Moving the Tracks

We started the day at Venture, gathering scat. We collected as many examples of animal (not domestic or human) scat as we could find and brought them back to the group, assembling them together into a Poo-seum. We shared field guides and got down to the task of journaling the scats. We listed all the information we knew about the scat, sketched it with measurements, and listed possible species. Then for each possible species, we listed three reasons why is could be that animal, and three reasons why not. Here's an example:


Our Poo-seum was the center of much bustle and activity.


We had to end our scat study earlier than anyone wanted, because we were going out on the land again, this time to journal tracks. We piled into cars and drove to the nearby lagoon. Its outlet to the ocean had been blocked by sand, and it was filling up with fast with fresh water. Most of our favorite spots were unerwater, but the dunes still held beautiful soft sand, and the sun was slanting at the perfect angle.




Here's an attempt at reproducing these tracks in a life-sized sketch of the track itself and the gait pattern:



The next day we moved out early to Gazos Beach for a morning of tracking stations. Groups of 2-3, with some Native Eyes people and some staff, chose spots on the landscape to focus on. The Cultural Mentors and Essentials people would break up into groups, too, and rotate through each of our stations. Every station had a different story to tell, but many told them in similar ways. The rhythm of bobcat paws rang from the dunes as people tapped in time to the trails. People transformed into coyotes and raccoons as we tracked. We ran along on all fours and imitated the patterns in the sand.


This was a new trail to me. It was about two feet wide, to the west (oceanside) of the dunes. No people had been over there making strange tracks, so what was it?

One group followed a long, consistent canid trail, letting the rhythm of the trail move in their bodies, bouncing along the line like a pack of coyotes in step. But the rhythm broke and lead coyote-person stopped, crouched down, and studied the ground. Everyone clustered around, finding their consistent trail all tangled up in a cluster of tracks. Someone said they saw a stop there, with all four of the canid's feet on the ground. Others wondered where the animal had gone, as the long orderly trail simply seemed to disappear. Then we noticed a chunk of stuff, framed by two of the canid's forepaws:


This Mystery Chunk consisted of short plant fibers, all packed tightly together. It weathered to orange-brown, but inside it was still green, and smelled of aromatic herbs. There was a clump of soft grey rabbitty looking fur stuck to the outside, and when we picked up the chunk, some round rabbit scat pellets rolled out. What was it? Why had the canid changed its pattern so sharply near it? Where had the canid gone afterward?



After our tracking morning, we ended the day at the nearby tidepools, catching crabs, poking sea anemones, tasting seaweed, and gathering mussels for dinner. We ended the day bone-tired and well nourished.

Food and Medicine

This week we were at Venture again, and spent the day with the RDNA crew. Our focus for the day was herbs, herbal medicines, and local and wild foods. The day was so creative and varied that I think this’ll have to be one of my longest posts ever. Apologies for the unbalanced text-to-photos ratio.

(We found the snake while wandering the grounds. He doesn’t have much to do with the day’s activities, but I thought he was beautiful enough to share anyway. I think his Latin name translates to “fierce bush snake from Hell.”)

We started the day with a blindfolded string walk. The Cultural Mentoring group strung a string down paths, around obstacles, and ended at a group meeting point. We were blindfolded and allowed to guide ourselves along the string using touch.



I found that I was far more comfortable going without shoes than with, and given the extra tactile connection to my environment, along with the string guide and the other sensory information from scent and sound, I felt totally comfortable, safe, and happy walking the landscape blind. With sight deprived, textures and temperatures, rather than sights, furnished the beauty in my landscape. Even the clammy grass and sharp gravel felt good on my feet, as it gave me that much more information about the world.

The one source of frustration I found was with negotiating my path in the presence other people. I found it easy to tell when the person in front of me had stopped, but harder to tell when they started up again. I didn’t want to bother the person in front of me by touching them if they were still there, but sometimes there was so much shuffling going on that I couldn’t tell if the person in front of me was walking or just fidgeting, or if an instructor was moving in front of me instead. I found myself worrying and fretting about holding up the line by waiting too long, and anxious about annoying the person ahead of me by poking her too often. This social worry was so strong that by the time I got to the end of the string, I was fuming about the bad design of this exercise, and how the presence of other people ruined the sensory immersion experience.

