October 31st, 2007 Heather
Based on my entries to this point, you may be getting a skewed idea of our program; you may think it’s all fun and games and sweetness and love, etc. But as with anything, what you put into it is what you’re going to get out of it, whether working from within “the box” or without. Today was a good reminder of that for me. Today we learned to make deadfall traps. These are traps are created by fitting together three notched sticks at various angles balanced against a heavy object such as a log which will theoretically fall on whatever you are trapping when it comes to get the bait you left in a strategic spot on one of the sticks. Simple, right? No? I’m afraid my difficulty explaining it mirrors the difficulty many have in creating a working deadfall trap. Suffice it to say, it’s a tricky project which takes patience and perseverance, neither of which I had this morning. This is the kind of day where in traditional school I might have spaced out, daydreamed, slumped in my chair, and been no worse off for it. It was the kind of day that I just didn’t want to be uncomfortable or challenged. As is not unusual at Wilderness Awareness School, however, it was cold and wet and the task at hand was challenging. What made it more challenging for me was the fact that this skill is one only to use in an extreme survival emergency, and is at other times illegal. So, I started off a bit grumpy, having little thoughts of “what’s the point of this?” and “I’m never going to need this skill so can’t I just sit by the fire and be comfortable?”. Unlike being a kid or an adult in a traditional institutional setting, there was nobody there who was going to make me do anything. Realizing this, I made a choice. I made a choice to be challenged and to learn this skill even if I might never use it. My brain hurt, I was cold and sore, and I sat there, carving and balancing and starting all over again and wondering if I should have taken a physics class…. and suddenly I realized I was enjoying myself. I was smiling and having fun and when I finally got that trap set and it worked like it was supposed to (in catching my hand) it was extremely satisfying. I had pushed the boundaries of my comfort zone a little farther and given myself a kick in the butt when I knew noone else would. It felt good, and I was proud of myself. So yes, plenty of fun and games and sweetness and love to be had here but it doesn’t always come easily. I know that there are bigger challenges ahead, such as building shelters in which we will spend the night (notice I didn’t say sleep). I just hope that the motivating force inside me will stick around through those times. Otherwise it’s going to be one long, cold, wet winter. (Note to self- buy some thick wool pants soon!)
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October 25th, 2007 Heather
This week we were blessed by a visit from Jon Young, a founder of Wilderness Awareness School. He no longer lives in the northwest but has gone on to share his gifts elsewhere. We were told he flew up here from California just for us, for our program. Our syllabus just read “Jon Young”, with no topic, as if that was enough. “So he’s just going to talk all day, and into the evening?” Yes, and it was enough. It was perhaps one of the most inspiring days yet.
We welcomed Jon into our circle and within minutes he made us feel part of something so much larger than our group of 30 around a fire on a cold but clear October day. He shared his inspiration and support in starting the school, including such varied influences as his own mentor Tom Brown, another mentor and friend from Kenya, Ingwe, the Findhorn community in Scotland, native american cultural influences, and many others. He stressed as our instructors do that our community and education models are not based on or taken from any other cultures, but more inspired by them and made into our own. But with this in mind, we are connected to a great number of both ancient and cutting edge educational organizations and communities all over the world who share similar threads. These threads include facilitating relationships- with each other and all living things, cultural mentoring- such as learning from our ancestors and elders, and environmental mentoring- learning directly from nature. For the first time I could see that what I am accomplishing by spending this time in the Residential program is so much more than an individual act, or even one simply involving the Wilderness Awareness School. We are part of a global community and not so alone as we sometimes feel in the greater community. As a powerful example of this we learned that our sister school in California had sent us not only their good wishes but a loaf of acorn flour bread and a song Jon shared with us. Jon also told us of schools he’s working with in Germany now following similar practices and core routines. It made us feel very very hopeful, for ourselves and the world.
