March 8th, 2009 Sheina
A long walk to the sand bar. We spend the day gathering willow to make baskets. We sit down in a circle, and start weaving. The willow is of all different colours; green, yellows, and reds. Some of us make beautiful baskets, some of us, not so beautiful. But looking around the circle, its not the baskets that are important. Its the conversations, the laughs, the frustrations, the concerns that we put into those baskets. Someone told me once that when you make a basket, its never really about the basket. its about the space that you make to place things of value. Looking around the circle, the empty space in the middle was holding all of us. one giant basket!
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December 18th, 2008 Sheina
Ladies and gentlemen, we have officially passed our first big survival step; the shelter overnight. As clans, we designed, gathered, built, and spent the night in a primitive shelter made of leaves and stick. These shelters were not debris huts, or holes in the ground. they were actually quite elaborate! Big enough for an entire clan (7 people), with a central fire in the middle, we spent the night literally on top of each other, keeping each other warm, laughing, complaining, drifting in and out of sleep, and wishing we had piled more leaves on our shelter. as they say, you can never have enough leaves on your debris-pee!
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November 25th, 2008 Sheina
Finally, we got to meet, the one, the only… DRUM ROLL PLEASE!JON YOUNG!And it was awesome. We sang all night. We heard stories that changed our perspectives. We called animals and spirits to sit with us around Ingwe’s fire. We laughed, we cried. But most importantly, we listened. We listened to the words of a man who we respected, and who respected us. He asked our names, and really seemed to care about remembering them. He listened to our stories, never rushing us, eyes closed, as if entering our minds eye to envision the sequence of events himself.The fire ended at midnight on Friday, and the next day was the start of our thanksgiving break. I was to fly into Montreal early, carrying Jon’s stories and the stories of my peers in a sacred little tinder bundle in my heart. I had to keep it safe, in order to pass it on, in order to pass the light on to my friends and family back home.”Light it up to live, tend it well and it will always be there. It’s inside me, so I can see. It’s inside me, it sets me free. ” -song shared with us by JY, written at the music art of mentoring by the teenage boys.
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November 25th, 2008 Sheina
I’m not going to lie.I arrived at the olympic peninsula pissed, tired, and really not wanting to be there. We had spent too long in a van ride, it was raining, and being the Montrealer that I am, I was really starting to hate the west coast. I went to bed in tears, cold, rolled up in a ball, praying for sunshine the next day.As I awoke in my tent that really resembles a spaceship (its silver), I yelled to Kevin, whose voice I could hear outside my tent “PLEASE tell me its sunny out!”. Kevin laughed and answered “Oh yea! It’s a beautiful day!”. I thought he was teasing me. I threw on my layers and my rainjacket, and stepped outside. And lo and behold, the sun was shining, brilliant. the air was crisp and sweet, and as we all departed camp to join our various adventure groups, my spirits were rising.So much happened that day, I’m not going to go into every single detail, but I will give you the highlights, and some quick stories.As we were climbing up a ridge, a blue heron freaked at us and landed in a tree!– While sitting at my sit spot, a young bald eagle look down at my from the sky, cocked its head to the side, and flew away– We watched the tide come in at the highest it goes all year– I touched a sea emenity in the actual sea!–We saw petroglyphs left by the makah– We heard seals in the distance. Real, live seals–those are just some of the stories of the day, and that just from my group. you can imagine that this was probably one of our most wonderfull adventures yet.
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November 25th, 2008 Sheina
I vividly remember hearing birds for the first time at the age of 16. No, i did not grow up locked in a basement. I had just never payed attention before. And then, one day, after a mentor of mine told me about birding at summer camp where i was working, I heard them. Loud, clear, diverse. We sat around Linne Doran, and I relived that experience. It was cold, we were all tired, and the sun hadn’t risen yet. But the birds didn’t care. they were having a party, and we weren’t invited. We were just eve’s dropping on conversations, some we could understand, some we couldn’t, trying to recognize voices of party birds we had only met once or twice, if ever, in passing. still so many mysteries…
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November 25th, 2008 Isadora
CRAZY COOL STORIES! We had tracked this area rampant with fox tracks. I’ve always wanted to see a fox, and so morgan and I decided to go sleep under the glowing dune stars in the area where there seemed to be the most fox activity. During the night, we both dreamt that a fox came and looked at us, and we both vividly remember hearing a yip yip in the night. the next day, another group tracked that fox looking down a ledge at us.
On the coldest day of our trip, Lucas spent the day in nothing but his loin cloth. talk about facing the elements! Our instructor marcus asked him if he wanted to turn around and put some clothes on. Lucas solemly answered: I dont deserve clothes. I made this choice. Thus, he spent the day with his hair sticking on end, trying to find shelter from the rain and the wind. Brave dude that Lucas!
