Hello friends,
Express apologies from your very delinquent blogger here at the Residential Program! It’s been three weeks since school has begun again! What have we been doing?
Well, we had another big snowstorm (up to 8 inches here in the foothills!) that iced over on the roads and prevented many of us, including our instructors, getting to the land for a few classes. This winter has been an amazing one for class-canceling weather.
Though we missed some classes, we have been keeping busy. On the days we didn’t have class due to the snow a lot of us went tracking. One of our guest instructors tracked and even saw a bobcat!
In class we’ve been doing more crafty stuff in honor of the cold, wet, dark winter season. We’ve made pine-needle baskets, cedar bark baskets, and cattail mats. We’ve also talked more about mentoring and spent a day with the youth school again, helping them on their journey to create fire by friction.
We’ve also done some tracking in class. One exceptional day we spent in the valley at Bob Heirman park where, among many other things, we watched a bald eagle chase a red-tailed hawk from it’s perch in a gigantic old cedar tree in the middle of a field. The hawk then retaliated so boldly that the bald eagle left the perch. We went over to investigate and found a ton of raptor pellets, feathers, bones and other animal remains scattered around the base of the tree. Then we looked up and found a fresh duck kill lying on a low branch above us. We surmised it was the reason the hawk was so keen on being in the tree at that time. It was amazing to see part of the cycle of life in play right in front of us!
We’ve all been feeling a little slow and scattered as a group lately, what with the dreary weather, and the loss of momentum after break, and the classes we’ve missed these past weeks. However, we are all excited about increasing daylight, and plan to get together more outside of class time to pull each other through this last, and most difficult part of winter.
On the other hand, it’s been fantastically beautiful with wet heavy snow holding down the green evergreen branches and coating almost every surface available. We even had a few days of blue sky and sun right after the snow storm! The lakes have been frozen, so people have been playing on them a bit too. A few students went out on the ice late one night and found and walked right up to a beaver lodge! They could actually hear the beavers moving around inside!
Well folks, sorry again for the lapse, hope you didn’t miss us too much ;-) Keep your spirits up!
–Dana
NatureSkills.com's Wilderness Survival Skills Blog