Some common discussions that come up for those of us who feel like we are escaping from the world by being here include a fear of being boxed in, stuck in a box, living in the box, and other such analogies for the majority culture “out there”. This is often shared as a fear for when the school year is over and we have to return to the “real world”. Today Jon helped us feel that we are part of the real world, a world we are creating, or remembering, or a bit of both. He assured us that we could never really live inside that stifling box again. “Besides”, he said, “by the end of this year we will have made you entirely too big for the box. Boxes will shudder when you approach.” Based on some commonly heard reactions to our time so far I know this is true. Just today I heard, ‘I feel like a human again’, and ‘I can feel my heart now’. That and the incredible harmonies of 30 people singing loud around a crackling fire under a full moon assures me that no box could contain any of us ever again.
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October 23rd, 2007 Heather
I had a thought recently that made me chuckle. In paying more attention to the former lives of animals I eat I’ve thought a bit about the idea of “free range”. For cows or chickens, for example, it means they weren’t locked up in little cages with poor light and no room to room. Instead, they (theoretically) got plenty of open space, fresh air, and healthy natural food. So what would free range people look like? I think they’d look a lot like us, the Residential students.
During our plant week we definitely spent our time in the open air, wandering open spaces and even gathering healthy natural food. My favorite part of that week was the day spent with visiting instructor Karen Sherwood. With the utmost respect for the plants, we gathered just enough to transform into a delectable meal which we consumed together (still in open air) at the end of the day. On the menu (with the help of a few added ingredients) was douglas fir tea, acorn muffins with elderberry jelly and rosehip honey, dandelion pesto over pasta, sauteed burdock root, and wild greens salad with elderberry vinaigrette dressing. A veritable feast!
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October 23rd, 2007 Heather
Our third week of school brought us another intensive full week, this time a trip to the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. The reason for spending a total of two long travel days getting there and back was the unparalleled tracking opportunities to be found on miles and miles of pristine sand. If you can still call it pristine after having been traversed by gray fox, red fox, coyote, feral dog, porcupine, raccoon, bear, weasel, squirrel, snake, frog, beetle, and the occasional wind-blown twig. With a combination of short learning sessions in front of a whiteboard with our expert instructors and long hours spent traversing the dunes, we became detectives. I came to realize that animal tracking is so much more than just figuring out what animal has been there. We had to learn animal locomotion- how different animals tend to move through the world. We tried to get into the heads of these animals; we tried clumsily to move like them and to imagine what they were up to. We studied shapes, sizes, numbers of toes, spacing, patterns, orientation, etc. until our brains hurt. We squinted and wondered and postulated and followed and discussed and wondered some more, for the major part of each day, and just when it might have gotten tiring…
We played. Opportunities for play on the dunes included flinging ourselves off sandy hills into sandy valleys below, attempting to run in straight lines while blindfolded, crawling through incredibly dense forested “tree islands” just to get to more sand on the other side, hiking out the ocean and actually going in, singing, sharing stories through silly skits around the campfire, and some of the best stargazing anywhere.
Once again I was amazed at how open and supportive this community is, how easily we all spend time together and feed off of each other’s enthusiasm. It made me wonder if we all just happen to be people who love to explore, are full of wonder, who love to laugh and play and experience the world and all just happened to come together in this program, or has this school created a space where that part of everyone emerges? Probably a bit of both.
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October 23rd, 2007 Heather
What a powerful skill to learn early in the season, particularly in this forever dripping, wet, cold that gets into your bones, northwest. We spent a whole day on primitive fire making. For a few of us this was a review, but for the vast majority it was one of those skills that seemed to make sense in theory as an archaic skill known only to long dead people. The fact of seeing it done before our eyes and believing we too could learn this skill was nothing less than extraordinary. Making fire is doing magic, and we were to become magicians. We did a bit of watching, listened to a bit of explaining, did a lot of gathering and creating tools, and a whole lot of practicing with our newly created bow drill fire kits. The sound of thirty people attempting to draw fire from the friction of wood on wood is something akin to a squirrel mating ritual of gargantuan proportions. But few of us really noticed the sound amidst the intensity of effort and intention, each of us set on creating our very own viable coal. From the energy of aching arms first came smoke, then a glowing ember, then, when added to a tinder bundle and gentle, steady breath, a burst of flame. Finally, then, total exhilaration accompanied by wide grins, cheers and not a few tears of joy. I will certainly remember my first fire making and the way it made me feel for, well, forever. If this all sounds a bit cheesy, you try doing magic you didn’t know you could do, and see if you don’t get all choked up. Fire is powerful, powerful stuff; that’s really the best I can do to explain it.
