The season is finally turning. We felt our first colder morning and saw glimpses of bare hillsides as the trees finally dropped their golden leaves. We were going for a village vibe today with lots of activities centered around each group’s fire and I think we nailed it! Students moved through hide tanning, preparing rock pigments and dart-making at their campsites.
It is our hope that taking part in any of the steps of harvest, preparation, and preservation of an animal can be a moving and eye-opening experience for students. We quickly learned that the process of tanning a deer hide is not easy! It’s messy, smelly, labor intensive, and not fun at all if you’re going it alone. We’re grateful for these animal teachers that humble and remind us of this hard work that people have been doing for centuries in order to feed, clothe, and supply themselves and their communities.
We hope to complete the tanning process over the semester and look forward to walking away with some cool crafts! A few ideas are knife sheaths, bound journals, and maybe even a pocket watch cover. In the next week, we challenge the children to tune into deer activity around them—this is a busy time for deer—and see what they observe.
Mixed into the day were awareness activities, a few spooky stories, and some nature-inspired predator/prey games to keep our bodies moving and warm. As the days get cooler, we welcome teens to pack a hot tea in the morning and/or keep a mug in their bag for campfire tea.
The crafts and projects we are working on, like darts and hide tanning, involve patience, perseverance, and delayed gratification, as the final products take several steps and often days to weeks to complete. It’s fun to see the kids sticking with these projects even as they become challenging. We look forward to watching the projects evolve!
—JJ, Phoebe, Josh, and Raven, October 26, 2020