Naturalist Challenges, Advanced Fire-Making, and Northwest Trek

The last week of classes before the holidays at the Wilderness Certification Program was exciting and challenging. On Wednesday we put the skills and knowledge we've acquired to the test in three different naturalist challenges. In the first challenge, two teams competed to light a friction fire on a rainy day to pop a balloon in under an hour and a half. Team Chupacabra passed with flying colors but unfortunately the weather got the better of Team Owl, who did however manage to keep their tinder bundle smoldering for over an hour. On Thursday, the real challenge started when we built our own bow drill kits out of entirely natural material harvested that day. Luckily it wasn't raining that day, but finding dry wood was difficult to say the least. Never the less, two different groups still blew a coal into flames; it was a good day. On Friday we went to Northwest Trek to learn more about wildlife native to the Northwest.

A striped skunk wakes from his nap to eye the camera.

A giant pacific salamander close up.

Finally! A huge coal from an all natural bow drill kit.

Some sort of slime fungus, looks like grape jelly.

Some inner cedar bark shavings drying in the sun for tinder.

Happy holidays to all, will post again after the new year!

Mentoring, Bird Language, and Permaculture Terraces

This week, Allan "Hawkeye" Sande, founder of Quiet Heart Wilderness School, came out to the Wilderness Certification Program again, this time to teach us about "creating the need" (to learn) when mentoring young students. We talked about how to inspire young minds and bring out their desire to learn. For example, if a kid had something to cook over the fire, but nothing to grab it with when it was nice and hot, a need was created for tongs. We got to be the kids and made tongs out of sticks and rawhide.



Then, Hawkeye told us that he was feeling a bit sick and needed some dandelion roots to make a detoxification tea. He created a need for us to make digging sticks.



He gave us a challenge as well. He wanted the biggest, most beautiful roots. This made me much more intrigued and excited about digging up a dandelion. Common needs of most people, and especially young people, we learned, are acceptance, challenge, self esteem, passion, curiosity, and physical and emotional needs. By setting up challenges, sparking that curiosity or passion, and teaching in a visually exciting atmosphere (in the forest, near a creek, around a fire, etc.), we can successfully create needs for children to learn.

Thursday was another bird language day. We played a game of "name that bird," which the Owls won (take that Chupacabras!). At our sit spots we listened hard for a good forty minutes. Every one of us recognized that as the sun poked into the canopy, the chatter of the birds picked up quickly. The Golden-crowned Kinglets were the most active near my sit spot, and I also watched a Winter Wren feed. Every time he flew from bush to bush, he let out a "kip kip," which was responded to by another Winter Wren about 50 feet northeast. We tried to stay invisible to the birds in order to not interrupt their singing, which some indigenous groups characterize as a bird's "thanksgiving ritual."

Friday was another Permaculture day with Adam Rawson of Eden Cultivation. We learned about earthworks in general (by tractor or hand) and the benefits of terracing, swales, and path making. We also learned a lot about water and water storage. The route that water takes from its source to its point of use should be carefully designed to ensure enough water, clean water, efficiency, and most importantly, sustainability. Water comes from a known, renewable source. It then needs to be collected, conveyed, and stored in tanks, barrels, ponds, earth, vegetation, etc. We learned about irrigation systems, and looked into pipes' capacities for pressure and flow.

Storytelling, Cordage, and OWLE

Last week was a real treat at the Wilderness Certification Program. Hawkeye came on Wednesday with bobcat skulls, deer antlers, and some great stories. Storytelling, we learned, was an important part of native cultures. Stories were told to pass the time between sunset and going to sleep. Different stories of personal adventures and folklore entertained both young and old, and brought a lot of laughter and excitement into the lives of the indigenous people. Good storytellers use a lot of body language, different tones and voices, and look into the eyes of their audience. I know I heard some great stories, including Ned and Fred (awesome, Dixie!) and the Chimpanzee let loose at Woodstock (thanks Fritz).

On Thursday, Karen Sherwood from Earthwalk Northwest came out and taught us how to twist up cord out of different natural materials. Types of materials included rootlets, bark, bast fibers, and even leaf fibers.

This is some cord made from stinging nettle fibers. The technique I used here is the reverse wrap. Other techniques include the thigh spin, three strand wrap, and double reverse wrap.


