We were greeted today by clear skies, warm sunshine, and quite a few migrating hawks. To start off our Wild Ways morning, we shared a bit of gratitude with a partner and created a movement or pose to represent what we were grateful for and shared it with the group. Next, we practiced some positivity with the Yes Game, using only “yes” to encourage a student to complete different tasks. Before heading to camp, we warmed our bodies with a game of skink tag, in which students try to protect their bandana “tail” as well as steal tails of others.
Once at camp, we worked as a team to get the fire started using hand drill, a friction fire method using horseweed stalk and white cedar wood. We then split into two groups; one to create natural paint brushes using turkey feathers, bison hair, hair, sticks, and natural glue, and the other to begin processing black walnuts to make dye. After removing the walnut husks, we boiled them over the fire and boiled our bandanas in alum to help set the dye. We will have completed walnut-dyed bandanas next week for students to take home!
After lunch, we played a game of Life and Death in the Forest. Each student was given the role of herbivore, omnivore, or carnivore, and a number of rubber bands representing lives. The goal of the game is to survive with enough rubber bands—carnivores starting with the fewest and ending with the most, and herbivores starting with the most and ending with the fewest. It was a good game with some students getting caught by the forest fire or hunter along the way, and of course stopping to smudge some charcoal on their faces after visiting the watering hole.
We ended the day with a classic game of Bobcat Dodgeball and lounging in the grass under the sunshine.
—Black-capped Chickadee, Black Walnut, Hawk Moth, and Painted Trillium, November 1, 2021