Jeremy Milligan took the following pictures throughout some of the surrounding areas:
Mt Si from Chinook Bend.
These falls are along the trail to Snoqualmie Lake.
Snoqualmie Lake
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Jeremy’s sit spot on the Tolt River.
Today we brought closure to our first third of the residential program. The first part of the day was a surprise “naturalist Olympics”, which included three main events in a clan competition. The first challenge was to make a primitive fire using only our fire kits and wood from the dripping wet forest, underneath a water balloon strung from two trees above. The first clan to pop the balloon with the heat of their fire won. Though some clans were more successful than others, it was clear to see how far we’d come by the ways we all knew how to contribute, how we knew what was needed. And boy was it fun! The second challenge was a more traditional cerebral test of knowledge, the good old trivia quiz game. Like many of the activities we’ve done this fall, this one both made us realize that we have been learning a whole lot, and pointed out how much we still want to learn. Our final challenge of the day was less a test of skill or knowledge than perhaps coordination and awareness with a bit of luck thrown in. We played a sort of group tag game involving blindfolds and flying sock bundles that is just as fun to play as it is to watch after you’ve been tagged out. After the scores had been tallied and the winning clan rewarded with cheesecake, we were thankfully able to put our rarely seen competitive sides back to rest.
The afternoon was spent reflecting on our past season through sharing and recapping our favorites stories, discussions with the elders, and thinking our own thoughts while sitting together around that now familiar fire in Malalo Ya Chui, our usual meeting space. The elders, seeing us after all this time, agreed that we all looked more relaxed. Though this program has affected us all differently, some in very powerful, others in more subtle ways, we all at least know each other and ourselves differently than we did three months ago. Many of us had trouble trying to summarize our experiences just as I do every time I sit down to write these notes; sometimes there are no words to succinctly say anything that would be enough. Some shared stories of incredible inspiration and breakthroughs, others of frustration, others of gratitude. Most of us I think feel some measure of all of these. There is no mistaking that we are in this experience now, no longer at the uneasy and exciting beginning, but in the middle, the meat of the program, which is not always easy but is somehow more real. One of the elders summed it up very well when she said, “It’s a gift to be here when everything’s going well, and it’s a gift to be here when everything is going terribly. It’s all a gift.” That’s exactly how it’s felt to me. The days I’m cold and wet and wondering if I’m learning anything at all useful are just as meaningful as the days when I feel fully engaged and excited to be here. Some of it may not always be pleasant, but we are alive in ways that many people in the paved and electronic worlds couldn’t begin to fathom.
photos taken by Jeremy Milligan at Deer & Beer lake
video also by Jeremy:
Lynx!
That IS a lynx jumping from one tree to another.
Can you spot the wolf?
How about now?
All of a sudden, this pack of wolves got very active.
They seemed to crowd around the alpha; maybe to show appreciation?
Black bear.
I actually said that this morning: “I’ll believe it when I see it”, after our instructor Chris told us that we were going to break rocks into useable tools, using other rocks. I had already dubbed this day “caveman day” when I heard we were going to be banging rocks together. As much as I laughed about it, as much as I doubted, I found yet again in this program that I was pleasantly surprised. Mid-day today I looked around to see my fellow students squatting by the river banging rocks together, smiled at the sight of it, then went back to my own effort. As any two year old will tell you as well as s/he can, banging things together is fun, but even better was the satisfaction of using our adult understanding of geology and physics to choose the right rock and the precise angle to shear off a razor sharp shard big enough to use as a tool. Caveman day wasn’t as simple as it seemed. Theoretically. By the end of the day a few people were binding their blades to scotch broom branch handles to create carving axes, while others had regressed to just throwing rocks on other rocks to see what happened. Amazingly, we all walked away from this primal day with all the appendages we’d started with, holding a new skill to tuck away in our toolboxes, just in case.
A week off for thanksgiving meant a substantial amount of time apart from each other and away from our school routines. It’s strange how just a few days can make such a difference in our connections with each other and the land. For some of us it took a good deal of energy to throw ourselves back into this world, a world often quite removed from the rest of our lives. Our schedule this week was perfect for reintegration. Wednesday we spent on the school land learning about land stewardship from Mike Prince, our land manager. We then spent some time brainstorming various land use changes and then getting dirty and sweaty actually doing a little land stewardship ourselves. Thursday we had a wandering tracking day at Bob Heirman park, a beautiful open meadow, wetland, and river ecosystem not far from school. In our clans we had various new adventures that day including owl sightings, otter and beaver tracking, and discovering multiple animal signs such as bones, skulls, feathers, beaver chews, animal burrows, deer rubs, and copious amounts of scat. Friday we took a field trip to Northwest Trek, a wildlife preserve/safari/zoo where we were blessed to spend time in the presence of a multitude of northwest birds and mammals. For many of us we made some real connections to animals we had formerly only read about in books or tracked in sand. Some of the highlights of that day included being growled at by a wolverine, watching raccoons use their amazing hands to “see” everything they feel, realizing wolves were hearing sounds none of us could hear, actually seeing a beaver strip the bark off a branch, hearing a wild bald eagle calling to captive eagles, holding a grizzly bear skull, and playing with a river otter. What a full week! How wonderful to be back and part of this world once more.
