What a wonderful day to unwind and learn the pace of the forest! Two-thirds of the Raccoon Kits gathered for a lazy Sunday afternoon. We welcomed new members and mentors to the group, played games, and got to know this special piece of land.
We gathered together near the parking lot and welcomed Drake to the group. We also re-established our relationship with mentor Greg as he was excited to share a small patch of woods with everyone. So, we quickly reviewed the jobs, taught the rules of
Hide! , and then went on our way.
Around the corner we went and just up the hill; ‘twas right there that Greg ushered us in the woods! We congregated in a small clearing and setup base camp for a little bit of lunch. Boys rekindled friendships with each other while mentors bantered about the different Vespidae and Bombini likely to be found in the area.
With fuel in our bellies, it was time to play Spider’s Web. This game, famous in Explorers Club lore, is a fantastic game that combines the strategy and teamwork of Capture the flag along with the sneakiness and camouflage skills of Hide! The Spider, who can move anywhere he likes, is trying to capture all the flies. A fly is captured when the spider spots him and calls out “Back to the web!” That fly is then stuck in the web (a tree or bush designated by a bandana) until he is freed by a comrade.
While the spider is trying to capture the flies on the web, they are sneaking, often crawling, towards the “food source” (bandana). If the flies can capture the food source and bring it back to the web they win. Whereas a single round can be over in five minutes, we have had games last hours! The Raccoon Kits played for a while, staying engaged for an hour and a quarter during the second game while Dave maintained as a ferocious spider.
This game, which is a favorite of explorers and mentors alike, forces all of us to practice moving slowly and quietly in the forest. While increasing our stealth makes for progressively more challenging games of Spider’s Web, it also has the benefit of helping us move unnoticed in the forest allowing us to see more on our travels. This game activates our senses in an effort to pick up disturbances in the landscape and also to learn about blending in with them. Stretching and strengthening our senses like this deepens our everyday awareness and can bring us a richer life.
Just like that, our outing was half over and Greg spotted a Hummingbird nest! Before taking it down, he checked to see if it were an active nest or one from a previous year. As hummingbirds don’t reuse their nests, so it made for a terrific learning opportunity to study how the nest was constructed. We imagined the tiny eggs and the small birds that may have grown up in that nest. We considered the real spiders’ webs used to bind together the silky, mossy nest. What a treat!
Our last adventure of the day was to explore the caves further up the hill. We climbed around, spelunked through, and built shelters around the openings. In actuality these caves are gaps between various glacial
erratics, huge out-of-place boulders scattered on the hillside. The setting provided us a nice shelter and way to wind into a deep nature connection practice commonly called a
Sit Spot.
Boys had a special place in which they sat in silence for 12 minutes. Who’d believe that eight year olds can stay still and quiet for so long? We do! And that is exactly what one of our main purposes is in this program. To help boys slow down their nervous systems so that they can spend ten minutes, half an hour, an afternoon, an overnight, a day, and one day, hopefully, even three days alone outdoors by themselves. The familiarity they build through these sit spots may one day empower them to have multi-day connections with the natural world that will help ground them. Or, perhaps, a short sit spot gives them time to stare at ants and the edges of sword fern fronds :)
We ended the day with a closing meeting and a Circle of Thanks, practicing our
motto,
Attitude of Gratitude. This blog post will end the same way. Thank you Explorers for being so present and engaged through the whole day. Thank you for your willingness to play and for being so kind to each other. Parents thank you for your support of these boys. It’s an honor that you send these Raccoon Kits out with us for afternoons as lovely as last Sunday. And Greg, thanks for letting me copy some of your descriptions of Spider’s Web!
We’ll see you at the
next outing, where we’ll do service at Connelly Creek from 12-4pm on May 3rd. Please see more pictures from this outing on the
photo gallery. Enjoy Spring!
