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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
