Class: Week Two

Tuesday: Tracking


The morning was spent in the classroom going over slides of different tracks and learning the basic questions to be asking when tracking.  These are the normal questions we are taught to ask when doing any sort of critical thinking:  Who, What, When, Where, and the big one, Why?  Doesn't this sound thrilling?  If it seems a little bit dry, understand that this topic is really better served when delivered from the mouth of someone who cares a lot about it.  Jason Knight (founder of Alderleaf) is such a person.  He has dedicated the larger part of his life to this, and other, naturalist study.  He is normally a rather reserved individual, and frankly, not the most emotive.  And that is okay.  Everyone expresses themselves differently.  But today was his day to teach, and he was lit up.
     The simple excitement of discovery was in his voice and a shine in his eyes as he described both the technicalities and the raw wonder of encountering a track.  He used his body to show us different gaits and movement styles, which is funny to see, but profound when you start to do it yourself.  Getting down on all fours in the woods and bounding makes much more sense than walking above the tunnel of animal paths.  This was morning.  This was classroom learning.  We took to the three Alderleaf vans for the afternoon, crammed in and expectant.
     We arrived at the river, the intersection of rt 522 and the Snohomish River.  The class ate lunch while the interns and instructors struck out to find the tracks we would learn from.  It is funny looking back at this memory, thinking about the groups of people sitting, talking, still feeling their way in the new social order.  This being nearly two weeks ago now and before 5 days of travel together, it is fairly ludicrous how stilted and uncertain these interactions were to me now.  We didn't yet know how much we loved one another.  Or at least respected.  Or any number of things.  The Dunes were great.
     We split into our groups and moved between stations manned by interns and instructors, each focusing on a specific piece of the silty mud plain between the river and the vegetative shore.  It is still dry season here, and looking at this spot on the map, I did not recognize it.  There is such a strong and wide river on the map, not the thin, shallow, and marshy overgrown piece of water we traversed so easily.

froggy (the line in the middle is added)

     Tracks dotted the entire landscape, some easy to recognize, others, many others, entirely foreign.  The easy ones to see were the familiar - deer, dog, and even a great blue heron (it is the only thing that big hanging out in a river bed most of the time).  The unfamiliar was quite.  Frog tracks are hilariously baffling until you imagine the frog sitting right over them.  Then they make perfect sense.
Beaver drags a heavy tail, Bobcat is a cat (of course), and the mystery bird is a hopper and skipper.  All of us left with a track unidentified that we are to look up.  I have yet to, so the mystery can be revealed here sometime soon.  In the mean time, see if you can figure it out.  I'll give you fifty pesos if you get it before I do.  For real.  I have it at home, hiding behind the picture of me kissing dad by the side of the pool when I was tiny.  Seriously.  It's waiting for you.

mystery track

mystery track with Jason and a ruler for scale!

what do you think?

     So, we are kneeling in the mud, crawling over one another looking at these tracks, listening to the more knowledgeable elders give us clues and guidelines to move by.  Some people are starting to get excited.  Others are just trudging along with mild curiosity.  It is an overcast day.  Some of them are probably just sleepy.  Soon enough, though, they will know that something started here in the first track that they figured out themselves.  I live with one.  She's a quick study and a quicker nut about tracks.  It starts in places like this, where no one is looking for it.  This was just the first day, too.