This is about twenty feet of nettle cord, reverse wrapped. It took me about three hours to make twenty feet. With the thigh spin method this would take about three minutes. The sacrifice of using the thigh spin, however, is the strength and tightness of the cord. It's a game of give and take.

(Medicine pouch with Dogbane cord)

Friday was a blast. We paid a visit to Hawkeye's school, Quiet Heart. We met students in the Outdoor Wilderness Living Education (OWLE) program. They ranged from age 8 to 11 and blew all of us away. They were chopping wood, starting campfires, and making knives out of stones, sticks, and bark fibers. A few of the older kids even gutted some mackerel with their stone knives! We went on a nature walk and Nate (9 years old) pointed out Black Capped Chickadees and an American Dipper. He also told me all about the Cedar tree and its importance to the native people in this region. At the end of the day, we played a game called Foxtail, which doesn't end. Hawkeye called it a burnout game, and I was thinking to myself, "the kids will get eventually get tired and we will end the game." This was not the case, as each of us "older kids" dropped out, one by one, huffing and puffing with our arms over our heads. These kids absolutely amazed me with their knowledge, respect, and focus on the tasks at hand.

Field Trip to Central Washington!

The Alderleaf Wilderness Certification Program just got back from the central Washington trip and I've never been more thankful for hot showers before in my life. It's not that I was particularly dirty, or particularly cold (even when it dropped below freezing) but the combination of the two and wearing the exact same set of clothes, thermals and all, for three full days that did it. We spent the first night at Umtanum Creek and collected materials for hand drill making including mullein, elderberry, willow and cottonwood. The next morning we worked on tracking at Potholes State Park and collected dogbane for fabric making. Luckily our apprentice T'Jen had a spare camera battery so I could document the trip:

A view of the Columbia River from Potholes Campground at night.

Everyone huddled around the fire carving materials for hand drills.

Steve making a coal with his new kit; note his excellent form.

Fritz and Jason taking a break from hand drilling to admire the moon.

The skull of a young buck we found at the site of a cougar kill.

All in all it was an incredible trip, with lots of awareness games around the fire, many gifts from mother nature, and more bonding and friendship amongst the Alderleaf students.

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Basket Medicine

Last Week at the Wilderness Certification Program we had Karen Sherwood from Earthwalk Northwest come out and teach more ethnobotany. On day one we made Cedar bark baskets. The strips were collected by Karen herself 6 months prior to class! 6 months, we learned, is the minimum drying time before cedar bark is ready to be worked. The weaving process is very much like meditation. Your basket becomes your whole universe while you weave over two, under two, over one, under one...


The twining was done with sweetgrass (rush) and functions to keep the bark taught. The dark strip seen is of cherry bark interwoven, and it not only adds to the aesthetics of the basket but makes it easy to find if you set it down out in the woods.

On Thursday Karen taught us how to make our own medicine in the form of tinctures. This is relatively easy and anyone who is looking to be their own doctor (for minor ailments only!) can benefit from making tinctures. We gathered cedar leaves and devils club roots, wiped them down, put them in a jar, and filled it with strong vodka (100 proof). Alcohol draws out the medicinal properties of plants over time. The only steps to follow after that are: shake the jar at least once a day, and bottle the tincture any time after one full moon cycle (28 days).


The photo above showa tinctures made of Oregon Grape root (thanks Jason and last year's class) and Angelica seed. Oregon grape stimulates liver functions and skin metabolism. It is also an anti-microbial for the skin and digestive tract. Angelica seed tincture is soothing to the cramped or upset stomach, and can help suppress excessive vomiting.

On Friday, Adam Rawson came out again to discuss mapping, triangulation, and windbreak on properties. We learned, upon observing pooling water in the middle of our barn, that drainage is the issue of importance in the Pacific Northwest. This is different than most of the world, which needs to concentrate highly on water storage because importing exotic water creates air pollution and may contribute to global warming. After Friday, and seeing all the pooling water on the property, I have had numerous thoughts on how to store all of this rainwater and make it usable to us throughout the dry months. Using the natural slope of the property, we can channel all of the rainwater into basins, ponds, or tanks that will store our water. If we want to make this water potable for our consumption, lining the tanks with limestone or marble will clean the water (these wonderful stones remove acids, metals, and salts from our water, making it alkaline and ready for drinking and washing).

