Palo Alto Tender Tracks May 7, 2014 Day 31

Waxing Half Moon
Thornwood Open Space Preserve

What a beautiful not too hot, not too cold day.  It was grand to be back and ready to go on a brand new adventure.  I only take children here when I think they are ready to really walk a bit of a ways.  Some were a bit pushed today yet they made it with flying colors and seemed happy for it.
It is  7 tenths of a mile down to the pond.  I have created something called a “song line” all a long the path to get them there and back.  A song line is stories connected with landmarks.  I have been told that in some places children are told, their entire youth, a story with song lines/land marks embeded in the tale.  When they are ready as a teenager to go on their Rights of Passage walk they are simply told to follow the story.  This of course was not like that, and, they found all the land marks with great exuberance and joy.  Particularly Natalie who really heard the song line and dashed to find it and always did!!!  The rest did too it’s just that she was  right up front and center  with it all.
When we went down “Rabbit Run”, a place where, if you are very quiet you sometimes can see little cotton tails, they were all SOOO quiet and took it quite seriously in hopes of finding a rabbit.  Well, we didn’t but along the path we found lot’s of Poison Oak and so many wonderful plants.  When they got to the Bridge, they found a beautiful full and fat brilliantly green caterpillar!  Jasper, on our way back really wanted to see if it was still in the same spot but, it was not and we could not find it.  They got to eat Douglas Fir spring green tips. They are like vitamin C and make a very nutritious tea too!
When we got to where we were to be, I told them about going very quietly as they walked down to our spot because when I first came here, I felt the Fairies and the Knomes and promised them that when I brought children here I would ask them to walk quietly as they entered.  From there on Aurora wanted LOT’S of Fairy stories and to learn more about the Fairies.  I told them all one sweet one in particular.  I started to tell Aurora and then the entire group got hushed and listened with great focus.
We played some fun games like rolling our water bottles down the hill to see which one would go down the fastest or go the farthest.  We played on the logs near by, ate together and then, I scurried up the Redwood Tree in front of us that had lot’s of limbs and nobs to easily use for climbing up on.   That, as I intended, spurred them on to try.  Jasper scampered straight up and was in total delight over this.  Emme really wanted to do it but couldn’t quite figure it out.  Natalie found another easier way and Anissa, Emme, Erik and Dahlia followed her in that way.  Nareya had a lot of fun with Bosch today in the bus and along the walk.  Aurora was snuggly most of the day and spoke of being scared of Mt. Lions.  Nareya as well.  Often times at four children have temporary fears of the natural world.  We shared with the children a lot about Mt. Lions with the hopes of alleviating, with truth,  their fears of big animals such as the Mt. Lion.
It was a wonderful day of exploring where we were going and how to get back, also known as navigation.
And all in all it was just wild, wonderful, sometimes very quiet and sometimes filled with grand exuberance.  A very fun day back from a week off.