Orientation

We opened this week of Native Eyes with a wander. Breaking into groups of two, we set out for some hours to see what there was to see, get the lay of the land, orient ourselves, and collect firewood.

We saw many birds, a possible peregrine falcon, heard lots of bird language, practiced tracking, and got a little lost. We found a good view of the whole of Commonweal from the East ridge but couldn't find a good way down, so we were a bit late to our fire.








We gathered at the fire circle, newly excavated to make a pit large enough for the 9-15 of us. This year there are about 9 Native Eyes students, a new kid's group, a mentor who'll hang out with the kids all day, and more Native Eyes mentors. Our little group is multiplying!



We lit the fire with a mullein stalk hand drill I'd picked up in Michigan (it's so far outperformed any Californian mullein) and a cedar board that another of us picked up in Washington. Not exactly native, but harvested wild and handmade by us. Three of us started off helping to warm up the kit. I tried to finish and get a coal myself, but I lost stamina before the coal formed. There's still something I'm not getting right with hand drill.



Cooking dinner on the fire with so many people was a challenge. We'll need to strategize further to get this process more efficient. We also made Tuareg-style ash bread on the coals. Basic bread dough was mixed up, allowed to rise, and tasty things like sauteed onions were mixed in. Then balls of the dough were dropped straight onto the coals, where the coals had turned a little white with a covering of ash. We kept moving the bread around in the ashes with a stick to heat them evenly. They turned out delicious.



The next morning we left Commonweal early to set up our beginning of the year Tourist Test, renamed as an Awareness Adventure to take the sting off the test format. Here are a few of our stations.

We started with a denuded Ceanothus branch, sticking out into the trail. The question: What happened here, and in what season?





Next we stopped at a mud puddle. Our question here was, "how many species are represented in this puddle, and who are they?"







Further down the path, an apparently unmanned station. Backpacks and sandals lay abandoned by the trail. Finally, a bush spoke.



The stationmaster, having revealed his hiding place, introduced us to this turd on a rock. The turd on a rock was greeted with extreme interest and fascination.





After a long trail of tracking stations, we gathered at the lake for lunch, swimming, and general downtime, in which the Native Eyes crew finally got to meet and socialize with the Essentials people. We finished the day out with a game of Nutty Squirrels, which is essentially an exercise in competitive, blindfolded, gleeful buffoonery. The game is a great test of scout, ninja and/or jedi powers.