References:
-Moore, Michael. Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West. Red Crane Books, 1993
-Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Designer's Manual. Tagari Publications, 1988

Give Me Shelter - Week 7 of AWCP

We built a group shelter last week at the Wilderness Certification Program. The type of shelter we built is called a debris-tipi. This is a tipi made of debris. Five of us began work on this shelter on Thursday at around 10 am. We worked consistently until sundown.

The skeleton for a debris tipi consists of two circles of standing sticks about three feet high and about 10 ridge poles all coming to a point above the center of the stick circles. The skeleton didn't take too long to build, but we checked its strength over and over again because the last thing anybody wants is their home collapsing on top of them. We placed some lattice work of smaller sticks and fallen boughs from conifers in the area perpendicular to the ridge poles. The lattice work was to catch most of the debris we were to put on after lunch. Five hours straight of gathering dead leaves and small sticks from the ground and throwing them on top of the skeleton gave us the bare minimum insulation to get us through the night.

We left a spot for the door that was about 18 inches high by 14 inches wide, just enough to crawl through. Our bedding consisted, from the ground up, of hemlock boughs, sword ferns, and numerous layers of the driest moss we could find. The bedding surrounded the fire, which we started by friction. I made the coal outside and passed it into Jason, who blew it into flame and added kindling. All the while T'Jen was serenading the fire into existence. As we crawled into the shelter we noticed a gap above the door. We closed it off and saw that we had just made a firewood rack. We didn't have to crawl out for wood all night. The fire was to be tended, in two hour shifts, by each one of us. At one point the fire got so big that part of Jase's goatee was cinged from his face.

On Friday morning we saw that the wind had done some small damage to our tipi. If one were to stay in a shelter like this for more than one night, daily patchwork would need to be done. We evaluated some of the habitats near the river and finished the day early.

On Wednesday we saw some great tracks of deer, beaver, heron, sandpiper, killdeer, cottontail, muskrat, snipe, and raccoon. We analyzed the gaits (how animals move) of a few critters. One of the trails we saw was that of a deer. It was walking all wacky with two feet facing forward and the other two facing almost perpendicular. One of the sideways footprints didn't register as heavily as the others, leading us to the conclusion that this deer was hurt. We weren't far from the road, so it may have been hit by a car, but I like to imagine it getting attacked by a coyote, scuffling a bit, and limping away after showing the coyote just how tough it was.

Week 7 - Gaits, Shelter Building, Habitat Evaluation

The tracks of a pacific jumping mouse.

Jason working on the outer walls of our debris tipi.

Steve putting our ridge poles in place.

Drying out and warming up the inside with a toasty fire.

Week 6 - Children, Flintknapping and Permaculture

Our new greenhouse structure; Alderdleaf is beginning to look like a farm!

Some sideways lettuce sprouts, 3 weeks after planting.

An example of some crude obsidian knife making.

Our new flint-knapping pit.

A hand print in the mud after our epic mud fight.

On the Trail

Week 4 of the certification program was full of surprises. We split into two groups. On Wednesday, the other group trailed elk down in North Bend. Adriaan Louu, a South African tracker was giving a two day workshop on Wednesday and Thursday. The group that went with him trailed two elk all the way into the woods and actually spooked the mom and child from their bedding spot. The group I was in went to Bobcat Lake to harvest cattail leaves which we will use to make sitting mats and walls for shelters. On the way we saw a lot of scats left by coyote, bobcat, and bear. One pile of scat, however, was huge. The largest pile I have seen from a black bear. We also saw a lot of new plants and fungi on the trail, and harvested a good amount of cattail leaves before the rain brought us back to campus.



Day two was our turn to trail. We went up to the Skagit River Valley and started the day by playing hide and seek. Seems elementary rather than college level studies, yet it taught us so much about how to look for and follow a fresh trail. When there is grass pushed down and dew wiped from the grass, something has just moved through there. We then trailed a deer for about one mile, through sand, dirt, shrubs, and forest. We had to stop at the end of the day but all of us felt inspired to keep tracking. The following day Jase and I played hide and seek at the campus.

On Friday we learned a bit more about birds, and were introduced to some common birds in the Pacific Northwest. The Dark Eyed Juncos are some of my favorite birds. Their call sounds like two little stones being batted together. Some other birds we were introduced to were the American Robin, Winter Wren, Spotted Towhee, and Song Sparrow.

