LUKE VAN HORN | 2020 ALUMNI
Middlebury College, 2024
Luke came to Place Corps directly out of high school as a gap semester before beginning Middlebury College in February of 2020. He was attracted to Place Corps as an opportunity to live closer to the land, gain experiential knowledge of food systems and engage in hands-on learning. During his fellowship he identified and began to pursue an interest in bushcraft, the use and practice of survival skills which enable an individual to thrive in the natural environment.
“Coming from Brooklyn I felt very disconnected from my food, very disconnected from the natural world, and I was hoping that Place Corps would [provide] a bit more of a connection towards food systems, and towards an eventual goal that I have which is to live more from my own hands, and source more of my daily food from my nearby by area.”
Luke was deeply engrossed in skill-building during the fellowship, learning to make friction fires, build shelters, forage for food, and tan skins, in addition to learning woodworking with architect and instructor Paul Rix. He found a mentor in Paul, who has been instrumental in his life after Place Corps. Luke has spent summers living with Paul in Upstate New York, continuing to learn carpentry with him, while working as an instructor at Flying Deer Nature Center, sharing his bushcraft skills with younger learners.
“The program was very valuable for me because of the connections I made. Paul Rix, and that relationship that I built [at Place Corps] has been and has led to so much that I really care about and is now very important to me. In the same way, there are connections that I've built [in college] that [will lead somewhere].”
His experience at Place Corps informed the kind of work and education that Luke has pursued and his approach to college, exploration, and plans for the future. He approaches situations with curiosity, openness and a desire to find opportunities through relationships, and a desire to deepen his skill-set and knowledge. He understands that embodied learning is where he finds the most enjoyment and satisfaction in education and so has pursued biology as the ultimate focus of his undergraduate studies with a minor anthropology, as lab work in the field is central to both disciplines.
“Place Corps informed what I wanted to get out of college because I was doing it before college. At Place Corps [learning] was much different [from high school] because it was all very embodied. When we were learning about the trigonometry of roofs, we were building a roof, which was very different from high school.”
Luke will receive his undergraduate degree from Middlebury College in May 2024, with a major in Biology and a minor in anthropology. His thesis is on ticks and Lyme disease, predator ecology, and how they tie together. He intends to follow his interest in hands-on work through a timber framing apprenticeship or intensive training in similar work, building his life from a practical and resourceful exploration of skilled craft, survival skills, and the natural environment.
“I don’t know if I want to go into a career in biology, I don’t know if I want to do timber framing [long-term] but I do know that those are possible outcomes, and I want to pursue them. I’m still exploring and seeing what works for me but I am also treating [what I explore] as very real possible outcomes for my life.”