean-to. And then I tried getting a fire, but I couldn’t get it started in the morning, and I tried again but still couldn’t get it going in the afternoon, and in the evening I was really tired since I hadn’t eaten since the night before.
I went to sleep and then next day I woke up and tried again to start a fire, but I couldn’t. I was trying so hard, I remember being so frustrated! I redid my bow and drill set and just kept trying and trying. It just wasn’t happening for me. Then I said, “OK, I should just let this go.”
I couldn’t find a place to dig a spring, and I didn’t drink anything for a day and a half and I was starting to get a little loopy. I got water another way, it’s not the best way, it’s using a grape vine: you cut them and they actually pump out water but it’s not good because you kill the grape vine and usually you only get a drip of water. But I put my pot under the grape vine — I’d brought a pot to boil the water I planned to get from the spring — it was like the magic grape vine because when I came back an hour later the pot was overflowing.
Then this huge storm came, the worst storm I’ve seen when I was in Vermont. I was having all these really strange dreams — I still don’t know what they mean. There was always this woman in them, this woman in white. In every dream I had, no matter how stupid the dream was. I remember having this dream about Godzilla and she was somehow incorporated into that.
Then that night — there was also this bunch of boys who were going on a really long vision quest — I had this dream about them. I drew a lot of pictures about them when I came back. It was just really hard, I’ve never had that kind of experience. That was the night of this really big storm. It was really one of the hardest things I’ve ever had because of that one dream. It wasn’t entirely a dream because I was awake, I was conscious of what was going on around me, but I wasn’t quite awake. I remember there was a lot of blood in the dream and I almost felt it on me, but it was actually the rain.
The trees were groaning, and the wind was howling, and a branch fell on my shelter and knocked it down. Knocked it down while I was sleeping it in, so now I’m soaking wet. I didn’t really care, I guess. I didn’t really care. I just kind of pushed myself out of it, and threw the sticks out and went to sleep in a pile of leaves. Honesty it really didn’t bother me.
The next morning, which was the morning that I was leaving, it was one of my funniest memories! [laughs] I just kind of covered myself in the leaves to keep the water off of me and I was just sleeping there. I was kind of awake and I was wondering when someone was going to come to me and tell me that it’s time to leave. I was just waiting and I didn’t even bother getting out. I was so tired then, I was so tired.
Then I heard this voice, “Becca? Becca?” And I kind of poke my head out of the leaves and one of my counselors, Kevin, he’s just standing there staring at me in my piles of leaves because I was always famous for my skill at shelter building.
It was just a really nice moment to come out of that state of really hard-core dreaming and see a person. If you don’t see another person for a real long time, then it’s nice to see another face, something familiar.
When I got back they had the whole “welcome you back” ceremony where you sit and you tell your story about what you went through. They ask, “What was your darkest hour, what got you through it, and what have you learned from it?” Those are usually the three questions.
For me, my darkest hour was that night when I had that dream because it was about people who were so close to me. They were doing their vision quest at the same time and my dream was almost about their experience. I talked about how it was hard for me to lie in my shelter when they were in so much pain in my dream. I got through that by knowing that it was their inner battle to deal with, and not mine. I learned so much about myself from being there, just from lying in that heap of leaves.
I really appreciate the space they make to welcome you back after an experience like that. How they honor you and acknowledge the fact that you’ve grown, and that you’re a different person than you were three days earlier. It would be really hard to go through something so strong as that and not have anyone acknowledge it. Now I know that if someone’s gone through something, then what I clearly need to do is just listen to them, that’s what seems to help.
I give the example of the vision quest because that was the hardest for me emotionally. The survival stuff was hard, but you have survival things to help you, like the shelter, and the fire. The hardest thing might be finding food. But the vision quest was more of a change for me to go through.
LS:
You consider that most kids go to public schools and they don’t have the chance for an alternative experience: private schools are expensive, and almost no one has grandparents who can take them around the world.
If you could speak to other kids where are roughly in your situation, then what would you say was the most important thing, in terms of growing and learning, that they could do for themselves?
BB:
Most of my life has been an alternative experience: I have never gone to a public school. It depends on the person. I guess I would say that you should just live your life. It doesn’t have to go by the books, you don’t have to do it a certain way. If you want to do something different, that’s OK, it makes us who we are, it makes us different people.
What I learned from Vermont Wilderness School was that no matter where I go, or what kind of problems I’m having, the wilderness is always going to be there to help me. I really got to put that into action when I traveled around the world because I got to see what it was like being in the jungle, or the Australian desert, different mountains. I would say that you shouldn’t just assume that being outside is buggy and wet and horrible, because it’s really one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever been.
Not being who you really are, just following along the path with everyone else, maybe taking a detour once in a while, and spending more time outside, which is really healthy for people. People who spend a lot of time outside seem really balanced, they have a whole aura about them. Do you know what I’m talking about?
LS:
Ummm… I don’t know. I mean sure, I could imagine. But I know a lot of people who spend a lot of time outside who seem somewhat normal. There’s sort of an illusion that I rebel against that the outdoors can save you. There are certain problems which the outdoors can’t solve and which you have to solve yourself. I knew people who were very out-doorsy, but they couldn’t resolve their own inner demons.
Outdoors can be destructive as well as constructive — it is what it is — and you can climb a mountain or you can throw yourself off a mountain, it’s up to you, the mountain doesn’t care. I know people who didn’t take responsibility for themselves and played a kind of Russian Roulette game with the outdoors and got hurt or killed. But there remains a kind of romanticism about the power of the outdoors.
BB:
That’s almost what
I was saying. I’m not saying that if you go out side, that’s going to save you.
Getting outside gives you a space where you can save yourself.
The reason that I think I trust being outside is because some of my most powerful experiences — experiences that helped me grow a lot — happened when I was outside. And like you said, it can be really destructive too: I have been really hurt when I was on these programs, like badly hurt. But every time that I’ve been hurt it has been my fault, completely. Like I forgot something, or I was stupid about something, or I wasn’t quite focused.
Some people just don’t do well inside, this is just me: I thrive when I’m outside. I’ve honestly made the best friendships and gone through a lot of inner stuff when I was outside. And it gives me a place to go when I’m upset.
I suppose the reason I go outside is because I have, one, two… [laughs] I can’t even count them… six brothers and sisters. I have a BIG family and if everyone’s home it gets really chaotic.
I really like having quiet and being outside. Sometimes when I’m at home for a really long time and haven’t gotten the chance to get somewhere really quiet, and I finally do, the sound of quiet is the strangest noise to me.