Wednesday: Leadership and Awareness


Today was a touchy feely day, and that's not a bad thing.  The instructor, Darcy, is our Leadership guide, soft of touch and gentle heart.  We began the day outside, sitting in the meadow, and everyone took turns saying exactly how they felt at that moment.  It was a nice bit of honesty among ex-strangers, future friends.  We went over the basic teaching model that we will be using to create our own growth and development program here.  It is familiar to me from my Education education.  So this was a re-education of Education education.  Got that?  The difference here is the subject matter and the attention to the process.
     Today was also about Awareness, which we tend to refer to here in terms of knowing the bird song of an area and what it means, of knowing who might be sneaking behind you, of knowing what species to expect in an area at a given time.  Awareness also fit nicely as an all-encompassing aspect of Education.  In a circular flow chart of a learning plan (Assess-->Develop Outcomes-->Design Education Plan-->Excecute-->(re)Assess), Awareness is the cloud that surrounds each step.  Awareness of what is being assessed and the lenses being used to see it, awareness of the outcomes desired and their realism and use, awareness of the plan itself and its many facets and repurcussions, awareness of the method of excecution and its progression, and definitely, definitely, awareness of reassessing what worked, what didn't, and WHY.  There.  Now you've had your pedagogical moment for the month.
     We met Hawkeye today.  He runs OWLE, Outdoor Wilderness Living Experience, for 6-16 year olds.  It sounds incredible, as they are learning much the same sort of thing as we are, only they are younger, more impressionable, and destined to be much, much cooler individuals.  We'd all like to believe we'd be much better or smarter or more skilled if we were only exposed to the things we like now back when we didn't like them enough to care.  Or were young and lazy.  But maybe we would have turned out better and different and all the more powerful in terms of creating consciously the version of ourselves we know is waiting under this unhewn block.  Maybe.  Or maybe not.  I stopped my piano lessons as soon as I was told that I wouldn't really advance much more unless I put my mind to it.  It was also when music theory got introduced to me.  I wish I'd stuck with it, but I still don't have much of a stomach for music theory and I still don't sit and practice the piano.
     Hawkeye is in his sixties and looks like you might expect:  wavy dark hair streaked white like his slightly tamed beard.  He wears camouflage and speaks deliberately and lovingly of the children he has helped bring to maturity through his love of the outdoors.  (By the way, do you realize yet that everyone here wears camouflage and those who don't silently lust after it?)  His is a story of a childhood without modern amenities where he lived and learned in the lap of the mother woods.  He became a teenager and lost it, absorbed in the normal absorbsions:  cars and girls, and probably drink and drugs, based on the When of his teen years.
     After an early adulthood of the Civilized sort, he reconnected with the ground from whence we came.  He gradually came to be the only male daycare provider in town and made weekly field trips to the Outside.  These trips became so popular(over the course of years of organic development) that he was able to start a school where primitive skills and time in the outdoors was the norm.  We Alderleaves will be going to this school multiple times this year to observe and eventually help participate and teach.  This is very exciting.
     In the discussions that followed, led by Darcy, we shared the piece of ourselves that we think is our greatest gift to the group, which is not an easy thing to do - to go beyond one's strengths, to admit and embrace one's Gift.  I honestly don't really remember what it was that I said exactly.  It was something about compassion, and how I feel like I have a heightened awareness of the need for its giving and receiving.  The interesting part about this was that I believe I act on that awareness less than I should.  In admitting the Gift I was immediately spurred to both the awareness that I should be more compassionate and simultaneously created the expectation in others that I would.  Neat trick, Darcy.
      Darcy had another contribution that was a gift, though I did not know it at the time.  She simply outlined the difference between Primary and Secondary Perception.  Primary Perception is what we perceive.  Right now.  You are looking at a screen (or maybe a piece of paper).  Secondary Perception is not what we perceive, but the store of all our past perceptions that we tend to project on our environment.  You might be seeing this text as black, (but it might be dark green or even white) you might be reandig thsee wodrs jsut fnie because your brain can put together pieces of information from prior experience.  This is very important when it comes to the Outdoors.  Letting your Secondary Perception tell you that those Dog Tracks are from some German Shepherd would leave you feeling silly when you scare away the wolf before getting the chance to see it.  And let's not even talk about getting cocky and picking Wild Carrot.  Poison Hemlock is real.
     Primary Perception is crucial in spotting a well-camouflaged animal that is banking on your Secondary Perception filling in the blanks of the green mass of forest in the periphery.  Then there is human interaction.  Paying careful attention to the genuine state of things rather than one's projection of past events is going to make all the difference between habituated, comfortable but shallow interactions and deeper, meaningful and earnestly truthful ones.  After the week at the Dunes this distinction between perceptions is a profound one.  But we're not there yet, are we?


