Palo Alto Tender Tracks Day 8, Oct. 6, 2011

Waxing Gibbeous Moon
Eleanor Pardee park & Jr. Museum

Today started out with some dark clouds, and before you all came, rain.  So, I made the decision to put up the canopy and bring out the campfire stove and popcorn.  Sadly, it really didn’t rain that much to support the need of the cover but, it was fun anyway.

All was so sweetly and easefully in flow with songs, stories and the PERFECT popcorn.  The fire had the best material from wood that they had gathered last year and that was perfectly dry so a one match fire was made.  We did not have the gift of the bow drill that Roxanne brought ye,t we had the gift of learning about dry material and making it with one match.  One of my teachers told me that in truth, most people will not be lost and know how to find the materials to even make a bow drill fire but, learning how to always have three forms of fire making with you and how to find the right materials for a one match fire is more realistic for the modern person. So, that was the gift of fire for this day though the THRILL of a bow drill is ALWAYS great!

Laurie was here today and she benefited the group with  her kind and gentle presence.  Audrey continued to bring our awareness to the natural world and the wonders that were going on all around us.  She saw spiders and webs where no one else did and were we all in awe of the beauty that was right before our eyes, though often hard to see.  The spiders were huge and then, at the Jr. Museum they had a display of lot’s of incredible spiders. Even a Black Widow!  I must say, I never like going through the building but this time they had real live life in there!

After we made the fire, ate our popcorn, had the traditional fire soup ( water poured on the fire and stirring up of the “brew”) we cleaned up and began our journey to the Jr. Museum.   Jasper and Anjalie were quite happy to help with the clean up and others had less interest but all in all they helped bring back all of the chairs and prepare for our adventure to the animals!

I always love this walk because there is so much to smell, see, touch and explore along the way.  Audrey and some of the children found these beautiful rose petals and she pretended that they were part of her tongue. She would put the petals on her tongue and slowing open and close her mouth.  It was very funny to see and of course invited much exploration into experimentation with plants.  I think you had to really be there to see  how fun it looked but this is some sort of description of the fun!

At the museum we became our usual caterpillar in order to make our way through the building and then….off they flew into a place of exploration, color, and wonder of all the beautiful birds, turtles, ducks, rabbits, fish, bats, lizards, skinks, ferrets, hedgehogs, rats and more.  The birds were soooo colorful and all else, racoons included, very fun to see up close.

We all had a marvelous time and, having lunch on the frog statues is a tradition that Jasper REALLY wanted.  We were able to have it too even though lot’s of other children were there that day none were really on the frogs.

Our walk home was predominantly serenaded ( half way really) with Kashi being a roaring Mud Monster.  We all played scared as we try to runnnnnn from such a creature.  He would however, just sit down on the ground and not move.  Laurie was a bit in a quandry as to how to aid him in moving along so several times I came back and gently coaxed this “Mud Monster” along.
Jasper tried but more with an arm tug then anything else. Well, that didn’t seem to work so again, I cam back and we finally made it to the park safe and sound.

A beautiful first full fall, puddle stomping day.  Oh yes, I wish you could have seen at least half of them sitting in a puddle on the side of the road.