Palo Alto Tender Tracks Wednesday Jan. 9, 2013

Waning Crescent Moon
Day 16
Foothill Park- the big meadow

Miska was home sick today.  Everyone else was back and in such beautiful spirits!  It was so good to see Davey as he has been gone the longest.  He was his beautiful, happy and vibrant self.  Julian was his thoughtful, fun and caring self who joined forces with Duncan a lot of the day.  They were Dragons or riding Dragons a good lot of the day and because of it I told a fine Dragon story. I typically tell this tale to the older group but they all stayed present for this sweet story about “Snowflake and the Dragon.”  Julian particularly liked it. It seems that he knows a bit about Knights where as when I used the word Knight in the story Juliette laughed and laughed because she thought I was talking about a brave Night!!!!She has such a wonderful sense of humor!!!   Jasper was his still yet present self and when I brought out my little fold out field guides to try and identify a bird that I just saw he, was really into looking at them.  And so was Zara, Juliette, Davey a little bit, and Harper.
Harper was filled with her sense of independant strength and vocal fortitude like never before.  It seems during holiday she stepped into another developmental phase of testing her limits. She is doing a GREAT job with this. She and Zara locked horns a couple of times and by the time we were sharing these field guides they both, very peacefully, took turns, all on their own.  It was a BEAUTIFUL progression of resistance, challenge, conflict moving into, growth and expansion!!!
We looked to see if we could find our gifts that we made for the animals from before holiday but there was very little trace of anything. Davey who was not even there found one of the cones though and Zara found a string still on a branch. But other then that all the others were gone without a trace.  Our fairy house was still there but a bit laid out flat too.
Mindy made these very, very beautiful and well crafted magick wands made out of sticks, leaves and cat tail leaves. The Cat Tail leaves were used  for string to tie the leaves on.  The children LOVED these!!!!
We learned new Winter songs and we listened and watched the many birds all around.
When we were eating lunch Mindy, Serena and Harper found a place to eat on ground that was dry but as those who were sitting with me saw them over there, one by one they all went over there and, no more wet bottoms!  Although, the ones with me got very creative I will say and most sat on their packs or something like that.

The day had a constant gray sky yet a warmth about it. The Dark Eyed Juncos were all over the ground feeding near us and I saw, for the first time there an American Bittern. There has been a bird call for years that I have heard there and I have never been able to identify it.  I wound up spooking it, by accident, out of the Cattail’s and it landed on a tree where I could check it out. They have very vibrant green legs so I was able to identify it in my fieldguide fold outs/carry on’s.  In the bus we have a book where you can play the bird sounds and I do believe this is the bird that I have been hearing all these years.  A red letter day for me that I shared with the children exuberantly!  And from that exuberance is when they got so immersed into looking at all the field guides of different plants, animals, flowers and such that I always carry with me in my pack.
Mindy was using her knife to carve a stick but it turned out that the stick was rotten on the inside so it’s original purpose was abandoned to a stick that would be good for fire wood.  Sirena found lot’s of wonderful little mushrooms and showed them to a lot of us.  We tried to identify them as well.  And Mindy in the bus, told great stories to keep the children engaged and enlivened.