Fire Keeper


     The most "fun" thing we did Wednesday was a game.  It is an awareness game, and it is a good'un.  One person sits blindfolded on the ground in the middle of a circle of people.  There is a set of loud, jangly keys on the ground in front of them.  Your task is to get those keys.  The catch is, you have to do it silently.  The FireKeeper, blindfolded, can hear a lot, and if they point to you creeping up to snatch those keys, it's back to the edge of the circle for you.  It is best to have someone moderating to both signal to only a few to creep up at a time and also to judge whether an individual has really been pointed out or is scraping by slightly to the left.
     The interesting and infuriating part of this game for me was not getting caught, but getting caught when I wasn't even moving.  Not making a sound, not doing anything.  Sometimes people would just get pointed at for no good reason.  It was certainly a random chance sometimes.  There were multiple groups playing the game nearby, so one FireKeeper sometimes pointed at another group's sounds.  It is also not out of the question that some of the FireKeepers would guess...maybe even flicker their eyes under the bandana in hopes of seeing some sort of movement.  That is possible, and I suspect one of our FireKeepers was a little bit of a stinker, but I'm over it.  I'm over it because I think there was another thing going on, too.  They called it carnivore energy, how an animal will sometimes get a Feeling because it is being watched when being focused on so intently.  I assure you, we were all focusing very intently on the FireKeeper.
     We've all felt it at some point, that feeling that there is something Over There, and sure enough, there is.  It can be a combination of senses, of course.  You know when there is a wall near you because it feels different on that side.  Air moves differently, sound bounces off of it.  The same is true for people when they get close.  They radiate heat, make internal noises, block wind and sound, and create a detectable energy space, even to someone with their eyes closed.  That all certainly played into those silent pointings during the game.  But that's not what I'm talking about right now.  I'm actually talking about Morphic Fields.
     It has been a few years since I have read up on them (and by that I mean it has been a few years since my friends read up on them and told me about them), but they are simple to sum:  When an individual is regarding something, it is essentially sending perception energy at it.  This is what makes hair stand up on end when someone is behind you, and believe it or not, there is a lot of research about it.  You know, science and stuff.  It's real, just so you know.  When it comes to hiding in the woods, those who are well-hidden and stare at the person looking for them thinking, "I hope they don't see me over here under this fern," get spotted a lot more often than those laying next to the fern with their head on the ground thinking, "I am the ground and I have roots and bugs in me."  Morphic Fields.  Awareness Games.  School is fun.
     At the end of the day Jason showed us his pack for the Oregon Dunes trip.  He took out everything and even showed us his undies.  There was some silent cackling by me.


Thursday:  Ethnobotany and Fall Wild Edibles


Karen Sherwood was our guest instructor for this day.  Karen is a master orator.  She uses her arms, her legs, her eyes, and her heart as she speaks and her words fly straight and true.  She immediately struck me as of a kind with Lincicome and Gilespie, the high school Giants of Oration from my past.  The difference here was merely subject matter.  Today was all about plants.
     Ethnobotany is the study of plants as used by native peoples of an area.  This includes food, tools, and anything else you can think of.  If it is a plant and it is being used by a native, it is Ethnobotany.  Karen stirred us up and got us ready to pick douglas fir needles and dandelion leaves for tea and pesto.  She had us get rocks for crushing acorn shells so we could make acorn muffins.  She had brought a kitchen and we were going to make some food.  Did everyone love class today?  Yes, we did.
     Dandelion leaves should be harvested when not in bloom.  It is nutritionally dense and can easily be considered the foundation of any diet (good source of Folate, Magnesium, Phosphorus, and Copper.  Very good source of Fiber, Vitamins A, C, E, K, B6, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Calcium, Iron, Potassium, and Manganese).  The simple Pesto that we made (which is bitter, don't kid yourself, though still very palatable) used 3 cloves of garlic, 1/2 tsp salt, a lot of dandelion leaves, and enough oil to get the blender going.  Experiment!
     The Acorn Muffins are a little bit more of a process.  We didn't use the fresh acorns that we broke open, as they still needed to be leached of their tannins to be palatable.  She brought her own flour so that we could participate in the first part of the process and still have the ready flour to make the muffins.  All acorns of Oak Trees are edible, they just vary in taste and the amount of tannins.  The tannins can be washed out in a stream over time or briefly boiled in almost none at all.  Once leached and ground to a flour, these are some (delicious) muffins that can be made: (mix dry and wet separately, then combine.  Banana is wet, silly.)
2c Acorn Flour
1tsp salt
1tsp vanilla extract (or more, go for it!)
1c honey/brown sugar/agave
1/2c oil
3/4c milk(almond or rice milk work great)
2 bananas
red clover flowers (because they're awesome)
3tbs baking powder
3tbs cattail pollen (because IT'S awesome)
Bake at 425 for 9-12 minutes


