Connor Holloway:
Waking up in the morning is astonishing. I have a window that faces the entire campus. It faces east, so when the morning sun rises, It shines on my face. This is my favorite way to start the day. I normally always naturally wake up around 6:30. Sometimes, I like to sleep in and miss roll call, but usually I wake up early. The lack of boys makes showering really easy. I always have the showers to myself. Sometimes I will listen to house music when I shower with other people. Getting ready in the morning with me is a long process because My hair routine is so long. Nnennaya, my favorite apprentice, bought me hair products that saved my life. She was one of the only people that I felt truly understood me. She taught me how to take care of my hair and the people in my cabin and life. I miss her and hope she gets to read this. After my shower in the morning, I like to get to breakfast and make a breakfast sandwich bagel. Then if it is a busy day, I will have classes all morning. On Wednesdays, however, I have a free period first. This is usually when I have online violin lessons. On Fridays, I have a free after P+P and I usually clean my cabin during that time in preparation for cabin inspection.
At lunch, I usually do my homework for the afternoon. After classes in the afternoon we have dinner. I have cook crew for dinner on Fridays, and it is made up of some of my favorite people. Study hall is my favorite time of the day because I like to slack off and not do my homework; instead, I spend time with people. I value this over school work because I will always be able to do precalculus, but won’t be able to be with these people under the same circumstances ever again. After study hall, we get ready for bed and tweak in front of the bathrooms. After that, we spend quality time debriefing snd chilling in the cabin until the next morning. My days might seem busy, but they are rewarding because every moment and moment in between is filled with laughter and visits with people that I love. These days have all become memories.
Sydney Huttner:
Coming back to campus after our 3rd expedition in the canyons, everyone was super excited to all be back together for our last 4 weeks of the semester. After a week of dumping snow at the beginning of May and digging through my clothes for warm layers to wear, the sun finally came out and campus now feels completely different. Since the warm weather, I think I’ve probably spent more time outside than inside. 50% of my time outside has been spent eating meals outside of who’s hall at a table long enough for the whole semester to sit together, doing work outside, going on walks, taking pictures, or going biking. The other 50% has been spent playing extremely competitive games of spikeball. With daily games that last hours, I’ve never been so thankful to be with 38 other kids who also always want to play. The routine of running outside after class to get in as many games before dinner, and continuing to rematch people until I win, has become such a highlight of this academic block, and HMI in general.
This academic block, I’ve also gotten a lot closer with the kids in my cabin. Knowing we only have a little bit of time left, we always want to stay up to be with each other. We decorated parts of the cabin, creating a bunk bed so we could have a communal closet, creating a picture wall of pictures we took throughout the semester, and putting up posters that fill the rest of our wall space.
This past weekend was the annual 10 mile fun run! After having AMX three times a week during each academic block, and training to be able to complete the run, it was super accomplishing to finish. As someone who is not a huge runner, my friends and I decided to walk the fun run, and we dressed up in funny costumes and listened to music the whole time. Even though we weren’t the fastest (we got 2nd to last place), it felt super accomplished just finishing the race and all the work we had done leading up to it.
This upcoming week is mostly filled with finishing up academics, wrapping up the semester, writing our final circles, and a lot of cleaning. We’ve been having a lot of conversations that we call “the going home series” which is meant to help us prepare to go back home to our own lives. While these conversations are needed, it’s super hard to talk about it as it becomes more real that we have to leave soon. As each day becomes a last (last Monday, last cook crew, last class, last cabin meetings), we are all trying to savor every moment we have here as we prepare to leave Leadville!
Abby Smith:
It’s hard for me to believe that it’s already the last academic block of HMI. Thinking back to the first few days of the semester, I remember how exciting and scary it was for there to be so many unknowns. I didn’t know about how many late nights I would spend talking with my cabinmates, how close I would feel with everyone I shared an expedition with, or all the amazing memories I would make. Over these four months, my feelings about the semester and the people here have shifted from overwhelming uneasiness and anxiety to a comforting knowledge that I have made family here and a love for who I have become while at HMI.
In these last few weeks, I have been anticipating the feeling of going home. Even though I have only experienced HMI for four months, I can’t imagine sleeping without six of my best friends five steps away from me, or doing my homework at my desk instead of next to the guitarists playing “Harvest Moon” on repeat in Who’s Hall. These small moments are what have made the HMI experience so meaningful to me, and experiencing them so close to the day we all go home has made me appreciate them so much more.
Toby Rivkin Brennan:
The third academic block flew by. After a restful spring break and an incredible 3rd expedition back in the canyons, it was great to be on campus again and to reconnect with friends and teachers. In the second week of the block, it unexpectedly snowed two feet overnight. Although the snow was beautiful, we were all sad to see the beautiful spring weather go – during which we spent our free time outside playing cornhole, soccer, frisbee and other great outdoor games. Not only did the snow shut down our wifi for two days, but the local church service was canceled. Although much of the semester doesn’t normally attend church, we were all planning on going to see some of our classmates play for mothers day, myself included. Regardless of this all, it was a great day where we spent the majority of it playing board games and hanging out all together inside. Later, once the 50 degree weather melted most of the snow down, we were able to go into Leadville for a final town time! I spent the day hanging out in cute cafes, visiting the thrift store, and scoring a last minute Melanzana fleece. Overall the third academic block has been incredible. The weather is warming up now and it’s beautiful outside. I’m sad to say the semester is coming to a close, but this last academic block has been one to remember.
Janna Cloninger:
At the start of HMI, I had no idea what to expect. Even though I had all the emails and I had scrolled through the website hundreds of times, I could never have imagined the semester I just had.
