This fall's entering class has students from all over, but perhaps none with as unusual a background as Jessica Gildersleeve, who grew up in Southeast Alaska on a floating logging camp.
The family business, Gildersleeve Logging, is now in its fourth generation. Her great-grandfather founded the business in the early 1900s in British Columbia. In 1953, the company moved to Alaska, and in 1983, Jessica's parents bought the business, now located at Grace Harbor, Dall Island.
Growing up in the pristine Alaskan wilderness offered the camp kids a unique opportunity to experience “the adventure of the outdoors,” as Jessica says. “We were outside rain or shine, building forts in the woods, playing tracking, going swimming [even in 'brisk' 50-degree water], boating, fishing, and camping.” The highlight of the week was a visit by a float plane that delivered mail and groceries.
Of course, the chance of misadventure, such as “falling into the bay” or “running into black bears while horsing around in the woods,” was always present. Children under age 12 always had to wear lifejackets outside. When they reached the age of 12 or so, they had their own rite of passage-the swim test. “It was a big milestone in every kid's life,” said Jessica. “You had a big 'coolness factor' when you got to go around without your lifejacket on.”
But the Alaskan wilderness can be as punishing as it is spectacular. Jessica recalls the winters that froze water pipes, shook the blinds in the house, and made “the boats jump nearly onto the dock.”
Despite the remoteness, the camp kids, like kids everywhere, still managed a social life. They'd gather at friends' homes to watch videos (before satellite dishes came to the camp) and play video games. They would also organize pick up volleyball or basketball games (often drafting the “bunk house guys”) in the small gym, which also was the venue for potluck suppers, plays, and dances.
Jessica reports that she and her pals held jobs at young ages. They'd work in the company store (commissary) and manned the “kiddie crew”-which did the “grunt work” that included cleaning, painting, and decking. “It was hard work, but great fun,” she says.
As expected, the camp school was small-only 17 students in K-12. Because the enrollment was down, in her sophomore year Jessica transferred to an all-girl boarding school in Tacoma, Wash., graduating from there in 2002. She was accepted by Union and then received a deferment to spend a year at a language school in Braunau, Austria. She spent the summer in Oregon, earning a private pilot's license before summer's end.
Jessica is very aware of her childhood's unique setting. In retrospect, she recalls the slower pace, the countryside's beauty, and the people. “Great memories stream from home; but many of them come from the summers and the nights after work where my buds and I would get together for a barbecue and do some waterskiing,” she says.
Although she looks forward to her freshman year, Jessica looks to her Alaskan home and cannot deny, “I miss it like crazy.”