These were minimuffins, so vary that time based on a larger pan.  These were really great and I highly recommend them.  It's also a fine muffin base receipe if you're feeling muffiny.  You could stick in sliced carrot and raisins and end up with a good breakfast food, too, even if you don't have acorn flour available.  Just use wheat flour or pork (it's a party).
     After Karen gave us the instructions and ingredients we set about making the meal.  The pesto went on pasta shells, and she brought her own jams and seaweed pickles to compliment the muffin/pasta meal.  The tea was simply made with the Douglas Fir needles, and doesn't really need explanation.  It was light and pleasant.  We sat on the grass outside and revelled in our stomachs' education.
     Karen teaches at EarthWalk Northwest, a very well-respected school for traditional skills, from bow-making and hunting to foraging, and everything you can think of in between.  I look forward to learning with Karen again and her husband later in the year when he comes to Alderleaf.  Their web site is http://www.earthwalknorthwest.com/history.php
     At the end of the day we were well-fed and oriented towards the 630am departure on Monday.  We were going to the Dunes.  (And now I'm going to bed.  The Dunes will wait one more night.)

A Photo Essay without the Essay

These are shots from all over the farm and campus.  If anyone wants to get me a fancy, expensive camera, I will put it to good use.  I grow tired of the lousy focusing of both my camera and phone camera.  Enjoy the visuals (and stay away from the last photo unless you like seeing skinned animals).

This is our front yard.  See our fancy sheep?  They are making lots of noise at you. BLAUUAAAGH. 

Our back "porch," archery target, shed, a cabin, and a little garden.

Our chicken coop and large garden.  (and two animals!) You can see two cabins in the back ground.

A fairly representative path on the South Trail - our side of the creek.  Lots and lots of Salmonberry and Trailing Blackberry shaded by Ceder and Hemlock.

Medicine Wheel and Altar. More on them later.

The Outdoor Classroom.  Can you imagine Frog on the far side hiding for an hour?

The wood shed behind the ODC. I am partly responsible for the pile on the left.

Inside the ODC. 

The mushrooms are coming. 

An old shelter built a few years ago.

A blurry example of Vine Maple being ridiculous, as usual, and growing horizontally like crazy, right across the entire creek bed, over 40 ft wide. 

Having crossed the creek the land changes.  Mossy trees have fallen and ferns abound.

Soft earth, lots of roots, trees and moss.

Oysters!

Monster Oysters!

This summer's primitive shelter.  This is a debris hut. 

This is the debris tent that I helped build.  Where the hut is round and can fit four or five around a fire, this is made to fit one or two laying down.  

The other group built this lean-to with a fire reflecting wall.  It would sleep two comfortably.   

When I look down this is frequently what I see:  bare feet on mossy logs with mushrooms over mossy ground that is impossibly soft.

This may or may not be my sit spot.   I'm not telling.

Delicious Oyster Mushrooms.  

If you have no desire to see the deer that was mentioned in the previous post, then enjoy the mushrooms and check out now!

(Week Two coming soon)

This is the aforementioned deer, sans hide, with a broken foot from the car that killed it and a lack of head from where we removed it ("we" is used liberally here). 

And you  might be able to tell that there are two people standing casually in the background, maybe carrying on a conversation, maybe drinking a beer, and perhaps even behaving as if this sort of thing is hardly out of the ordinary at all.  Just maybe.  