The magic of HMI is that there is no time to spend doing things that aren’t important. So, everything happens just a little quicker than it does in the real world. I remember the very first night, when I knew no one and I was scared, but there was no time for that, so we all sat around the fire laughing like we’d known each other for years. I still do that every night in my cabin, when I get to have sleepovers with eight of my new family members. I remember loading on a bus to go on a tour of our AM exercise routes on one of the first days, and someone said “you can see home from here,” and they were right. This place became my home before I was even aware of it, and it feels wonderful.
The magic here never goes away. It never even fades. Even in the lowest lows, we get to be together and remember our highest highs, and that feeling will never go away.
Trygve Jordahl:
The third academic block has flown by. We got back from third exped to mostly melted snow, but the following week, we awoke several mornings to more snow. Last Saturday night, we had Coffee House, and lots of people had talents to show off in performances. In my opinion, the highlights were Janna, Vivi and Noah’s performance of The Box, Kestrel and Sydney’s 3 minute interpretive dance, and Connor’s numerous guest appearances. Sam, Asher and myself spontaneously added an act, Follow You To Virgie by Tyler Childers, about 10 minutes before we performed it.
The next day was Mother’s day, and we woke up to 18+ inches of snow, which knocked out the power momentarily and the wifi all day. Sam and Connor were originally planning to play music at church service in town, and we were all going to watch them, but we got snowed in and had a fun inside day instead. We went into Leadville for our last town time of the semester, and it’s always super fun to walk around and buy things that we don’t need. The snow didn’t stick around long (even for a day) and the past couple days have been lovely. We’re in the midst of a Cornhole tournament (which Piper and I will be winning), and there’s a spikeball tournament in the works (which Nolan and I are gonna dominate). This academic block, I’ve also been working on picking up guitar, and I now know 5 chords and 90% of a song!
It’s been weird to come to terms with the fact that we’re leaving this beautiful place in 10 days, but I suppose all good things must come to an end. Right now, all I can worry about is the pile of homework I’ve been neglecting for the past couple days to play outside in the sun instead. I don’t regret any bit of it, but I need to lock in now.
Emerson Markiet:
“This will be the fastest semester of your life.” Mike Adler says to a group of kids scattered from all corners of the country. My eyes shifted nervously, trying to match names to faces with my arms wrapped around my knees, sheltering myself from the surrounding unfamiliarity, wondering if he was right. In all the daunting expeditions and academics, all the adaptations required of me, I saw a lifetime in front of me. I saw a world of the unknown waiting to be explored that I was tackling, alone. What the heck is a trowel?
But I’m in front of it now, my lifetime of belly-laughs and blisters. And it wasn’t so bad either. I made a quigloo, survived a flash flood, got sun poisoning, slept under the stars, giggled in the showers of Road Canyon with my tarp mates, and met a hospital nurse with a 4-inch long beard named Nate, who is an aspiring singer. I learned that in exploration, you can’t hide from discovering new parts of yourself too, not only your X for the day. HMI was a change for me, in responsibility I found self-trust, in struggle I found my strength, in heat and thirst I scoured myself for positivity, and in the cold I found my handwarmers lodged in the bottom left side of my 100 liter backpack. But it wasn’t just change, it was transformation. Only the mountains and I know what really happened up in that crazy hippie town, 10,000 feet up, oh, and the family I made along the way knows too.
Mirabelle Treves:
Study halls are not something that would seem “fun” to most, but in these last few weeks of our semester the every moment, even the two hours designated to studying every night is taken advantage of. Depending on the context two weeks could be extremely long or extremely short. At HMI where all time is warped and an hour can feel like a week but a week feels like a day, two weeks is not enough time with these people. That’s why I look forward to the time after dinner ends when the bell rings, commanding us to clean up and go get ready for bed. I look forward to the music being blasted as 28 girls cram around three sinks. I have also given up going to bed at a reasonable time so that I can spend as much time with my six roommates as possible. I cherish this small moment as much as I do the times we get to leave campus and adventure together because the moment we have left I will miss every part of my experience here.
Anna Palitti:
The third academic block at HMI. The last chance that we have to create the memories that will forever replay in our mind when we think about Who’s Hall or hour and a half classes, or study hall. Going into May and this last month at HMI I thought that I would have enough time to prepare myself for leaving. Enough time to process the fact that in just 10 short days I will be in New York and over 1,000 miles away from a place I call home. These last couple of weeks have been filled with some of my favorite times here. Especially when I got into a snow war with two other kids and I endlessly found myself laying on my back drenched from snow and laughing the whole time. When Avery and I, even after getting attacked by snowballs and secret ambushes for 15 minutes, continued to run out to the tree outside of our cabin and make snow angels because why not we were already soaked. I truly never thought that my time would ever end here, I don’t know why but it felt like something that I could hold onto forever. As we move into the ‘going home series’ as it is called I can’t help but think every single night that in less than two weeks I will be home. A home that was the only one I could only imagine until I stepped foot onto this campus. The past four nights in my cabin have ended in nine girls holding onto each other as we listen to Rivers and Roads and analyze every lyric relating it to our soon reality. But, we still have ten days, ten more days to continue our spikeball tournament. The moments Emerson and I scream at Toby and Sam that they are cheating and doing breathing exercises to get locked in, those are the moments that I am truly going to remember and that make up the home I have created here. I have learned in these last few weeks that it doesn’t matter if I don’t always see this family everyday after this semester. It is just about the way we will be permanently connected because of this shared experience.