The Pine Martens met at N. Galbraith
Mountain Trailhead for their second outing of the spring season.
This is our second season together as a group and the mentors have
happily noticed us getting much more comfortable with the culture and
flow of Boys Explorers Club. We were lucky to have an outing on this
day because this was the first sunny day in Bellingham in multiple
weeks. We were excited to have a fun day of exploration and to continue our introduction to harvest.
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| Sun in the woods! |
As we hiked through the regenerating
forests of N. Galbraith, some of the sun's energy was able to sneak
through the canopy and dappled the understory with patches of warm
light. Not to far along the trail, we found some interesting downed
trees, a spring, and even a cave (that was deeper than it initially
appeared!) All of these cool things deserved our excited, curious
investigation, so we took an hour or so to have some free exploration
time.
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| A cave... |
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| ...that ended up going further than we first thought! |
While we could have spent all day in
this spot, the mentors reminded us that there were many more cool
places to explore in this park so we packed up and hit the trail
again.
We eventually broke out of the woods
and into a clear cut area of this forest. This provided the
opportunity for us to look at and talk about our earth skill
(harvest) on a community wide scale. In addition to starting these
discussions, this clear cut offered us another great learning
opportunity.
While one of us was climbing over a
downed log, they slipped and used their hand to catch their fall. They
felt a serious stinging sensation in their hand and did the right
thing by letting a mentor know right away. Upon reviewing the scene
of the incident we discovered the culprit: a stinging nettle! We
gathered around the plant and took a moment to listen to one our our
mentors tell us more about this member of our forest community. We
found that arming ourselves with information helped to alleviate our
fears of getting stung from this delicious plant! We learned how
to handle the leaves in a way that won't sting our hands or our mouths if we want a nutritious trailside snack. In an exhibition of
bravery, the explorer who got stung by the nettle tasted it himself
for the first time! While we are certainly excited to learn about
more edible plants, we reminded ourselves of the rule about wild
edibles: we always ask a mentor before we put anything in our mouths!
We meandered down through the clear cut
and found a healthy patch of woods that surrounded a cool stream. It
had been a long hike to this point, so many of us took a moment to
eat some food and hydrate ourselves.
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| Having a snack |
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| Some of us decided to take some time to do a little journaling |
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| Of course we had to crawl up here |
After some more exploration, it was
time for a game. We got to play Meet-A-Tree, a game that helps us
with our plant identification skills while also building trust among
the members in our community. In this game, one of us was blindfolded
and led to a tree by a fellow explorer. We then get to use all of
our senses (minus taste!) to get to know this tree.
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| Leading each other over branches and around sword ferns |
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| Smelling, touching.... |
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| ...even listening to our trees! |
Getting to know a tree like this implants the tree into our memory in a way that simply reading a field guide could not do.
We were happy to have had a warm, dry
day in what seems like an endless parade of gray skies and rain in
the Pacific Northwest this year. We continued our study of the Art
of Harvest by playing Meet-A-Tree and discovering the goods
(delicious, nutritious) and the bads (stings) of nettles. Be sure to
check out the pictures from the rest of our outing
here.
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| Not a bad spot |
