Marin Tender Tracks Day 19, April 11, 2012

Waxing Moon
Lake Lagunitas

Simone and Leo weren’t with us today.  The wind was blowing with great gusto and a cold icy feel to it.  The rains never came as was predicted yet, truly, that wind had it’s time with blowing us about.    When we first got there Lenny and Sidona saw a friend of their’s that they home school with and her Mom and brother.  We spent a little bit of time with them as they were very, very excited to be with them.  Then we all went our separate ways.  Lenny was DELIGHTED to run to his favorite Redwood Tree to climb and Sidona followed him up and up as they climbed.  Bodhi does not have their enthusiasm  for climbing so he and I ate a bit while they did that.  They then came down and joined the eating part.  They really did not want to go any where so we stayed in this one area for a time as they explored climbing some other trees and the land around us.   I began to gather material that might be able to be used for a fire which then got them involved in looking for places after a rain where you might find dry material. Pretty soon everyone was looking all about for this stuff.   We all worked together to get some fire going.  We were successful a couple of times but the larger sticks of wood were just too wet and the fire never fully took.  However, they did get to see where you gather dry wood under the dead logs and making shavings and gathering certain dried thistles, though VERY pokey, for fire starter.   They worked together to make a wind breaker too.   Lenny however REALLY wanted a fire because he was cold.  I then showed him where to go to get a bit warm. We went under the big Redwood tree, huddled together and I told them several stories.  One of which was a story that Sidona missed from last week and Lenny and Bodhi wanted to hear again: Gluscabi and the Wind Eagle.  For the rest of the day they were talking about the Big Wind Eagle and how much he was flapping his wings and making such wind!!!

After a while I encouraged us all to go walking in order to get warm and we did.  Bodhi was our guide for this and he took us to some of his favorite places and then we settled down in this one spot near the lake.  They spent FORTY MINUTES, taking care of a little worm.  The worm unfortunately did not fair too well so most of the time was building him a great grave.  They gathered plants and all the Cattails around to make this new home of his very, very cozy.  They were all working together and sharing thoughts and ideas on this process throughout.   We found all manner of beautiful lichen and leaves to give the worm a sweet bed.  They all got very involved in trying to get the Catttails from the lake.  We then saw Ducks that were like the ones in Gluscabi’s story too.

Such a fine and invigorating day as we stayed with the cold and made our way through that, found material for fire and discovered the many wonderful things that lay upon the Forests floor.