Class: Week One

Tuesday: Orientation and Introductions


The class opened up the way most classes do - with students milling nervously, some awkwardly, mingling with the other nervous, awkward students in the air thick with potential.  We are informed that class will meet in the Outdoor Classroom and that our journey there will be in silence until the interns, graduates of this class last year, light a friction fire to start the day.  We made the trek of a couple minutes, all backpacks and summer tans, some outfitted to the teeth in woods camouflage, many others in the barest threads of clothing, soaking up the unusually warm and sunny end of season.
     The ODC is a gazebo-like structure, only instead of walls there are benches, instead of flooring there is a fire pit and log stools, and the roof has a smoke hole among the sky lights.  We crowded in, almost 40 students and 10 interns and instructors.  It was tight but cozy, not uncomfortable.  In silence, two of the interns started a fire with a bow drill.  This fire blazed hot and high, perhaps more dramatic than intended, but impressive nonetheless. PS: Gordon was not present for any of this.
     We started this day (and all those to come after) by Bringing our Minds Together.  This was done with the Words Before All Else.  This is a universal thank-giving that begins with the smallest of the small and ends with the largest of the large (before entering into the unnamable all).  We were taken from the air we breathe and the waters we drink to the plants and animals to the sun and moon and beyond then back again.  Then came naming.
     We each shared our story, as brief or long as we pleased, in terms of Why We Are Here.  Then we picked a name out of a hat.  This name was to be the first thing we researched, learned from, and got to know intimately.  It could be taken as our name, if we identified with it.  The sharing of almost 50 people takes a while.  What I was impressed with the most was the genuine reflection most seemed to give this normally banal part of class beginning.  After speaking my piece, I picked a name that made me laugh on the spot.  I thought it was a bird, but I have found out that it is not.  Blue-eyed Darner.  I found them a couple days later, and I think I like them a lot.  
     When the naming and sharing was almost finished, one of the instructors (who is also a house-mate of mine), asked us if we had heard a Frog on the roof.  I should mention at this point that throughout the entirety of the proceedings thus far my attention had been split.  I knew that Gordon was nowhere to be seen, but that he was surely nearby.  There had been one point during the naming that I had heard a sound on the roof.  I had thought it possible he was up there, but heard nothing more.  So, when Steve asked, "Has anyone heard a Frog up on the roof?" I spoke up immediately, "I thought so!" as everyone looked at each other or Steve with vague uncertainty.  (In retrospect I should have left that moment silent for greater effect.)  Then came loud, clomping footsteps across the roof and down fell the shadow of a gray hoodie and a camoflaged face.  Off came the hood and there was Frog, introducing himself as one of the students from last year who had specialized in scouting.  The rest of the day was spent learning our smaller group's members and touring the grounds in our small groups, which we will keep to often for the rest of the year.  It all took a while, and as far as first days of class go, it was a good one.  The day ended with us Bringing our Minds Apart, where we reflected on how we started the day and brought the energy full circle.  


Wednesday: Introduction to Naturalist Skills


When I was in 10th grade, my biology teacher gave us the Alien Test.  It is a series of identification questions that would be logical for an Alien to ask you if they came to you seeking an explanation for the various species on Earth.  The questions are actually all pictures of animals, field examples of plants, and a few sound clips.  I remember doing terribly on this test in high school (as did almost all my peers) and being told by my teacher that we must surely all be aliens to know so little about our surroundings.  The outcome of this go 'round was a little bit better, but not a lot.  I broke 50% on the animal portion and almost 20% on the plant section.  Granted, these were all Washington native plants, which I feel slightly reasonable in not knowing very well at this point.  I can tell you that I know them a lot better in the few days since taking this embarassing test.  The funny thing about the Alien Test that I took in high school(and here) is this:  it was created by John Young, who helped create the school where Jason Knight (the director and co-founder of Alderleaf) learned and taught for years.  It is amusing to me that I am interacting with the same lineage of knoweldge years later in vastly different circumstances.
     After lunch we learned the basics of plant identification and prepared to begin our Plant Inventories, a process I will describe in detail a little later (after I've started mine tonight or tomorrow).  Then we went out to look for our Sit Spots.  The Sit Spot is the focus of a program like this.  Instead of concentrating on a wide range of knowledge and going only so deep, by sitting in the same spot a few times a week (or even every day), one learns intimately that area and everything in it.  The trade is quality over quantity.  
     By sitting in one place for at least 40 minutes at a stretch, the land is allowed to come back alive and out of the hiding that occurs whenever a human tromps through.  That pretty bird singing as you walk down the woodland path?  It is telling everyone in earshot that there is a THREAT on the ground moving around loudly and unpredictably.  That cute squirel chirruping away in the tree as it flicks its tail?  Same thing.  By sitting still those alarming animals are allowed to come to rest and the forest (or meadow or mountaintop or mudflat) slowly comes back into itself, back to baseline.  This is the way to witness the world as it is moving, just outside our peripherals, all the time.  Slow down and become part of the landscape.  Put in the time and the animals will get to know you.  There are incredibly inspiring stories from those who have given their sit spot enough time.  I wait with expectant patience.  Thus far my times at my sit spot have been peaceful above all else, but each visit yields at worst a single new insight, and, even better, ten more questions.  
     The best place for Sit Spots are places away from human activity if possible, on the edge of habitats, where there is like to be more diversity and activity, and most importantly (yes, MOST), easily accessible.  If you won't go there frequently, it doesn't matter if it is in the most magical place on the planet.  For a great introduction to viewing your boring back yard as a phenomenon outside your imaginings, check out, Tom Brown's Field Guide to the Forgotten Wilderness.  It's about your yard.  It's as worthy a spot as any if you'll simply go there.  
     I will talk about my sit spot a lot in the time to come, so I'll spare an elaborate description of it here other than to say that it is full of moss-covered hummocks which I like to lay on and is criss-crossed by fallen trees that form a highway anywhere from two to ten feet above the ground.  Ferns, huckleberries, and salmonberries abound, nestled into the undulating moss carpet.  This place is beautiful.