I also got my very first coal! YAY! after two years of trying, Pete the aprentice finally coached me into flame.
I love this school
.
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November 25th, 2008 Isadora
WOW! I’ve never had so much information shoved into my brain before. Not really any survival skills in particular. we didnt bow drill, make traps, or flint knap. but it seems like we learnt things that were just as important. we learnt how to see. we learnt how to walk quietly and respectfully. we learnt a lot about eachother, finally splitting up into clans, playing get to know you games, learning about the six directions and where we stand. we learnt routines that we wont only be doing for these nine months: well be expanding on them for life. I remember sitting in cedar lodge with izi, playing guitar, and making jokes at eachother. everyone was doing something: some were reading, journaling, finishing our tourist test, napping. but it struck me in that moment that all these people were going to be more than my friends, more than my family. they were going to be people i was going to get to know, whether i like it or not. they were going to encourage me, help me grow, and help me become who i am suppose to be. I hope ill do the same for them. Were spending nine months together. remind you of anything? nine months of hard labour, and nine months into rebirth from our big pacha mama, our mother earth.
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November 25th, 2008 Isadora
Hello everyone out there in cyberspace! We are the 2008-2009 WARP class and we are so excited to share this journey with you through our blog. Here’s a bit to start off with and we will try to get pictures and some more writings up soon. Enjoy the tidbits for now. ~Isadora, Sheina and Spencer~
we all sat around our first community potluck, not really knowing what to think. How akward; a room of people none of us know, all standing in a circle. Someone asked all the rezzies to step forward and introduce themselves. We did, and finally, we knew eachothers names. not much, just where we were from and where were living now. It was enough though, and soon the ball was rolling. people were talking, laughing, singing and were making plans to meet up later on. It was clear from the start we were going to be a young, vibrant community, and we were going to make our mark at WAS. 
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June 13th, 2008 Heather
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June 9th, 2008 Heather
It is rare for me to procrastinate; usually I’m one of those annoyingly prompt people. It has taken me a while to get around to this entry not because I didn’t want to do it, but because I knew it would be the last one. My procrastination didn’t stop the program from ending though, so now, without further delay, I will get down to the business of sharing how it ended.
The first of our last two weeks was the much awaited survival trip. With ceremonial singing and beating drums, our instructors sent us off into the wilderness together, yet alone in the world. It’s strange how fast priorities can change the pattern of our lives. Within minutes we transformed from modern humans into our animal selves. All that mattered was finding water, making shelter and fire, finding food. Basic needs are easy to discuss in theory, but unless you don’t have them at hand, it’s hard to truly understand their importance in every instant. The tone of the week was set by necessity, and lived in community. Thirsty? Find clean water. Cold? Sit by the fire, add more insulation to the shelter, or snuggle with a friend. Hungry? Forage for green shoots of salmonberry, nettle, miner’s lettuce. Roast oyster mushrooms or snails (or something even more adventurous) and share every morsel in village circles. Weak, dizzy, sick, or injured? Lay by the fire and let the village care for you until you feel better. Knowing our sparse animal existence had an expiration date both helped us to make it through the hard times and distracted us from really living there in the moment. Food cravings elicited hours of almost philosophical discussions about what we wanted and how we wanted it. Epic eating plans were made as we salivated and turned up our noses at the greenery available to us, holding our growling stomachs. Thus it was clear that we weren’t really the same as those three black- tailed deer sharing their bounty with us, yet we got a taste of their lives like most people never will. I think in a way they understood that. On our final morning those three deer walked up to our circle and looked back at us, seeming to really see us. A little later, our instructors met us and sang us back into a different world. We knew that they too were looking back at us, seeing us, understanding something few others will.
Our final week was a blur of debriefing, reflections, game-playing, singing, more reflections, and ceremony. If we had any doubts before, it was made clear that our experience this year was so much more than learning natural history or survival skills. We have come through a rite of passage, which, though different for all of us, was indescribably powerful and important in our lives. We lived this experience in a close-knit community within the larger Wilderness Awareness School Community. Our graduation ceremony reflected this- each program coming together to share a little of their different experiences, yet each feeling part of a big family. Some will stay here in this community, others will head out into the world to find new communities, new families. Our instructor, Chris Laliberte, summed it up well when he said, “Now we let these students loose into the world with the difficult task of explaining to others just exactly what they did all year.” Though it wasn’t easy, that was my hope for this blog. But to truly understand what happened to us, you’ll just have to do it yourself.
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