Nature gap year?

I’ll continue my Woodsmoke review a little later, along with a picture of my very first spoon that I carved while I was there!
Today was a happy day for me – although I was revising all day, I also got an offer from Cambridge. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet but I feel the need to broadcast it to the world!

Anyway, back on topic, this got me thinking about my gap year. I’d love to do something to do with bushcraft during my gap year: the problem is, there aren’t any companies that do trips for longer than say a week or so. If there were, they’d cost a lot, I expect. I’d be perfectly happy to do something just with a couple of friends: say, to Sweden canoeing and camping in the wilderness. Sadly, none of my friends are into bushcraft. I’ll keep searching for any gap year opportunities- if anyone happens to know of any, please do let me know.
I’m very attracted to doing work on a cattle/sheep station in Australia: you go out and do a 5 day course of working on a station, then they help you get a job in the outback. My only reservation is how remote you are once you’re on the job – it would be fantastic, but if you ended up in some dodgy place then it could be terrible. I love the idea of taking extended trips into the outback, sleeping in swags, although I don’t think I’d end up doing that working on the station.
Conservation work is of course another option, which would be great: there are so many options though it’s just overwhelming, and the problem is discerning which companies are reliable nowadays. And then of course dealing with the cost!
I need to make a lot of money for this gap year if I’m to do some sort of conservation work or maybe an expedition combining conservation and community work like Raleigh International.  In the case of Raleigh, it’s a charity, meaning fundraising by writing to companies etc could gain a good proportion of the money.  I also intend to work in the 2009 part of my gap year.  I’m now also looking into ways of making money on the internet, although it all seems very technical.  This summer I went on a trip to India to build a house for a beneficiary, and we as a group had to raise £4000, which was quite a challenge.  A message that really struck home was the use of collective input – we held discos and non-uniform days at school where everyone paid a pound to take part: that raked in a lot of money at very little cost to anyone.  Something else I did was sell tracksuit bottoms to my school house: although a lot of hassle I managed to profit by about £300 from that, all for a good cause – this was very satisfying, and got me thinking maybe I should go into business when I’m older..! Or maybe I should start now – but I wouldn’t have a clue how.  I don’t think I’m independent enough to do so, and I have no idea how to set up a business or what to sell etc etc.  Maybe I should start thinking – how hard could it be?

 

– Sylvan