Interlude:  Life on the Farm


By living on the farm I am being afforded some unique opportunities that I wouldn't have if I were a commuter.  Today, for instance, I fed the chickens and earned a share of their egg output.  Likewise, for garden work.  Sometimes, though, the opportunities come unasked for, and very unexpected.
     Before class began on Wednesday, there came word that a fawn had been hit and killed on the road very close to school.  Because it would be used for education, an instructor was legally allowed to collect it and use it for demonstration.  That evening after almost everyone had left, a few of us helped (I helped mostly by watching) in the skinning, gutting, and butchering of the young deer.  It was altogether a bizarre experience from start to finish, and left my instructor housemate covered in blood almost everywhere.  I am glad to be surrounded by such interested and capable people.  I watched with a mixture of amusement, awe, and horror, as my friend and housemate squelched her hands into the severed head cavity to pull out, bit by pulverized bit, brains for tanning the hide.  The brains are an incredible variety of colors, by the way, a mess of pinks, reds, whites, and anything else gory you can think of.  With very little exception, all of the animal was used, from sinew to spine.  This is extracurricular activity around here.


Thursday:  Introduction to Wilderness Survival


This was a cool day.  We began with the theory of shelter building and some of the fundamentals of wilderness survival.  Shelter, water, and fire are infinitely more important than food.  Staying warm, hydrated, and safe is the priority.  After an hour or so of information, we went to the woods to be taught how to build a shelter.  Practically speaking, shelter building should be limited to situations of need, I think.  The amount of debris that it took to make two shelters that could house a total of five people left the better part of 3000 square feet pretty bare of leaf litter and dead fern fronds.  The result was impressive.  The shelters are sturdy and would insulate individuals well for many nights.  Once the process began, however, so many of us were scavenging for debris that few got the chance to really have a hand in the creation.  There were just too many of us, and not enough land for everyone to make a shelter at the same time in the same place.  
     In the afternoon we moved on to fire.  We went out to look for our bow, a piece of sturdy wood about arm-length with a slight curve and diameter around 1 1/2".  We strung twine between the two ends and wrapped a spindle(that we carved from red ceder) in the string.  Working that spindle back and forth vertically between two pieces of wood(one hard oak, the other the softer red ceder) fast enough creates friction enough to create a coal.  That coal is then gently tipped into a tinder bundle which, if blowed upon lovingly, spurs to flame.  This works easily for some, and not at all for others.  I was lucky and fortunate and made fire three times.  Between my first and second fires, though, I had an interesting sidetrack.  


Segueway:  Blue-eyed Darner


After my first sucessful fire I was counselled to start Wilding my fire kit, by replacing some of the provided materials with those that I find myself.  So I wandered into the forest looking for a piece of oak.  What I found was the little pond to the right of the South Trail.  It caught my eye with twitches of movement across the water.  They were too big and sinuous to be appropriate for the normal water skimmers, but as I crept closer I could not find their cause.  Then I saw it, a snake, about two feet long and quite thin, weaving back and forth, seeming to chase large tadpoles.  I was rapt, seeing this snake swim around and around.  I'd only ever seen a snake in water a few times before, and never so close.  
     As I crouched, I saw there were many dragonflies buzzing about, chasing flies and dipping in and out of exposed root crevices.  I knew at once what they were: Blue-eyed Darners.  Their blue eyes glow and their bodies radiate color in segments that look like black and blue tie dye.  Exactly like tiedye.  Of course.  I let them flutter around my unmoving form before I saw another snake in the water.  I eased out onto a log in the water and found to my amusement a third snake poking from under a submerged root.  Only the inch or so behind its head was out of the water.  It was like a new grass shoot, bobbing expectantly in the pond.  I almost fell off the log laughing at it.  
     In the end I did not find my piece of oak.  I did catch the attention of a passing student, who I had remembered mentioned missing his snakes back home.  He and I shared a good piece watching the garders spinning their ripples about.  That student then showed me the moss (right next to me) that I could use as a tinder bundle all by itself.  Fire kit Wilding: 1/3 complete!


