Gray Wolves: Fire and the wonder of wander; 4/14/18

The Gray Wolves are on the cusp of really engaging opportunities with the Boys Explorers Club. A few boys have begun, for instance, to learn to mentor younger boys through Wild Whatcom’s Explorers Mentors Apprentice (EMA) program. Summer backpack trips have and will provide the setting for them to put the wilderness travel skills we’ve been working on to use. And now, FIRE! 

We began our outing last Saturday with the tantalizing prospect of starting a fire without the aid of matches, lighters or other “modern” fire making tools. 

Next, along our short hike to the Larrabee State Park picnic area (chosen so as not to cause too much impact by making fires in open park areas), we searched for natural materials, primarily Western Hemlock branches, which are more likely to stay dry in our very wet spring weather, Truth be known, mentor Glen harvested more than the rest of us combined. Glen also provided “fat wood” to help ignite our bundle of jute cord, hemlock twigs and more.

Now for the true test. Using a ferrocerium rod, the Gray Wolves tried, and almost succeeded, to start their fire, without match or lighter, in a steady drizzle. They got a flame but couldn’t manage to convert it into a sustained blaze. Fair to say the Gray Wolves have a greater appreciation of the convenient tools we have now as well as a sense of how to manage without them. Check out the photo of the spark coming off the rod.

After that hard work, it was time for relaxation and celebration. So we used our lighter-ignited fire to cook “Pigs in a blanket”. Much laughing and high-spirited hi jinx followed.

We then hiked down to the beach for a good long stretch of timeless wandering. Saturday was special for the skills work, but also for the chance for your Explorers to, in the words of the good folks at Wilderness Awareness School, “Wander through the landscape without time, destination, agenda, or future purpose; be present in the moment; and go off-trail wherever curiosity leads. Unstructured time, wander, walk-about — during this timeless, unstructured play anything is possible and self-guided experience leads to wonder, curiosity and learning. There is nothing to accomplish, nowhere to go. By just being present in the moment, curiosity gently leads us wherever we go.”

There’s more work to be done around fire, but we made good progress on this outing. The culmination of our work and play this year will happen on our last outing this year. During our extended time at beautiful Racehorse Falls, we’ll get to combine shelter-building, cooking, fire-making and more. That all happens on Saturday, May 12, from 9:00 am ’til 4:00 pm. 

In the meantime, enjoy more photos from Saturday’s outing.

Navigating Beyond Map and Compass with the Gray Wolf Pups at Clayton Beach

Navigating the festivities of the Chuckanut 50K, the Gray Wolf Pups met up at Lost Lake Trailhead Parking Lot for an adventure to Clayton Beach. Having met here for our first outing of the Fall 2016 season, we had a good idea of what to expect. Navigating Chuckanut Drive, we dropped down to the trail with the loud rushing of the nearby creek significantly louder than our last time here. After days of heavy rainfall, the creek was running stronger than any of us could recall from recent memory. It is one thing to appreciate a place like this on a given day for its beauty and serenity, but bringing the Gray Wolf Pups back to the same locations during different seasons offers the opportunity to deepen their sense of place and connection to an area. Each season brings with it a new personality that alters how we interact with landscape.

Checking out the fast flowing waterfall

On our outing the Gray Wolf Pups were asked to recall what we had previously learned about navigation on our last spring outing. Reviewing the cardinal directions and ways to navigate using knowledge of the landscape, the sun, and other techniques that aided us on our last outing, it was time to break out the compasses and do some old fashioned orienteering. Splitting into two groups, each group of Explorers was tasked with hiding a bandana a good distance off into the forest and creating a “scout map” utilizing a series of natural landmarks, compass bearings, and number of paces to develop a list of directions the step by step would lead from our basecamp to the hidden bandana. Each group then returned to base camp, swapped scout maps, and proceeded to search for the hidden bandanas. Utilizing compass bearings, counting off paces, and identifying natural landmarks, each group proved successful in discovering the hidden bandanas hidden over a hundred yards away in the forest. Everyone seemed to enjoy the activity, learned how to set a bearing on a compass, and view the landscape in a new perspective. With our skills practice for the day out of the way it was time to head to the beach for some expansive free play!