When we debriefed the exercise, an often-repeated point about nature connection practices came to the fore again: the stuff that comes up in these exercises is the stuff that participants bring to them. Likely, the blockages one comes up against in nature connection are the same blockages that one repeatedly engages in life. Like so many other personal practices, nature connection brings one’s blockages out of their familiar context and into a new and different light. I went into the next exercise musing on these thoughts and hoping to erode my anger with new understanding.

(Unlike other personal practices like martial arts or meditation, practicing nature connection allows for more feedback than that provided by one’s individual point of view and that of the mentor. Nature connection brings one’s blockages into an environment where not only mentors and students can reflect them to you, but where birds can shout at you about them, fox and mink can honor you for your progress, and trees can offer comfort and grounding in a crisis. And practicing nature connection with others on the same journey offers that many more eyes and ears and hearts and minds to perceive that feedback, push you when you’re unwilling to push yourself, and help you incorporate the feedback into your development.)


(Photo from CalPhotos)

The next exercise was a simple plant sit. We were told to find a plant, sit down with it, and talk with it, aiming to get to know some of the plant’s “spirit medicine”. We were advised to begin with a question, such as “what’s your name?” or “what story do you have to tell?”

I wandered away from most of the group and sat down by a big, beautiful Scrophularia plant. My question was, “what’s your role here,” a variation on the get-to-know-the-stranger line of, “so what do you do?” After sitting with it for a time, spacing out and being distracted by very cool looking hoverflies, I was feeling a little unfocused and ineffective at my task. I reconsidered my question, and sent a wordless request for communication with the plant, opening this “conversation” to let it say whatever it needed to say. Quietly, I watched bugs crawl over it, saw the discarded skins and honeydew excretions of now-absent aphids on a young stem, inspected leafminer tracks in the newer leaves, and noted that most of the mature stalks and leaves were free of insects. I inspected the flowers and wondered about their pollination.

Holding the plant stalk between my thumb and forefinger, I realized that physically, the plant’s body and my body were part of a continuum of matter, that the divisions of individuality between human and plant were arbitrary and that in fact one body merged into another and into the air and the earth, and more, in a continuum of matter and energy. I thought that perhaps spirit might be similar, and wondered, with silence rather than words, about participation in plant spirits and the continuity of spirit between apparent individuals.

Then the coyote howl came to gather us back, and we moved on to another project.






After a fun communal journaling session and a lunchbreak that included more journaling, (I got to learn about the medicinal and toxic properties of Bleeding Heart wildflowers) we launched into the afternoon activity, a lesson on intuitive cooking from one of the Cultural Mentors.



We had each brought at least one food local to our homes, meaning harvested less than 100 miles away from where we live. I brought snow peas and fava beans from my former garden (I had to negotiate with the landlord to get in an pick them), winter squash from the last fall harvest in my garden, and duck eggs from the Eco House nearby. Others brought many citruses, greens, peas and other vegetables. One person brought some ground beef, another some kefir, a jar of dried huckleberries (yum), and the star of the show was fresh abalone from Bolinas.

Our challenge was to create an appetizer dish for the rest of the class using only these ingredients. We grouped into teams and selected our ingredients. My group wound up with the kefir, the huckleberries, and lots of veggies. We were frustrated at first with our luck, getting such an odd collection of ingredients, but we came up with a plan and created a dish. Vibrant, energetic chaos ensued in the kitchen.

Our dish, a sweet stirfry using greens, sugar snap peas, celery, and apple with a sauce of huckleberry kefir flavored with lemon zest, nettle, and lemon balm herbs turned out to be an improbable success. Others made equally delectable dishes: herb meatballs with dipping sauces made from fava beans, tomato soup, or mustard; toasted kale chips (delicious and simple creations that result from tossing kale with oil and salt and toasting the leaves in the oven); stuffed beet leaves; carrot and greens salad alongside abalone that was breaded (with locally dumpstered bread), seasoned, and fried in olive oil; squash, herb and dandelion flower fritters; and squash stuffed with an herbed duck egg scramble.