Potluck:


Thursday nights, all year long, are potluck nights.  I made a demonslayer salad (constituting either 10 or more ingredients or at least 5 avocadoes.  I went the avocado route this time) and was not disapointed in the spread.  Everyone brought amazing things, not least of all was the liver and heart of the fawn we had come by the day before.  I ate a small piece of the liver, and it felt good.  The festivities devolved into a riot of clothes-pinning (as a lot of the new students became aware of the game for the first time as they discovered themselves to be pinned) and a lot of musical jamming.  There is a lot of joyous culture here to be shared in.  


Friday:  Workday


Every friday is Farm Project Day, where we work to actualize the permaculture vision of this farm.  This time I worked in weeding a bed and preparing it for our winter crops, mostly brassicas.  The other team worked on splitting firewood.  More on this as I become more familiar with the Permactulture in action here.  I know that the brain-squishing girl is the kitchen right this moment working, as ever, on canning of the fresh peaches from our trees.  She's been in here working so long on it.  I'll find my domestic stride around November, I expect.  


After lunch Gordon and I hopped in the bug and zoomed down to Olympia to visit a friend, but while there were many adventures to be had there, I don't think they need to trouble these tired fingers today.  I have resolved to not let a whole week of class pile up at once, now.  Pictures to follow, too.  Love to you all.

one week in.

Flying Day - Tuesday the 30th.  Notes written in the back of Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (thanks Donald!):
"As the plane eased towards its runway I closed my eyes sitting next to the Sikh gentleman of full beard and hawk nose.  I pushed my awareness down from the head to heart and felt it pulsate outward. And then we were up.  As the plane levels out my smile hits full with the flying away of the stomach butterflies.  It's done.  I did it.  I'm really on my way, and the only thing to stop it now is a fiery death (a risk I've signed up for before).  I'm really on my way.
"Watched the lines of the Blue Ridge become the whole of Appalachia.  It is remarkable how straight some of those ridges run.  The border of West Virginia was a solid mass of immutable green, soft mountain.  Soon, though, that unending green was not pockmarked, but deeply scarred - and frequently - with massive mining sites.  Often many would be connected along a similarly brown smear of road too large for anything but massive earth moving machines.  Anger and sadness.  
Kentucky had a lot more houses than I expected.  Then I slept.
"to wake entering New Mexico.  What a change a nap makes.  From green to dusty tan, and countless circles of crop rivetted along highway 40.  The in-seat TV is my map.  Following the road with circle after circle when suddenly the neat lines of man's etching fall away is the wrinkled precipice cutting like spilled ink on a napkin.  Those farms were all, it seems, on a plateau which falls south of 40.  Such beautiful asymmetry.
"Still following the road we find the first green in NM, the line of mountains running north to Albuquerque.  A sudden huddle of civilization crowds the river beyond, extending not far from the slow water's edge.  From here the landscape varies  anew with ridges and shrub lands and even more winding runoff stream beds."
"I look at the map again to see that all that green down there is Arizona.  Such state to state differences!  And sand!  Such wonderful, exhaustive attractive wastes reaching up rocky spines and punctuated by, of all things, lakes!  Huge lakes.  SE California is my Arakis.
"These California mountains are dirty sand peppered with tree and shrub.  Expansive, deeper, taller, brutish instead of subtle.  I do not love them.  Appalachia feels of home, not this youthful grandeur.  
"Washington is green and beautiful.  Its blue fabric under legion white clouds running streamers.  This could be home."


