Our second
outing of the spring season brought us together at N. Galbraith
Mountain Trailhead. Galbraith is a special forest as it is managed
for recreational use (including an extensive network of mountain
biking trails) as well as logging, so when we explore here we get to
see parts of the forest that are in many different stages of
succession. Moving between healthy patches of forest as well as clear
cuts throughout our day lets us see first hand the dramatic change
that happens when we log forests, as well as providing a good
starting point for conversations surrounding sustainable harvest.
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| Exploring new places |
Before we hit the trail, we had to gather in the parking lot at N. Galbraith Trailhead. We had two explorers joining us from another young group as well as an Explorers Mentors Apprentice (EMA). EMAs are explorers from our oldest groups that elect to come out with a younger group on an exploration and share their experience and knowledge.
We started our
day as we always do with an opening circle. In this circle we formed
a loose plan for our day (one that could be adapted should other
opportunities arise!) and passed out our jobs. Passing out jobs is a
way for us to share the physical weight of all of the things that we
need to bring with us (field guides, toilet paper, apples, bandanas,
etc.) on an Explorers Club outing. In this way, we all individually
get a chance to be a part of and help our Pacific Chorus Frog
community.
We were happy
to be able to enjoy some spring sunshine during our exploration
today. As much as we appreciate and love exploring in the rain, it
was nice to feel the suns energy warm our faces. The dirt jumps provided us with a great track for running, jumping and holding races.
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| Exploring trails |
As we moved
from the dirt jumps, in one moment we were standing next to towering
cedar trees and sword ferns; in the next we were standing on a gravel
road surrounded by bare earth and burn piles of mangled limbs over 20
feet high. Some of us formed theories about where the animals that
used to live in this area have since moved to.
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| Dirt jump fun! |
We made our way
through the clear cut to a patch of relativley healthy woods. We
observed and explored big nurse logs, a babbling stream, cedar trees
and big leaf maples covered in moss.
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| Spring brings lots of water, and fresh skunk cabbage! |
Our earth skill for this season is the Art of Harvest. A fundamental part of harvest is plant identification. To practice our plant identification, we played a game called Nature Concentration. In this challenge, the mentors revealed to us parts of a few different species of native plants. Then, we worked in small teams to go out into the forest and retrieve samples of those native plants we had been shown. Today we got to know western redcedar, western hemlock, licorice fern, and huckleberry.
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| Hmmmm, what do we still need to find? |
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| Harvesting licorice root |
We finished off
our day with a big game of spider's web. Our EMA for the day was
chosen to be the spider and boy was he a good one! We found that we
had to sneak slower and lower in order to evade the sharp, watchful
eyes of the spider. We welcomed the opportunity for growth that
playing with older, more experienced explorers provides us.
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| We found this trillium while we were sneaking around during Spider's Web! |
As the sun
started to break out from behind the clouds we made our way back to
the trailhead where we found our families waiting to scoop us up
after our adventure at N. Galbraith.
To see the rest of the photos from our day, click here!
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