The day began with coyote up to his usual tricks! The mentors arrived anticipating the usual crowd of mountain biking enthusiasts at the South Lake Padden parking area, but were stunned to see a huge crowd of folks out for a fund raising ride for Bellingham’s local mountain bike club, WIMPS. The heroes of the moment were without a doubt the explorers and their families who gracefully navigated the impossible parking lot to join us.
Boys Explorers Club founder Drew Butler joined us for our outing and it was great to have his botanical knowledge along for the day since our focus was on the Art of Harvest. The boys and mentors conducted a comfortable opening meeting where we distributed the jobs for the day. The mentors also shared the philosophy of the Art of Harvest with the boys. We discussed how as explorers we use the idea of “never take more than 10%”. We use this rule to make sure that we don’t take too much from a single plant or cluster of plants. This ensures that the plant will provide food for the creatures who live in that forest, and provide the plant an opportunity to reproduce by not taking everything! We also shared how we leave the best so that the future plants might hold similar berries, which is always hard when you are staring at the perfect thimble berry.
Our harvesting in Explorers Club for much of the year has little to do with food plants. We use plants for making fire, for constructing bow drill kits and, for carving projects. In the summer we blessed with a bounty of delicious berries, but at south lake Padden they were all a few weeks away from being ripe. The Boys and Mentors spent time looking at plants that had other uses than just food. We looked at the Vanilla Leaf and Drew made a point to have all the boys smell it. As begins to dry Vanilla lead emits a sweet vanilla like fragrance giving its other common name, "Sweet After Death." This plant, hung in bunches, will help to keep flies and mosquitoes at bay. We also looked again at how to find Douglas Fir stumps that contain “fatwood” and we tested an extremely wet piece from deep in a muddy rotting stump and it lit with a single match!
With our heads full of new information about plants and how to take responsibly from the land the boys headed off the trail and into a tangled patch of Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar trees. It was the perfect place to have some more food and water and play a couple of rounds of spiders web! The boys were eager to show off their sneaking skill and after a long battle with Greg as the Spider they finally defeated him using their strength in teamwork.
With scratches and scrapes we gathered in a final circle to share stories from our game of spider’s web and give thanks. The boys shared gratitude for the forest for providing a wonderful place to explore and play. Without a moment to spare we bounded up over logs and around stumps and back to the trail to the parking area.
Explorers, this blog entry marks the end of the Spring season for the Gray Wolf Pups. You have been eager and willing to learn about the culture of Explorers Club and time and time again you have shown the mentors that you are a strong group! The journey continues in the Fall where we will continue learning important skills for traveling in the land. It has been an honor for the Mentors to serve you this Spring and we look forward to seeing you in the summer either in camps, around town or in the forest! Thank you explorers so much or a wonderful season!
Parents, thank you for your support and flexibility. We know that your son’s lives are busy and we are grateful for the chance to work with them! Please join the Mentors and all the other explorers for a final gathering at Hovander Park to celebrate the beginning of summer.
Drew and Greg got carried away looking at plants and playing Spider’s Web and kept forgetting to take out the camera, so there are some photos in the gallery but not very many! Do check them out here.
If your family needs a good field guide for western plants we would whole heartedly recommend Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast by Jim Pojar and Andy Mackinnon. It is indispensible and contains a wealth of ethnobotanical knowledge!
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