Marin Monday Tender Tracks Day 1, Jan. 02, 2012

Waxing Gibbeous Moon
Lake Lagunitas

Well, I will never say what kind of a day the children have because, I can not speak for them, however, in my observation and personal experience, this was a wonder filled first day. The children were very open hearted  one to the other,as I suspected  would be the case. They are easy, kind, and playful.    Every moment was finding the adventure, awe, wonder and each others curiosity.  Not that each person’s curiosity could be completely followed, as, when with a group, there is this thing called, working together.  That’s where my job comes in, putting the pieces together to have some appearance of being a cohesive group traveling about the Earth taking in all the gifts as well as giving back.

As soon as we got there the adventure began with hearing the water, seeing some birds (Aero’s immediate observation) and checking these things out.   Purnat wanted to go and check out “the village.”  This is the wooden shelter that is right past the parking lot.  But, Bodhi was drawn to the water.  We went over there but Purnat still wanted to check out the village so he took his new friend Aero and they went over there with the invitation to bring back tales of what they discovered.  Bodhi had the same invitation.   He quite soon found ” something tied onto a root!” and Purnat and Aero found a very special leaf.   I asked Bodhi what he thought it was on the root, what it felt like, what color it was and he dove deeper into the exploration of what this thing was.  Purnat shared the journey he and Aero had, ” we kept saying, no this is my house, no my house, no my house” with a lot of easeful smiling with the telling.   He really wanted to take the leaf home to his Mom yet Aero found it and wanted it so, we went to go see where this leaf actually came from and then Purnat COULD take one home.  We looked at all the trees much more closely all around us until we found a tree with leaves that looked very similar and were all on the ground below it.   But then, where was Aero?  Purnat spied him and then off the rest of us went to find the wonderful place he found:  A Big Redwood Tree that could be climbed.

Somewhere around here it became time to eat.  They went to the benches in the “village” and there they ate and I told them a story of why certain trees are Ever Green and why some animals stay awake all night.   We found a long straight stick after this and earlier found part of a bird carcass with feathers on it.  On the stick I tied some of the feathers and this will be our counting stick, weather/wind determiner and Moon marking stick each day that we get together.

We climbed daringly on the wood bridge up the stairs, discovered mint plants and chickweed plants to eat.  The Bullfrogs really did appear to be sleeping  in their mud beds for the winter and the Cattails were hard to dig up and eat.   Aero became an Owl hooting a good portion of the day, Bodhi was his forever lovely Tiger and Purnat was a wonderful Lion.  Of course, sometimes we all were birds flying or running or morphing into one animal or another but these, were the main characters of the day.

Bodhi likes and wanted to go on more traveling adventures, Aero liked, mainly but not always, to explore in one place and Purnate liked to explore close to me.   There was all of these adventures happening and sharing of spaces and places.    We found a very inviting spot underneath some Doug Fir trees and there we found some wonders, MUSHROOMS!  Bodhi said he was scared of them so we spent a lot of time checking them out.  We then tried to be really quiet so when people came by we could see them and they couldn’t see us but Aero was much too involved with being a hooting Owl and, due to the wonderfully developed ears of all the passers by, they figured out where we were!!!

At the end of the day we played a very fun game of: Coyote and Rabbit.  I was the rabbit that they were chasing to bec0me Coyotes dinner. Oh dear, I, the great rabbit that I was, ran and ran and ran and darted but finally, they caught me and I was eaten up with wonderful joy!!! How interesting it was to be in the belly of such wonderful Coyotes!!!!!   They then chased me all the way back to the bus where we sang our good-byes, shared stories of the day and gave our thank you’s of the day.

What a joyful first day. I thank you very much.