Author: Mike

For me, my background of growing up on thirteen acres of free range field and stream, in a big old farm house, part of a large family gives me perspective. I remember summer days spent catching frogs and chasing my dog across a freshly mowed field, down to the stream where my brothers: Bill, Joe, Rob, and Sam, sisters: Mary, Evelyn, Barbara, Sarah, Christina, Nell, and Gina and I would play forts, and camp out along that wooded stream bed corridor.

I love being in a barn too. The old barns of New England are like weathered old friends that explain the hard work days of our ‘For Fathers and Mothers. Our family barn was a straw dusted, sunlit-gold flecked, airy cathedral built of hand hewn beams crusted with swallow mud nests. And in the twilight, bats would circle the arching face that has always looked west toward Mt. Tom.

I decided early I did not like indoor classrooms. Cut off from the outside, I would try to be a good student. However -over the many years of inside education- first at St. Stans in Chicopee, and then Holyoke Catholic, and finally to Umass Amherst, I would find myself unfulfilled, and not happy with my education. It somehow felt disconnected from my soul.

I think I would have thrived in shop class; for its hands on application.  Tools, and building, making things, learning by doing, getting out in the real world, getting my hands dirty:  this is what I love, how I grow, what fulfills me. And this, I think, is how many thrive. Maybe you ?

Just as I am writing this, my son Leo bumped his head into a wall as he backed up just now, and this literal example is very much what I found was happening to me: literal walls were figuratively standing in my way and I constantly found myself bumping my head into them: classroom walls, office walls, even the occasional bar room wall.  Ouch!

This Be The Route blog site, web space, online forum, creative outlet, space for sharing our common experiences, and understanding others, –grows out of being hands on.  Being now what you imagine. I have a mug that has a slogan attributed to Ghandi: Be the Change you want to see in the world.  

He actually said:

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”-The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume XII

Tolerance, understanding and problem solving political divides in our society, healing the environment, and getting together for positive change, here in our country and beyond in the world has to start somewhere and what better place to start then with me, ourselves, the family, together. 

Be the Route is an online resource and an interactive portal that taps the fountain of gifts we gain from learning and sharing with others.  We want to give back and extend what we’ve been taught by so many beautiful people out there.

I’ve always believed travel is the best way to learn.  So it follows that the blend of traveling and homeschool education really just felt natural.

Almost as if traveling and understanding the world through meeting people in new and varied places is the very fulfilment of human nature.  

Meet people, experience other cultures, learn from history, art and places.

Get out and gain valuable life experience.

So homeschool education is travel.

RV Travel and homeschool children go hand in hand.

Almost can’t have one without the other.

Come meet us en’Route.  Be The Route.  Live the Change.