8 - 31 - 11.
I got scouted so hard today.  To get scouted:  don't notice that person too close for you to have any excuse to not know about.  It's like rolling a 2 or 3 on a spot check.  Sometimes there are others around, too.  Then it's even better (or worse).  Sometimes this person has come up to you within sight of others and you have simply not paid the attention to know.  I was standing in a circle of three talking about a bow quiver and wondering what the insects were doing flying into my hair and somehow not getting stuck.  That would be Steve, standing behind me, fiddling with the top of my head.  Now, before I turn around, see me, talking with Gordon and another student, thinking that I should go get a fork before heading down to the fire for dinner.  See me glancing up (not back) at the mosquitoes, see me shifting from side to side (but not back) and see Steve walking silently up to me to stand directly behind me.  For minutes.  I got scouted hard.  
Gordon got me later with a clothes pin.  That's nothing new, though.  He and I will go back and forth sometimes.  The clothes pin needs to be on the front of a person to really count, and the pinner needs to get away scott free before the pinee notices.  These are awareness games.  Know your surroundings, know your environment.  Theoretically this translates into someone who will notice details, notice sounds, notice small movements, and not fail to see what is right in front of you.  That's the idea.  And in the mean time: it's fun.  
After dinner, cooked over the fire at the Outdoor Classroom down a trail in the woods:  Sign language.  What an amazing tool.  Sitting around with apprentices learning from someone quite advanced and a gaggle of novices (where I am) watching and picking up pieces, trying to make bridges.  Some of my favorite things to say now include: you're paranoid; goodnight, teacher; I climb the moon ladder.  Obviously it was a fun evening.  




9 - 5 - 11.  
It has now been nearly a week in Washington.  I like the people living here with me on the farm very much.  They are all either instructors, interns, or students from the summer classes who are continuing with the same program as I.  In other words, I am surrounded by motivated, experienced, and active individuals who spend their leisure time canning, tanning hides, making bows, creating cordage, working in the garden, and of course, stalksneakscouting.  I have been picking up some of these activities, but as of yet I am hardly as self-directed as everyone around me.  The new students that come to the farm see me living in one of the houses and being chummy with the interns so they assume that I am one of them.  I am not.  I am ignorant waiting for the shoe to drop.  It drops tomorrow, the first day of class.  I am ready to get assignments, to be directed, to be guided for a time, so that I can find my own niche.
I somewhat hesitate to name everyone I'm around, as they aren't asking to have their lives broadcast to an anonymous audience.  We'll see what I think about this as I start describing more things in greater and greater detail.  False names sounds silly, but it may be what I do.  
This is an inherently intimate environment, I am coming to realize.  There are seven of us sharing this house - four living in it and three more using its kitchen, living room, and baths.  Two have girlfriends, and since two interns and an instructor are among the seven, this house is a bit of a hub for activity.  I anticipate it being difficult to separate many experiences from the greater context we are all sharing.  Awareness games are always going on.  One is never alone if outside, it can be safely assumed (or should, lest you be scouted unawares or caught with your fly down).  

The last few days have been a mix of explorations of the woods, the surrounding towns, and the constant process of meeting new and interesting people.  The day before yesterday (Saturday) a group of eight of us hiked up Index Mountain.  Three miles up, three miles down.  A lot of up and then a lot of down.  A lot more hiking like this is going to be necessary to get these legs and lungs into the shape they need to be.  The terminus of the hike was a lake with sheets of snow laying down to the water's edge in the Northern shade of an even taller peak.  Two were brave enough for the water.  Oh, and if you didn't know, 

THE TREES ARE HUGE.  
Really huge.  And this part of Washington doesn't even have the really big ones.  Red Ceder, Hemlock, and Spruce form a ridiculously soft and undulating forest floor.  Ferns abound and downed trees provide raised highways for quicker travel.  It is a magical place.  There will be a more directed and concise description of the lands here and the surrounding area in the near future.  I miss many friends and family now, but I am so busy being back in the absurd (and good) feeling of being Gordon's roommate with new people everywhere that it is hard to feel so many emotions at once.  The music jamming is good.  Everyone plays, and everyone plays differently.  There is a drum kit in the house, a billion guitarists, a cello is coming, and the harp is getting ready.  Kalimbas are never far from my hands.  I missed Cornstalk.  I know it was a strappling good time for everyone.  
More later, and more.
Enjoy your Labor(less) Day
Love.