Last Friday we were able to hone our bowdrill skills and also start working on the hand drill method of making fire by friction. With this method, all the work is done with your hands and arms; so as you can imagine, it is very difficult to produce a coal.~ Michael 
Our 24- hour group shelter experience is in my opinion one of the highlights of this program, if I may name a highlight only three months into it. It is a certainly a day and night few of us will forget anytime soon.
We met early Wednesday morning for a short introduction to and discussion of different types of group shelters. Then we were lead out into a new area of forest where we would spend the rest of the day building shelters which we would share with our clan members that night. There are four clan groups, chosen early in the year by a random drawing. We’ve done various activities throughout the fall in our clan groups, so we already work fairly well together. This experience was a true test, however.
My own clan, “Devil’s Club” (a particularly interesting yet common plant in these woods), though missing a couple members that day, really came together to get the job done. After deciding to build a “lean-to” shelter, we spent a long morning and afternoon gathering all the necessary materials- logs, sticks, hemlock boughs, sword ferns, firewood for the night, and massive amounts of leaf litter- and assembling our home for a night. We were on a race against encroaching darkness and ever-threatening rain, and worked on despite aching backs, blackberry scratched arms, and heavy wet materials. Just when our shelter looked almost ready, we heard a loud crack and saw that our main support beam had collapsed. It took the strength and perseverance of all of us to fix and improve our shelter late in the day, but we had learned an important lesson. At dusk we found ourselves exhausted, sitting in the rain by a crackling trench fire, next to our proud creation. That night was the real experience, the one many of us had looked forward to with various mixtures of excitement and trepidation. Of our whole group of 30, a rare few slept soundly, many slept fitfully, some chose to spend the night outside the shelter, some tended fires all night. Some of us got cold, some got wet both outside and inside shelters, some were too cramped, others breathed in obscene amounts of smoke from poorly ventilated or rained-on fires, but we all made it through the night one way or another. Whether we choose to practice this skill often or never again isn’t important. What matters is how much we each learned, and the powerful sense of accomplishment we all had. I could see it in our bleary eyes and sleepy grins the next morning when we gathered at sunrise. Once again, we’ve been through something big together, and we are changed for it.
Day 2 of our peninsula trip.
photo by Margaret Lambert
photo by Margaret Lambert
photo by Margaret Lambert
photo by Margaret Lambert
photo by Patrick
photo by Patrick
photo by Patrick
photo by Patrick
photo by Patrick
photo by Patrick
photo by Patrick
Our first day, to the old-growth forest on the Olympic Peninsula.
photo by Patrick
Our instructors seem to think we aren’t getting quite enough rain here, because we spent the week on the Olympic Peninsula in and around a true temperate rainforest. All rain aside (and there was plenty of it), this trip took us to new and different landscapes where we were able to expand our understanding of the Pacific Northwest a great deal in a short time. Before the trip, a coworker asked me- “what will you be doing there?” I told her we’d hiking around, learning about the forest and coast there. She didn’t seem to understand why we would spend long days traveling just to spend a day or two hiking around. I realize that experiential education is hard to pin down, to quantify, but hopefully after reading on you will understand how valuable this experience was to us.
We had spent a classroom day learning some background information on the ecology and cultural history of the Olympic Peninsula, so we went into this experience with a bit of knowledge and a whole lot of curiosity. Our first stop was the Sol Duc Valley of Olympic National Park where we got to explore a mature old growth forest and lunch by a waterfall. Although much was familiar to us- many of the plants, trees, bird calls- the character of the forest was completely different from the often- cut dense Cascade foothills we are used to. We walked through the open forest in awe of the massive trees and open space around them. The expansiveness and powerful energy there caused us all to breathe a little deeper and speak a little quieter.
On to our camp site at Ozette lake, at the far northwest corner of the peninsula. We had just one full day to explore there, but what a full day it was! We split into small groups and set out on unstructured wandering; the landscape provided us with more than enough material to evoke continual wonder and always more questions. We made our way on slippery boardwalks though spruce and cedar forest dotted with tannin-rich swamps out to the thunderous Pacific. Some of our teachers that day were a Western Red-backed salamander, Black-tailed deer, sea otters, sea lions, seals, Harlequin ducks, Bald eagles, cormorants, Surf scoters, anemones, limpets, chitons, and sea stars. We also learned from those there before us, through Black Bear and River Otter tracks, a variety of bones, a shell-filled midden, and petroglyphs carved deep in rock. At the end of the day we all came together around a fire amidst heavy wind and rain to share lessons, stories, questions, and songs.
Our final day we spent some time at the local Makah tribe’s cultural history center and museum, where we were able to soak up more information on the rich natural and cultural history of the northwest tip of the peninsula- some questions answered, more asked. Coming home on the ferry, breathing the salt air and singing a new song, we were surely not the same people standing in the same place just two days before.
Photos from our day spent learning how to catch animals with deadfall traps. -Michael
photo by Margaret Lambert
photo by Margaret Lambert
photo by Margaret Lambert
photo by Patrick