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October 23rd, 2007 Heather
At a September potluck welcoming many of us to the Residential Program, we were told the following: “You are now meeting people who in nine months you will not be able to imagine life without.” ( Or perhaps some more grammatically correct version of that.) We all looked around at each other, a very motley bunch from age 18 to somewhere up in the 60s. I honestly wondered how we could possibly come together into any sort of cohesive community in anything like nine months. I’ve lived and worked in several different communities and always have valued the rich experiences that come from this. I knew we could learn a lot from each other at any rate. But this is certainly one of the more diverse communities, in terms of backgrounds and life experiences, of which I’ve been a member. Think of the movie The Breakfast Club. For those having never seen it, it’s a simplistic teen angst movie where a handful of high school students with labels like “jock”, “nerd”, “princess”, etc. magically bond over the course of a Saturday detention and leave as friends. If it sounds unlikely, well, of course it is because it’s a movie, and it’s high school. Imagine a similar scenario, people brought together from different backgrounds, without even ages in common and increase the number to 30 with almost that many labels we might give ourselves. Yet amazingly, after just our first week together, I could honestly say (and believe others would agree) that we all bonded, are friends, and can hardly imagine life without each other.
Granted, it was an intensive week. We showed up Monday morning and set up a tent city at Linne Doran, the school’s land, where we stayed, learning and sharing from dawn (pre-dawn even) to dark, until Friday afternoon. During this first week we were introduced to the basic aspects of our curriculum, including core skills that will help expand our awareness and make way for new ways of seeing and being in the world. We learned to gather our minds together each day by giving thanks for all manifestations of life and the earth. We learned to sharpen our senses by getting into the minds of animals with owl eyes and fox walking. We were tested on our notice of details, on local plants, on bird language, and we found out how much we have to learn. We want to learn! We were given ways to relate to each other in smaller groups through assignment into clan groups and societies. We played, we sang, we spent a whole day exploring and came back to tell stories, eyes wide open like children. We are remembering the true role of elders. We are remembering how to be dirty, wet, and cold, and not care, the feel of bare feet in a muddy meadow. We’ve seen fire kindled from wood in seconds. We were given a small taste of all that is to come and we are hungry for more!
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October 23rd, 2007 Heather
Welcome to the much awaited 2007/2008 Residential Program blog. Now that we’re up and running I will be writing on a regular basis to fill you in on the many adventures we’ve been having, with a bit of my personal take on it all.
So who am I? I am a 34 year old woman originally from New England (Massachusettes, Connecticut, New Hampshire), most recently from Colorado, planning to make a home in the Northwest. In a lot of ways I’m your basic nature geek who enjoys all things outdoors. I’ve had a variety of environmentally related jobs and educational experiences, though not yet in the northwest. I thought this program would be a great way to gain knowledge and make connections with people and the landscape here. Now that we’re more than a month into it, I know that I am gaining so much more than simple knowledge and connections. It seems that all parts of my brain and body get fed exactly what I didn’t even know they needed on a regular basis here. This is true education- a continual gathering of mind expanding and life enriching experiences which would never fit into the stringent course categories found in traditional classrooms. Somehow we’re learning science, anthropology, history, math, philosophy, meditation, and a variety of other subjects and skills that wouldn’t show their faces anywhere except around a crackling fire in a nurturing community. All of this, sometimes, in one day. The best part, particularly to those who weren’t crazy about past educational experiences, is this is fun. It feels like play, and that, in my opinion, is how it should be.
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