Outside Adventure Grant team biographies

Hope Jackson

My name is Louisa Hope Jackson, but I have always been called Hope. My birthday is on the same day as my older brother Dylan’s (only five years part), and I think that out of my three brothers Dylan is the one I have the most in common with. One thing I know we all share is the love for adventure and the outdoors. My family moved to an island off the coast of Maine when I was three years old, until that time we lived in Brooklin, Maine. All my life I have been near the ocean, so I know how and love to sail, row, swim and do any other kind of water activity. Sailboat racing is my favorite water sport. I also like to do a lot of different crafts including sewing and dollmaking. I enjoy singing and acting, and I recently participated in a musical version of The Wind in the Willows.

We have been homeschooling for the past five years, and although there are some hard parts of homeschooling, I think I will always prefer it to any other kind of education. Reading is one of my favorite past times. Last summer some friends and I started a club called the Chickadees, and I became the editor of our newsletter called the Chickadee News. A few years ago I became interested in gymnastics and take classes on a nearby island and on the mainland whenever I can. I have spent a large part of my time being a playmate for my youngest brother, Oakley (and keeping him out of mischief).

I am very excited about the upcoming trip to Baffin Island, and though I can’t wait to be there I think the time to go will come much faster than we expect.

Tristan

Tristan Jackson

I was born on September 7, 1982, on a farm in Owosso, Michigan. I was named Tristan, after an old sailor/author, Tristan Jones, and about two months after I was born my family and I moved into a borrowed 30-foot steel sloop on the coast of Florida. While sailing we met a family who told us of an island way up in Maine that had land for sale. Also in Maine was an opportunity for dad to teach sailing at a girl’s camp. When it came time to return our dear sloop Katie to her owners, we moved to Sedgwick, Maine where the camp was located. We also bought three acres of land on the island, which turned out to be an excellent little piece of the wilderness named Green’s Island. Eventually the salt water in our veins sent us to the sea again; when I was two, we shipped aboard a 105-foot Greenpeace ship, a ketch called the Fri, bound for the Great Lakes. After we left the Fri we moved to Brooklin, a small town not far from the camp where we had lived before. There we added two members to the family: first a sister, Hope, then a third brother, Oakley. As soon as it was deemed that the older children were old enough (I was seven) we moved out to our land on the island and set up home in tents. Green’s Island had become our headquarters.

While I seem to have forgotten the bulk of my first year’s travels, learning to walk, talk, and just fool around on a small sailboat undoubtedly influenced my character somewhat, as the further events of my life surely show: by six years of age, my brother and I were flying alone to visit relatives in Kansas, when I was seven we took the train to the Grand Canyon. More recently, in the spring of ‘96, I spent two months in Alaska, riding a bike 200 miles along the Brook’s Range and rafting 600 miles down the Koyukuk River, and in ‘97 I flew to San Francisco to spend a few weeks with my great aunt and uncle. Most recent of all, in the future actually, is the planned trip to Baffin Island when my brother Dylan, younger sister Hope and I will walk the 60 miles across Ayuittuq National Park. Should be the greatest yet!

When not roaming the countryside, I enjoy homeschooling, acting, writing, and various crafts (silversmithing, boatbuilding) ornithology and botany. Projects underway on the old home front include building our new house (we moved from tents into our 20 x 20 foot “shop”, too small for six!) and the resurrection of Katie. On a trip to Florida to visit relatives several years ago, mom went by to see how she was doing, and was disturbed to find her in a critically rusty condition. On asking the owner what Katie’s fate was to be, she was told they were looking for a good home for her, and, knowing our attachment to the boat, offered her to us. Not the sleek and seaworthy craft she was 15 years ago, but still we hope to rebuild her for “Global Challenge 2000”: round the world journey to begin at the turn of the century.

Dylan

Dylan Jackson (left)

Right from the start our family has been one that travels as much as we can. My earliest memories are of boats and going places. When I was still a baby my mother and father (and little brother Tristan) borrowed a friend’s boat and spent a year refurbishing it and sailing it along the coast of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. I can’t remember that year of course, but I have no doubt that it has influenced the rest of my life. Living on the water for a year, my parents decided that they wanted to raise their kids near the ocean, so they moved to Maine.

After a couple of years, before my sister Hope was born, we once again lived aboard a ship, this time on the Greenpeace vessel Fri. We were on the ship as it sailed from New York, up the St. Lawrence, and into the Great Lakes. In 1985, we returned to Brooklin, ME, where my sister was born and we lived for the next several years. In ‘89, not long after my youngest brother Oakley was born, my parents decided to move to a small island in Penobscot Bay, where we settled down and built ourselves a cabin. The island we live on has very few inhabitants and almost no modern conveniences. Drinking, bathing, and cooking water is carried from a dug well, all the electricity we need comes from two solar panels. For the first three years we lived there we attended school on a neighboring island, but for the past five years we have chosen to homeschool, partly due to the difficulty involved in getting from one island to the next in the middle of winter, and also because we think of it as an interesting and productive way to educate ourselves. It has also allowed us to follow opportunities that have come our way.

My parents choice of lifestyle has worn off on me; I love the ocean and sailing on it, I am excited by travel and have taken myself on several trips, I enjoy working with my hands — building, woodworking and the like. I am interested in natural history and biology, as well as acting and photography. In ‘93, my father and I went to Indonesia to work aboard a sailing ship for two months. From that trip came a curiosity in Southeast Asia, and last year I left to study in Thailand for 11 months on an AFS program. I returned home from that two months ago, satisfied and with a year’s worth of amazing experiences. Now I am back on the island with my family, looking forward to summer, the sailing season, and especially our hike across Baffin Island.