Marin Tender Tracks Thursday Oct. 23, 2014 Day 14

New Moon
Deer Park and Phoenix lake ( actually just the front creek part that I, as of yet, do not know the name)

Another wild and at times, challenging day. The group was called together a couple of times to help some of the children out. Each time it was beautiful to hear all their very sweet ideas of support and those that were struggling  appeared to be supported by the process.
Our first adventure of the day was to go around the corner of Deer park, past the school, past the tree swing to the Oak trees where there were fresh Acorns to be picked off the ground.  Well, a lot of them knew exactly where the rope swing was and they RANNNNN to it and the others followed.  When we got there, Theron, Jai and Thea had a tussel about the swing.  We made some choices about how to choose who would go first, second, third but alas, Theron and Jai were not content with how this all ended as each one REALLY wanted their turn FIRST!! Oh the hardships and struggles.  Theron ran off to cry, found his peace after a time and then decided to BYPASS his turn.  ( He did come back later for it with ease and joy.)  Jai, was ok and waited a bit and then was happy with his turn and Thea was delighted to be first.  These three throughout the day were really working on struggling together and each time had opportunities to find different solutions then their initial butting heads style of communication.  Again, the Tender Tracks “villagers” were brought in for support and each time there was beauty that came out of the chaos.  Everett and Julian clearly wanted nothing to do with “trouble” and skirted it as often as possible and the girls all had sweet little offerings of what could be done, such as making pictures, bracelets to give and the like.  🙂  All of their hearts were always so very visible and beautiful each in their own unique and creative ways.
Everett, Jai and Julian really liked picking acorns off the ground. The others were enthralled with climbing up the hill with the assistance of Linsey.  We found buckeye’s on the ground and I made them into puppets which they all liked and then, stomachs began to growl so, off to the front of the bus where we had snack, songs and story and then off to our next adventure.
When we got to the parking lot at Phoenix lake we all imagined the “parking lot fairies” coming to help and, sure enough we got a parking spot shortly after we arrived!!!!  The children were  filled with great smiles about this!
When we got out I directed them to go to the second place that we went the first time we were there and it was there that we settled in, ate lunch and explored and explored.   There was a marvelous tree stump that was desired by most so there was some figuring out how to share this.  Which they did, and then Linsey started with, first Velia I think or maybe Ariel, painting with rocks on arms, faces and legs.  (This was actually one of MY agenda’s for the day) Velia, Ariel and Hana were very immersed in this for a long time while the others were playing with a log trying to first see how deep the water was and then if they could push it from one side of the creek to the other.  There was also a lot of figuring out by all of them how to go back and forth across the creek with or without getting wet.  Stone hopping and the like took place.
It didn’t take long for  most everyone to come on over to the rock face painters and join in. All of the girls found the same clay doll offerings that we found last time  that were stuck in a wood pecker snag on one side of the creek.  They got those out and were able to get them wet and paint with those with great glee.   Painting themselves and/or Linsey and I was the game for the day that brought them all together.
Rock throwing and figuring out how to do that without hurting anyone took place.  Finding exquist leaves, similar to the ones we found last time we were there happened too.
When it was time to leave we needed to figure out which way to go and where the bus was. There was actually some confusion on this point. Some really thought that it was further down the trail, so we took some time to figure this  out and did indeed make it back to the bus, safe and sound though there was a desire to keep playing and playing!!