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!
