Canoeing, backpacking, writing about the wind and gathering berries for dinner may sound more like a weekend camping trip than a day in a University student's life.
But 11 students experience such events every day as part of the "Natural History Writer's Project" - a semester-long living-learning program at the BioStation in the northern tip of Michigan's lower peninsula.
"Our focus is on examining how society, and especially ourselves, interact with the environment," said Engineering sophomore Ryan O'Connor, a participant in the program.
The BioStation program is a variation of the Residential College's community living-learning atmosphere - what organizers call an "intentional community."
"Intentional communities are groups of people that choose to live together to achieve certain goals," said Catherine Badgley, creator and director of NHWP.
Badgley said many of the program's goals are met through making group decisions as equals on such aspects of daily life as work, events and holidays.
Their community has decided to emphasize the ideas of "living deliberately" and bioregionalism, a way of life emphasizing survival on only the surrounding habitat - including food from local farms and a simple lifestyle.
"A lot of (our) decisions are made about food because we have total control of that," Badgley said.
LSA junior Matthew Pierle said group members cook all of their own meals and bake their own breads and pastries.
"Furthermore, as we become more familiar with local fruits, berries, nuts, herbs and mushrooms, we've been gathering a fair deal of food products from the grounds on and around the BioStation," Pierle said. "We'll be slaughtering our own turkeys for Thanksgiving and that may make further vegetarians out of some of the seven or eight omnivorous members."
Beyond sharing their daily cooking, cleaning and bread-baking duties, the students have classes six days a week.
"Overall, the atmosphere is the most conducive to learning I have ever experienced, and is much, much better than nearly any standard University class," O'Connor said.
The classes - field ecology, culture and the environment, and creative writing - are all interdisciplinary.
"Our assignments and projects are inclusive of all the topics - the goal is to understand them as interconnected. This is the extreme opposite of the typical U-M chemistry or anthropology lecture, which is as esoteric and lacking of any connection to the real world as possible," said LSA junior Angie Migliaccio. She added that students in the program do not take tests or quizzes.
Speaking of connections to the real world, despite the outdoorsy setting and emphasis on closeness to nature, the group maintains much contact with "the outside" through e-mail, letters, radio and visitors.
"We have guest faculty and researchers from the University visit and share with our community, as well as environmental writers, friends and family," Pierle said.
Students said the program has proved to be a life-changing experience.
"I think I have learned more here in three months than I think I would learn in four years at U-M's main campus," O'Connor said.
"This fall helped me develop my own values in life, and opened my eyes to many different paths my life might take," he said.
The NHWP, which was originally slated to run twice - once in 1994 and once this year, may or may not continue. Badgley said plans for the future of the program have not been discussed, but students said the effects of the program will stay with them for years.
"These people are thinking, synthesizing and stand-up individuals," Pierle said. "I have no doubt that what we learned and shared with one another here will benefit a great deal of people in direct and indirect ways for some time to come."