Tender Tracks Thurs. Day 12

Oct. 19, 2017
New Moon
Sorich Ranch

WOW I believe today is the first day I have ever fully breathed in fresh air with such awareness and gratitude.  And, the sky was BLUE!  I mean real beautiful blue that was seen with clean white clouds. The wind blew refreshingly and was invigorating.  What a gift. Though, I do not know if this was a gift for the fires that are still around in the many places that it is. It was, however, a gift for us.

Today we went to Sorich ranch in search of Soap Root plants in order to make paint brushes in the next week or two. Not only did we find that but we were able to gather and eat fresh picked white figs, purple figs, fresh little purple grapes and those grapes that had turned to raisins on the vine

The children had such fun climbing on the big rock that is here, bouncing on the bouncy tree, playing run, run, run, run, TAAAGGGGGG, King of the Mt., Monsters, Bear, Mt. Lion, and many other incarnations.

In the bus, before we left, the children were brought into a little “pre mindfulness” meditation. They closed their eyes, and saw a door of a certain color, with a certain door handle( all just from what they saw) that, when they went in, there was a special gift for them.  They each shared what they wanted from that.  It was beautiful. This came about because Austen had made up this great story that he said he wanted to share.  It was this,’There once was a little boy named Austen and Puma……..”  He went on for a bit about their adventure and then it ended.  Puma was a bit curious about this story that he had no recollection of.  Austen laughed.

The meditation was used as a way to introduce “the world of imagination” and how your friend can go on wild adventures with you even if you did not!!!

And then we moved on.
Devin met us at our site and, they all fanned out to play and play.

Vita seemed a bit tired and maybe not feeling so well as she sniffled a good amount throughout the day. Austen was very rambunctious, Avaline was quite happy, Puma was alive and energetic, Devin was inquisitive and so delighted to be digging up soap roots and digging in the ground with a shovel later in the day.

After circle and much play we got our packs on and made our way to find soap roots.  But, we found one of the fig trees and tried to get as much as we could.  From there the children were so very, very, very observant and found so many soap roots. Most of them were too old and dry for our needs,  However, we will use some for brushes, some for fire making and some for making soap.  We then went up, up, up, up, up this big hill and they just scampered along!

Puma, Vita, and Avaline know this place and loved being there.  Puma fell for the first time this hard since he has ever been at Tender Tracks. He scrapped his side and we fixed it and bandaged it up.  He was very aware of how it hurt and when it stopped, during lunch time, he shared that it no longer hurt.

The children played on the swings there and the bouncy tree, they discovered the “castle” tree, and the climbing rocks. They dug with shovels and before we left they found a couple of Buckeye’s that I made into little pumpkins that you can put on a stick.  They loved those!   They weren’t able to find enough for all of them because the Buckeye babies in the trees were not yet ready to come down. We will just have to come back and keep checking for when they are ready to drop.

We took the shortcut down. All the others were up ahead and Devin and I were taking our time getting down the hill learning new ways to come down safely and with ease. When we got down this is where all the grapes and raisins were!  They were hanging from a beautiful arbor over a table. We had such fun eating these!!!

Then back to the bus and singing our goodbyes all the way home we went.