Congratulations to Tracker Evaluation Participants!

Alderleaf hosted tracker evaluations in early October. They were facilitated by Casey McFarland, Mark Elbroch, and Adriaan Louw of CyberTracker International. Casey is a former student and colleague who is now working full time as a tracker and evaluator! Mark Elbroch is the lead evaluator in North America and author of Mammal Tracks and Sign. Adriaan Louw (a senior tracker from South Africa) facilitated the trailing evaluations. Congratulations to all who participated - everyone scored well and earned certificates!

The evaulation process tests and certifies competent trackers, helping build greater credibility so that trackers can gain employment in wildlife research and conservation efforts. If you would like more information about the nuts and bolts of tracker evaluations, visit the wildlife trackers website at: http://www.wildlifetrackers.com/evals/

A special congratulations goes out to Brian McConnell, who gained the first senior tracker certificate in North America! Brian is also a former student and has scored 100% on both the Track & Sign Evaluation and Trailing Evaluation.

Stay tuned, we look forward to hosting more evaluations in 2009!

Oregon Dunes Trip

This past week the Alderleaf Wilderness Certification Program took its first field trip of the year. We went down to the Oregon Dunes near Lakeside, Oregon. We spent our time trailing animals (especially porcupines) for miles across the dunes, exploring deflation zones and forest islands and eating tasty mushrooms we found crawling raccoon style across the forest floor. It truly was an amazing trip; we all learned a lot about the environment, tracking and trailing, and each other. Here are a few pictures from the week.

The unforgettable trail of a porcupine

Camouflaged inchworm

Monkey Flower

Fritz, Steve and Jimmy at midnight

European Red Snail on a log

Oregon Dunes Trip

Here are some more pictures from the Dunes.

Red Legged Frog in small forest isalnd

Daddy Long Legs at night

Jimmy trailing by flashlight

Brownish Chroogomphus

View of dunes surrounded by forest

More Pics

Western Red Backed Salamander

Crayfish? Trail

Rough Skinned Newt

Spores falling from a wood fern

Raccoon track

Pics

Some Common Mycena on a Log

A Banana Slug on Amanita muscaria.

Angel Wings on a Log

King Boletus

Red Cracked Bolete

Gifts and Chirps

Last week we had an outdoor, hands-on class on the Skykomish River. We were introduced to different stones such as agate, basalt, and my favorite, obsidian. Frank Sherwood, hunter, naturalist, and teacher, showed us how to create tools from these stones. The gift of stones was generously offered by the river and we were reminded by Frank to thank the river and the valley for providing these stones. We learned about the hertzian cone, or cone of force, which is the direction cracks move in when stones are struck. With our cone of force in mind, we began to bash our stones with larger, heavier hammerstones. A few bloody knuckles and a lot of gravel flakes later, we all had at least one sharp edged "survival knife." We also learned how to percussion flake edges off of rocks to shape them into tools. By the end of the day, each of us had a cutting tool made of natural materials (except for the artificial sinew lashings):


Thursday was an introduction to ethnobotany. This is the study of how people use plants. The three things that plants are utilized for by humans are food, medicine, and utility or craft use. Karen Sherwood, Frank's wife, began the day with a slide show of numerous wild plants in the pacific northwest. She gave us a snack of muffins made from acorn flour topped with Oregon grape jelly. If you've never tried Oregon grape before, beware. It is edible, full of nutrients, and bitter as bitter can be. Luckily Karen used a bunch of sugar in her jelly recipe. The treats were a delight. We then went on a walk and learned about dandelion, dock, thimbleberry, elderberry, and western red cedar. The gift of plants provided by the soils is greatly appreciated by all native peoples. Soils provide all of us with the fruits and vegetables and grains required to sustain our lives, and when you pick the leaf or fruit yourself, you can't help but be thankful. Some other plants around the Alderleaf property:


Cooley's Hedge Nettle (Stachys cooleyae), of the mint family (the square stem a dead giveaway), is utilized as medicine and as a scent depressant. Aboriginal fishermen would wipe their hands and arms with the leaves to decrease their human smell. The rhizomes, or spreading root structures, can be dried, ground up, and made into a tea or tincture to treat migraines, hangover headaches, and internal inflammations.