Finishing up our navigation activity and getting ready to head to the beach

 After a chance encounter with another Explorers group; the Black-Tailed Deer, we traveled down to the beach and the boys immediately dropped their packs and scampered up the rocky shoreline. It is always a treat for the mentors to witness a group playing at Clayton Beach with the beautiful backdrop of the San Juans and Bellingham Bay it is nearly impossible to not feel like such a place was meant for a day of playing with friends and timeless exploration. With the end of our day drawing near, the mentors rallied the group to prepare for a sit spot before closing circle. The group was given a prompt to think about on their sit spot of; “what else do you ‘navigate’ in your life outside of Explorers Club?” After fifteen minutes of solo time gazing out over the water listening to the waves break upon the shoreline we reunited to discuss our thoughts. Surprisingly enough, the Gray Wolf Pups actually came back with insightful thoughts and we had a rather meaningful discussion about navigating conflict, relationships, and potential hardships that life may throw at you. With just enough time to share some gratitude and eat apple slices we packed up and cruised back to the trailhead to meet our parents. After this outing the mentors are seriously having to consider whether or not this group should be called the “Gray Wolf Pups” or the “Gray Wolves” as they demonstrated focus, maturity, and a depth of thoughtfulness that seemed beyond anything a mere pup could muster. 

Playing on the hike down

Checking out the honeycomb weathering patter on the sandstone at the beach

Hiking home after a successful day

Make sure to check out the rest of the photos from our outing here!

Gray Wolf Pups Delve Into Tracking and Bird Language

The Gray Wolf Pups kicked off their fall season with a classic Boys Explorers Club outing to Clayton Beach. With a few members not returning from last season, we had the privilege of welcoming a few new faces to our group. Of course we will miss our past exploring companions, but the opportunity to foster new friendships and exploration buddies made it a bitter sweet day. In fact, all of our new members already knew at least one other Gray Wolf Pup so we jumped right into things without skipping a beat. After our opening circle we navigated the hazards of Chuckanut Drive and slipped down into a forested ravine to begin our explorations. 

In the ravine the mentors took some time to review our earth skills focus for the season; Tracking and Bird Language. Clayton beach provided the perfect opportunity to not only listen to the birds in the forest, but the sandy beach offers excellent tracking substrate. With our current location of the forest we figured we would jump right into learning about bird language before playing any games. Ask your Explorer if they remember the five types of bird calls (song, companion calling, alarm, aggression, and juvenile begging). A silent sit spot where everyone took some solo time to listen to the birds seemed like a good idea, but right as we got out to our spots a thunderous bird of steel decided to fly right overhead. A big Coast Guard rescue helicopter flew by multiple times over the tree tops before stopping to hover over the beach at the bottom of the ravine! With so much commotion and the thwap-thwap-thwap of the helicopter’s rotors there was no chance of hearing any birds. Calling everyone back in we ate some lunch and drank some water before finally getting a break of silence to tune into the birds who were alarming for obvious reasons. 

Transitioning from exploration and honing our natural history skills we managed to get a game of Spiders Web together before the helicopter returned for another round of hovering (it turned out to be a Search and Rescue practice session and not a real emergency thankfully!). Playing with the atrociously loud helicopter overhead added a new layer to the game. Usually the Spider and the Flies have to be careful not to make too much noise but, with the helicopter, this made noise a non-factor. The Spider was able to tromp around all over while Flies scampered through the underbrush much quicker than usual. After a back and forth game, the Flies managed to secure the food source and return it to the web for a victory. With our game over we had just enough time to make it down to the beach for a quick introduction to tracking.

Arriving at the beach we were met with a high tide and little sand to actually track on. Thanks to a fellow beach-goers dog we had plenty of tracks to analyze. Before looking at any prints in the sand, we discussed how to begin analyzing the big picture before getting into the minutia of the track. Taking into consideration where we are in the world, the country, what bioregion, what ecosystem, what time of year, what time of day, weather patterns, terrain, and a myriad of other variables, we can begin piecing together a story of who made this track, why they were there, where they were going, and what they were doing. With this in mind we found some canine tracks that we could clearly connect to the dog on the beach, however, if we did not see the dog, we could have clued into the human tracks freshly imprinted beside the canine tracks with similar aging to piece things together. The four toes, and clearly imprinted claw marks gave away the canine aspect, while the deeply dug in front toes and claws with chunks of sand pushed back toward the rear of the track indicated this dog was pushing off hard, digging for traction in the sand, and likely running along the water’s edge only a few minutes earlier. There is so much to learn from tracks and their infinite amounts of clues they convey that we can piece together to tell a story. But with waning attention spans, dunes and rocks to climb and play on it was time to get out and play on the beach.

