Townsend's Chipmunks Continue to Carve

The Townsend Chipmunks met on this drizzly late winter/early spring day having been robbed of one hour of sleep by daylight saving time. Fortunately, any of the fatigue that this caused disappeared as soon as we took our first few breaths of fresh, cool forest air. We were excited to check out some shelters that we had built here on a previous outing. We were also eager to continue practicing safe knife techniques that we learned about on our last outing.

Practicing safe knife usage

At Lookout Mountain, cedars, Douglas firs, hemlocks, maples, and alders reach high into the canopy while vine maple, grand fir and indian plum form the understory. The abundant nurse logs and stumps provide a perfect growing substrate for young hemlocks and huckleberry. We felt lucky to be able to have a pretty healthy patch of woods in which to play, learn, and deepen our relationship with the natural world.

As with most of the BEC outings at Lookout Mountain this winter/spring, the first order of business was to check out the deer carcass that was found earlier this winter. It has been interesting to visit the carcass and see it in varying degrees of decay. We noticed that only a few of the bones remained, including most of the spine, and these bones had been picked clean. We also observed that in the absence of rotting meat, the smell really wasn't so bad.

Not much remains of this deer, the forest has distributed its energy and nutrients back into the ecosystem

After finding the shelters that we wanted to check on, we set up camp and had some time for free play and exploration. After this, we began our first carving project in BEC: chopsticks! All of the BEC groups that learn carving start with this simple yet challenging task. Carving chopsticks provides lots of practice with some of the basic carving techniques while at the same time introducing us to the patience, calm and attention to detail that any carving task requires. The mentors were happy to see us respecting our blood circles and generally having good intentional focus surrounding carving. We look forward to having a completed set of chopsticks by the end of this spring season!

The chopstick blanks that Tim harvested for us today

As growing children, we are constantly in a state of learning about the outside world as well as our own selves, or, our 'inside world'. Learning about ourselves includes recognizing the feelings that we are having and acting on those feelings in increasingly healthy and responsible ways. Today, many of us found ourselves feeling antsy and restless during our closing circle of thanks.  There are many times that we are allowed to be silly and loud and goofy in explorers club, but during our sharing of gratitude is not this time. Today, we had to be reminded that, even though we may feel the urge to blurt out distracting comments or have side conversations with our fellow explorers, we need to be intentional about holding our focus during circle. We were reminded that this is because when we are in circle, we acknowledge that this is a time to speak from the heart and seek to listen. Listening to each other is the foundation on which we build respect in our community. It is arguably the most important thing we will learn to do in Explorers Club. We look forward to holding circle many more times during our tenure with BEC and getting the opportunity to practice our intentional listening skills.

We finished our day off with some practice using an atlatl (a primitive hunting tool) that Tim had made. We realized that this was something that didn't come automatically and it gave us lots of respect for those humans who relied on this kind of tool in order to eat and survive.

Practice with an atlatl

Overall, we had a great (and mostly dry) day that included some great carving practice, a discussion about personal management and a few games mixed in as well! Be sure to check out the rest of the pictures from the outing here.