This is Fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium), one of my favorite plants. Yes, it's all in the name. This beautiful, common gift is found along roadsides all over western Washington. It has edible roots, leaves (when the plant is young), and stalks (again, in young plants). The buds and flowers can be eaten throughout the summer as well. The bast fibers of the fall stems can be twisted, much like stinging nettle, into cord. The tea from the boiled herb helps to relieve constipation, settle an upset stomach, and diminish a harsh cough. My favorite gift from the fireweed, however, is its down. After flowering, in late summer, the stems become littered with this cotton-like substance that is fluffy, light, and dry. What could this fluff be used for? Like I said, it's all in the name.

Friday was an introduction to bird language. We learned the calls of birds like song sparrows, winter wrens, spotted towhees, and stellars jays. Understanding the language of the birds is important to any hunter, wildlife enthusiast, or tracker. Knowing how to tell the difference between a song, a call, and an alarm will give a person a tremendous advantage in the outdoors. For example, a few weeks ago, on Tiger Mountain, Filip and I heard a Spotted Towhee alarming across the swamp from our trail. Then, a Stellars Jay joined in a bit further up. Soon enough a winter wren alarmed in its machine-gun like fashion a bit further up. Filip and I scurried across the forest floor as quickly and quietly as possible to try to get a visual. We stopped and listened to big, careless footsteps across the swamp moving fairly slow and breaking a lot of sticks. Which one of our animal friends could this have been?

A tremendous third week of class left us inspired and excited to start incorporating wild foods into our diets and investigating areas of multiple bird alarms. The other day we had lentils with dandelion leaves, a chantrelle mushroom quiche, and pot pie made with dock and plantain bread.

Teaching, Tracking, and Permaculture

Week 2 of the Certification Program was a blast. There were new mysteries presented, skits performed, and garden beds dug up.

On Wednesday, a man named Hawkeye educated us about education. What makes an effective teacher? There are core values that good nature-based educators have; these range from respect to repetition. One value that must be present in teaching children, we learned, is an animated personality. We learned about dressing the part, feeding off the group, and using heavy body language to not only hold interest but get the children excited to learn. We were assigned random topics to act out in two minute skits. This was a chance for us to animate our personalities, and animated they became. We had Jimmy the growling bear, Fritz the shapeshifting raven, and Dixie the big-eyed nocturnal flying squirrel who came out during the day. There was a lot of laughter and excitement, and I noticed that I retained more information given in these skits than I have from most college lectures I have attended.

Day 2 of Week 2 was a tracking day. We went out to Bob Harman park and tracked along the Snohomish river. On our way out to the sandbar we were fortunate enough to come across a Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) cleaning itself high in a snag. It took off and showed us it's flight pattern of flap flap flap glide, flap flap flap glide. These hawks have to fly fast and quiet because their main diet consists of other smaller birds (such as Cedar Waxwings). We got down to the sandbar and saw raccoon, coyote, mink, and beaver tracks. The beavers had some easily identifiable trails that lead into the sloughs near the river. We saw some cottonwood sapling stumps with what I call "tooth stairs." Beavers leave these ridged bite marks on the wood they harvest that look like little stairs. Further along the slough, we were studying some Great Blue Heron tracks near a spotted sandpiper trail when a juvenile bald eagle flew overhead and landed in a cottonwood. He was followed by an alarming Osprey who held a small fish in its talons. Maybe the eagle had come into the osprey's home without permission. The eagle eventually took off and showed off his ginormous wingspan, gliding 25 feet above our heads. We then found some mystery tracks on the sandbar, riverside. We all knew it was a bird, but which bird was it?

Friday was our introduction to permaculture. Adam Rawson, our professor, taught us that in permaculture, anything is possible. Permaculture is defined in many ways, the most blunt being permanent agriculture. This is a sustainable way to grow the crops you need with as little manipulation of the natural world as possible. Adam showed us the map of the property and where him and Jason had planned on putting raised beds, ponds, food forests, and chicken padducks. At the end of the day we all chipped in to take out some grass and till some soil that will soon have some edible plants in it.

A great second week with a lot of new ideas and experiments was very fun. Stay tuned for week 3, which will include stone tools, ethnobotany, and birding.