For an intensive program such as this, a three week break feels like an eternity. Wednesday morning back at school was like a reunion with old friends, everyone excitedly talking about visits with family and friends, travel adventures, and how good it is to be back. We welcomed one new member to our group- Vanya- who comes to us all the way from Russia. Our newly reunited residential student group was then split randomly into smaller clan and society groups, which mixes us up differently than last quarter. Everything feels new again, yet at the same time comfortably familiar.

This week we spent some time with a few traditional tribal winter pastimes including natural materials basket making, nettle cordage, and cattail woven mats. Unlike most crafting we may have done in our lives, these experiences were more meaningful because we harvested the materials ourselves back in autumn. It’s a wonder to look at a rough but functional cattail doormat that until recently was a pile of cattail reeds drying behind my couch, and before that was a living plant in a nearby swamp. Or a thin but strong piece of rope that was not long ago a dried nettle stalk leaning in a corner of my room and a few months ago growing in a field near the Snoqualmie river, stinging me as I pulled it up. As I look around my room right now, there are very few items I can trace to the source, or that I had anything to do with at all until I bought them. It’s a nice change not only to truly know these items I’ve created, but to feel deep connections with and gratitude to the plants they came from.

Just so that you don’t think we’ve gone soft, spending our days around the fire, telling stories and making useful little crafts… Friday we met at school at 6:30am, over an hour before dawn, and trudged out to preplanned sit spots spaced around the pond in order to be there before the birds woke up. Our “bird sit” involved sitting in one place for almost two hours and simply listening, watching, and noticing any bird activity. Our time there was divided into 15 minute segments where we noted all birds seen and heard, including location, types of calls (alarm vs. song, etc.) and any behavior notes. Coming together at the end of this, we created clan maps of our experiences. For a relatively quiet winter morning in northwest Washington, I can assure you that there was a whole lot going on around our little forest pond.

I’d like to mention one final highlight from our first week back. At a transition time between activities when we were all heading back to the lodge, there was a spontaneous snowball fight involving the majority of us. The snow was icy and slushy and only in a few sad patches, yet we somehow found enough of it to sling back and forth at each other across a muddy field. If you haven’t been in a real, full-out snowball fight in a while then you probably won’t understand. If you have, you know how inexplicably hilarious and fun they are. Too often in life we forget how important it is to just let loose and play. Thankfully, there seems to be always someone here who helps us to remember.

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