With dinner over, three rounds of dishes done, and the sun setting low, we gathered in the main room for more herb work. Some of our musicians jammed with drums, guitar and mandolin while we milled about and waited for everyone to settle. Only settling never quite happened, and finally the energy of the music took over the room with dance and improvised song. Rather than fight the energy, our instructors began to sing their instructions for the next activity. Demonstration flowed into dance, questions came out sung in time to the beat, and spontaneous poetry erupted. We learned and processed herbs for the next hour with music fueling our motions. This was by far the most fun herbal class I’ve ever attended. My grandmother would be overjoyed to see this kind of learning going on.







Finally, we finished out the evening with a council circle, discussing sex and gender issues. The men asked the women’s circle questions, and vice versa. It raised many more questions, and opened new avenues of communication that I think will continue to be explored for these last five weeks of class.

Battle at Starling Hollow Cypress

Last week we tried to udate the base map of the field at Commonweal. We divided up the area and spent a large portion of the day on solo walks drawing out the runs and other track and sign on our areas.

When we came back together, we noticed a bunch of sticks poking out of a hollow in a cypress tree. Half our group clambered precipitously into the tree under the pretext of getting a closer look at the (possible) bird's nest, though really as an excuse to climb a tree. The other half of our group, logically, used the climbers' rear ends for target practice as they were climbing, thus sparking off the most epic battle of Starling Hollow Cypress (just down the hill from Double Skull Cypress) ever witnessed. Though the tree fort's defenders were deadly marksmen, it was only a matter of time before thir supply of cypress cone ammo ran out. Two hemlock spears and a dramatic death scene later, we were on our way back to our fire circle.

In the afternoon we worked further on the base map, discussed how awesome Native Eyes is going to be next year (it will, of course, be totally awesome), and gathered wild radish and nodding onion for our potluck dish. Wild radish is a bit fuzzy, but the young leaves are tender enough and very flavorful. With the onion, it made a delicious contribution to the meal.

Hypericum

Last Native Eyes we arrived at Venture early, ostensibly to meet others for a pregame hike, but no one else was there. We took the opportunity to start a fire early.

It had rained the night before. The firepit was a mud puddle, all the available wood was damp, and the kindling twigs I found on the brush pile were positively sodden. Still, we collected the driest materials we could. We gathered dry redwood needles from a sheltered redwood circle to line the bottom of the firepit. My classmate started to build a kindling tipi while I went to a dryer spot to spin up a coal on my bow drill.

I was most of the way through burning a new well into my hearthboard when my classmate walked by, sucking his finger. “Do you have a band-aid?” he asked. I told him where to find them in my pack and continued work on a coal.

Before I knew it, smoke was billowing from my kit and there sat a fat ember in the notch. I dropped it into my tinder bundle and walked it over to the fire circle. I found the circle empty except for the redwood needles we’d already put down. No tipi. Wet kindling. Damp wood. Hmm.

I blew the coal into flame, placed it in the fire circle, and began adding the smallest and driest of the kindling. Nothing would catch. I added more small bits, blew it into flame, then it sputtered and guttered and died. I added more small bits and blew until flames appeared, but now I was running out of small stuff. I tried adding the smallest of the firewood, bigger but dryer than the kindling, and blowing. Embers crept through the redwood needle platform, hollowing out the space under my not-quite-fire and oozing smoke as they went, but flames refused to come. I added the rest of my smallest twigs, and again blew the flames alive. They licked and blackened the log, but refused to stick. I kept blowing and added more midsized twigs, but the sizzle and sputter made it clear that if I stopped blowing, it would stop burning. Finally, out of breath, eyes burning from the smoke and dizzy from hyperventilation, I stopped. And the flames died. I stared at the ready embers, wondering how I could coax this waiting fire into life.

Then I remembered my tinder bag. I had a bagful of cattail fluff, dry mugwort, and dry bracken fern! I grabbed a handful and tucked it under the log, among the wisps of smoke, and blew. This time fire leapt enthusiastically, drying the twigs as it spread, and finally building to a healthy little blaze. Rejoicing in these self-sustained flames, I piled all the wet wood I could around the little fire to dry it before I had to use it. I did not feel like working against the water again. At last I sat back and breathed clean air.

