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First published in Foxprint, Winter 2007. Excerpted from Wilderness Awareness School’s upcoming book, Coyote’s Guide to Connecting Kids with Nature
If you take part in a program with one of the schools that uses the Art of Mentoring model, Starting Story, Nature Names, Four-Directions Classroom, Animal Calls, Fire-Keeper, and Eagle Eye are the activities that you will probably encounter first, as these set the tone for the learning to follow. They help create a learning landscape, they provide the basic “vocabulary”, and they give students an inspirational taste of what they can expect to learn.
Along with hero stories, these activities help “flip the switch”, temporarily removing students from their day-to-day culture—whatever it may be—and relocating them to a culture where nature study, healthy serious fun, curiosity-based exploration, community respect, and personal growth are central. These activities both excite and ground, inspire and set parameters. Once the tone is set, kids’ instincts slip into gear and connection to nature happens naturally.
Eagle Eye
Every exercise in Coyote’s Guide is preceded by this key, which highlights aspects of the learning experience. The Mentor’s Manual, a part of the Coyote’s Guide curriculum, defines and describes these aspects.
Core Routines: Expanding the Senses, Secret Spot, Animal Forms
Child’s Passions: Scouting, Hiding, Seeking, Challenges
Natural Cycle: East or South-West
Language of Nature (Species and Skill-Sets): Nature Observation, Birds
Symptoms of Aliveness: Quiet Mind
Primer
Eagles have incredibly keen vision. They’re able to spot a small rodent or splashing fish hundreds of yards below their flight or nest. Humans have good vision too, and if you practice using your vision as an eagle does, you’ll be able to see more animals that hide from you in the woods.
How-to
This game is a sedentary variation on hide-and-seek. Play this game in an area where there is decent cover for hiding: bushes, ferns, tall grass. Choose one person as the Eagle who stands in an “Eagle Nest” that consists of about the range of the student’s pivot-step. Start by having an instructor stay with the Eagle during the game. The Eagle closes his eyes and counts to sixty while everyone else hides in a broad circle around the Eagle Nest (define the boundaries). All hiders must hide themselves in such a way that they can see the Eagle with at least one eye at all times.
The Eagle opens his eyes and looks (and listens) for the hiders, without ever leaving the nest. When the Eagle sees a hider, have him describe the colors of the clothes or hair he sees and where the hider is, until it is clear that the person has in fact been seen. That hider then is called into the Eagle Nest and sits down, remaining silent so that the Eagle can listen for the movements of other hiders.
If it’s been a while since the Eagle was able to see anyone, ask everyone to quickly hide again, 5 steps closer, while the Eagle closes his eyes. Continue this reshuffle until everyone but the last is found. Then have the last hider reveal herself and her ‘primo’ spot!
Inside the Mind of the Mentor
This is consistently one of the most popular games at our Youth Programs. We love it and often introduce it right off the bat because it inspires kids for a long time to 1) hide, scout, and practice invisibility, 2) use their eyes and ears in more focused ways, 3) practice patience in looking for animals in the woods.
We also really love this game because it gives energy-filled children the experience of Secret Spot: sitting still in nature. Hiding games “trick” students into breaking in new comfort zones in which it is okay to be belly-to-the-dirt or in a thicket full of spiderwebs and scratchy branches. They are becoming at home in the natural world.
I can’t tell you how many times students return to the Eagle Nest, not caring they’ve been caught. Instead they are talking excitedly of an orange and black caterpillar that crawled right by their face or the way the clouds were making such cool shapes in the sky.
Left alone to sit quietly, children discover awe and wonder for nature, without any prompting. But since they likely won’t sit alone in the forest without a good reason, hiding games such as Eagle Eye provide a space for this to happen. Of course from their perspective, they are just playing a game.
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