Another Wild Weekend!

Just in case you thought I'd gone crazy after my last post, I wanted to share what I did Saturday...A friend and I caught the bus in Monroe and rode up the pass on Highway 2 to Gold Bar to check out Gold Dust Days...The bus ride was nice, as the highway 2 traffic is quite intense on a sunny Saturday, and we were both happy to enjoy the scenery without worrying about the other drivers...Gold Bar is a small town, and it seemed that everyone had turned out for the festivities! We missed the parade, but got there in time to see the Civil War reenactors shoot off the cannon. The setting was beautiful, even if no Civil War battle ever got close to Washington...however, there WAS a ship called the USS Tahoma that was part of the Union Navy blockade! Tahoma was the name given to Mount Rainier by some of the indiginous Pacific Northwest tribes.

Darlene and I wondered through the classic car show entries, watched kids enjoy horseback rides, shopped the craft booths, and watched a bellydancing tribute to the Lennon Sisters - to "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" !!!

We also stopped at the Washington Prospector's booth and for $5, purchased a bag of sand and a goldpanning lesson. We each brought home 6-8 flecks of gold, and think we should get a bit of gear to stick in our packs...Gold Bar got it's name for a reason.

And we still made it back to Monroe in time to hit several of the garage sales we'd seen from the bus! My personal best was about $50.00 of Pampered Chef tools for $2.00...an even better deal than the gold flakes! Burgers at Red Robin and a quick stop at an antique shop completed our day. Summer in Washington is good!

Tracker in Training

"I can track deer and turkey and horses," my sister reports that Andrew told her. "Do you know how to do it? You look for foot prints and poop. Poop is what they ate a while back"

You know, he's exactly right. Andrew is my sister's grandson, and my great nephew. He turned 5 on the 5th of January. I think he has a great future as a tracker.

In the Residential program we would spend hours looking at tracks. No pile of poop went un-analyzed. We measured, sketched, and wrote in our journals. I think it's kind of funny that Andrew knows instinctively what we spent most of a year studying.

I'm glad that he has the opportunity to play in the woods, and to study in his 5-year old way things like tracking deer and turkey and horses. He's one of the luck kids who gets to follow his passions...I have dim memories of sitting by a Groundhog (Marmota monax) den in the field by our house when I was about Andrew's age. It was near the fence that separated our farm from the neighbors peanut field.

My brother Jim and I would spend hours waiting for that Groundhog, or Woodchuck to come out. It never did...I imagine that our shadows fell over the entrance as we sat much too close.

Mom would pack a lunch for us and send us off the quarter-mile or so through the field to sit where, I realize now, she and the neighbors could both keep an eye on us. It kept us out of her way, and out of trouble. For me, it was the place I started to learn the skills of a naturalist. My brother? He's a biker dude and machinist in Oklahoma City. He lost his enthusiasm for watching large rodents as soon as he discovered wheels.

For Andrew, I pray that he always has tracks to follow, and never looses his interest in - well, poop. I'm doing my best to be a good long-distance mentor to him. I think it's time to get him started on "Kamana for Kids". He's starting school soon, and I worry that he will lose interest in outdoor things when he's surrounded by kids who wouldn't know a deer from a turkey from a horse.

It's a big responsibility, passing on the stuff I've learned at WAS. And it's exciting to think that at least one little kid can talk to me any time about tracks, and poop, and the wonder of the natural world.