Later I found out that my classmate had cut his finger severely, and had gone into mild shock while looking for my band-aids. Some of our instructors found him lying by his car on the cold, damp ground, sucking his finger. They helped him up, made sure he wasn’t bleeding to death, and got him a butterfly suture for his cut. I’m embarrassed to say that I had no idea he was in trouble until long after I’d finished making the fire.

The next morning we gathered in the main room. After kindling a fire, we spent the morning journaling. This particular method, called “Mind’s Eye journaling” utilizes field guides and personal experience to create a naturalist’s journal entry on a particular organism. Areas of focus include field marks, habitat, range map, dangers, and traditional uses, just to name a few. As an example, my journals at home include entries on Raccoon, Coast Live Oak, Poison Oak, Western Fence Lizard, Steller’s Jay, and other common organisms of my area, each of which includes sketches and text. You can find more information on this method in the Kamana program, which is where I learned the practice initially.

Our process this morning was to wander the grounds and find a tree with which we were unfamiliar. Then we were to memorize as much detail and whole impression as we could, come back to sketch our impressions, and finally find the tree in a field guide and make our journal entries.





I’m still not entirely sure what my tree was. It looks to me like a cypress but it doesn’t entirely fit the description of our local Monterrey Cypress, Cupressus macrocarpa.

After journaling, the Native Eyes crew set off for our local Hypericum patch. With Cybertrackers in hand, our mission was to catalog the signs of wildlife activity at the edges and in the middle of the Hypericum thickets. We dove into the thickets on our hands and knees, brushing past trailing blackberry vines, and weaving through the tall Hypericum stalks over a carpet of Oxalis sprouts. We found some predictable patterns of high edge activity and low thicket use, but some surprising signs as well.

In one area we found what look like chews or rubs on the Hypericum stalks. I’d been looking for this type of sign for a while, since the Hypericum groves look a lot like Scotch and French Broom thickets, both in the way the individual plant grows and it’s formation of monocultural thickets. In the East Bay Hills, broom thickets often harbor large populations of brush rabbits and the rabbits often strip the bark off the broom stalks to eat the inner bark. Bark stripping was, by comparison, markedly absent in the Hypericum, except for in one spot.



I also found an interesting little area of striking diversity in the sameness of the Hypericum sea. Granted the diversity was mostly invasive, but it was still refreshing. Just off the fire road, a clearing held Bull Thistle, Black Mustard, Poison Hemlock, a prickly-leaved yellow-flowered Composite of unknown species, Trailing Blackberry and a Juncus (the only two native plants that I could ID in the lot). I found the heterogeneity inviting after all that Hypericum so I poked further in. And I found something even more interesting.



A worn-in rabbit run caught my eye, so I bent down for a closer look. The Oxalis leaves had been nipped from their stalks all around the run. There was a cluster of soft rabbit pellets pressed flat in the middle of the run, still glistening wet, as if I’d interrupted an instance of lagomorphic coprophagy. Beside the pellets were two even more interesting little piles. One, of neatly-snipped fresh Hypericum leaves, the cut ends sharply angled. The other pile was of Hypericum seed capsules, the stalks again neatly snipped at an angle. The capsules had been opened from the side, and still spilled a few of their tiny seeds onto the ground.



We piled back into the cars as the sun set and headed back to Venture. Once there, I quartered the fox that I’d skinned and cleaned, rubbed the meat with salt and rosemary, and roasted it over the fire. It turned out delicious.



That night we had a potluck (at which I presented the fox meat) and a party. We played ridiculous and hilarious party games. My favorite was as follows:

The players are divided into two groups, one on each side of the room. They are given a time limit to disguise one of their number using any or all of the items of clothing found on their side of the room, while separated from each other by a sheet or other opaque divider. When the time is up, the sheet is dropped, and the disguised individuals face each other. The first team to guess the identity of the other’s disguised person gets a point.





Both teams and onlookers were in stitches by the end. I laughed so hard that my whole head hurt.