Wrapping up our free play on the beach we regrouped for our closing circle. Reflecting on the day we reviewed what we learned about bird language and tracking. The mentors took some time to highlight the importance of understanding tracking as a skill that permeates throughout one’s life and into many facets of our day to day. Noticing clues here or there and sewing them together to tell a story goes beyond a print in the sand and a dog on the beach. As we tune into our surroundings, the people in our lives, the places we live, even our own behaviors and actions, we can begin realizing all that comes with a heightened awareness. Whether tracking that you get grumpy when you’re hungry, or that a loved one hasn’t quite been themselves lately, we can begin applying what we learn from tracking to make ourselves better individuals, better friends, better family members, and even better community members. Once we track someone is extra quiet today we can check in and make sure everything is alright. When we feel like everyone is being extra annoying and feel like a grouch, we can take a moment to eat some food, drink some water, and take a few breaths before we begin lashing out at others unnecessarily. 

All in all, there is so much more that we can learn, but in the end we also sometimes just need to remember that spending time outdoors, tracking, listening to the birds, and just getting lost in the present is more than enough to revitalize our spirits and bring a smile to our faces. Even if that is all that these boys took away from the day, it would be difficult not to call that a successful outing. Luckily for us this was just the first of many more to come and we can’t wait to get back out exploring and learning about the natural world. 

Make sure to check out the rest of our photos from this outing here!

Gray Wolf Pups Revisit Carving at Clayton

Our outing started as all outings do; with an opening circle, however this was an especially fun opening circle. With such a warm and sunny summer there were plenty of stories and memories to share with one another. Trips abroad, time with the family, or just a silly story, everyone had something to bring our circle. After sharing summer highlights, we discussed our plan for the day, what hazards we would encounter along the way, and passed out jobs to help us as we explored Clayton Beach. Enough chatting, time to hit the trail!

Crossing the ever perilous Chuckanut Drive, we dropped down to the main trail and headed for the beach. It felt good to be back out with the Gray Wolf Pups back together hiking down the trail with a full day of exploration ahead of us. The first thing we did when we got to the beach was establish a base camp on a rocky bluff and settle in. Before we got too excited about scurrying on the sandstone or perusing the tide pools, we needed to revisit our Art of Carving skills focus. Gathering as a group we reviewed the safety parameters required for using a knife. Carving technique, awareness of others, and strong focus were some of the main topics we focused on. With our minds refreshed it was time to carve.

Spreading out along the sandstone bluff, each Explorer received two lengths of wood to be carved down into a pair of chopsticks. If some remember this was our initial task last season as well, but for round two of carving the standards have been raised. The Gray Wolf Pups needed to not only make a reasonable attempt at carving chopsticks, but show their ability to create a straight, cylindrical chop stick that tapered and didn’t have any obvious edges. This requires patience, skill, and focus. Many of the boys were grateful for tips from the mentors on how to adjust the angle of their blade: steep angles result in more wood carved, shallower angles less, much like using a planer. Although the mentors were pickier this time around, many of the boys were able to produce quality chopsticks and continued to hone their carving skills and ability to focus. Alas, carving can only compete with Clayton Beach for so long, and now it was time to explore.

After a quick lunch, we reconvened for a group circle to plan out how to spend the second half of the outing. The Gray Wolf Pups needed a little bit of a refresher in our group decision making process, but with a little help from the mentors we Collaborated, Compromised, and came to a Consensus. Each Explorer voiced their opinions, the Tribal Elder offered a few options and we all voted, checked in with the minority, compromised, and developed a plan that everyone agreed with. With a solid game plan we took off to the south to find good climbing rocks. Explorers scurried and scampered up and down the sandstone getting lost in free play and allowing their imaginations to take hold. Some became merchants trading trinkets they found on the beach, others formed small clans and claimed territories along the rocks and back into the forest. Before we knew it, the time to head north to explore a new part of the beach was upon us. With a quick check in the boys decided to stick to their plan and head out.

Just a few hundred yards away, traversing along the rocks due to the rising tide, the Gray Wolf Pups found a whole new beach to get to know. With great climbing, and an incoming tide, everyone was quickly back into free play mode. Whether that meant discovering what lay at the top of the rocks and beyond, or building a wall of sand in a futile attempt to withstand the incoming waters, everyone was having fun. But like they say; time flies when you’re having fun. Time for closing circle.

Circling up for one last time, we shared our gratitude and munched on apple slices. Many were thankful for the pleasant weather and cooling breeze, others appreciated the rocks and all the entertainment they provided. No matter what we were grateful for, across the board we were all happy to have had such a fun day and to be back with our fellow Explorers learning skills, building friendships, and discovering the wonders of the natural world. What a wonderful way to kick off the Fall 2015 Season!