The Wonders of Zayante

The beautiful Zayante Creek

I did a little research on Zayante Creek. According to Wikipedia:

"The Zayantes, a local tribe of the Ohlone people, originally inhabited the area. Early history of the area recalls the Zayante people finding shelter and game in the plentiful forests. The area provided them with enough acorns, fish from Lompico and Newell Creek, and small game to live a peaceful, easy life. Temascals (saunas), songs, and games were the rule, while fighting and thievery the exception."

Yes, this is still the peaceful, easy life...

You pretty much know when your day starts with scorpions and snakes, it's a good sign. At least up here on Poppy Mountain it is.

And it was.

Look at that beautiful spiral the snake's tail made.

While the highlight of the day was, of course, the creek and swimming hole (or wait, was it the snake and scorpion?), a few other activities rounded out our afternoon perfectly: cooking, a scavenger hunt, and berry picking. It really was such a sweet day.

Today's snack was a home made breakfast cookie, made with soaked oats, chia, mango, dried fruit, banana and cinnamon (It got mixed reviews). And bacon on the side. Turkey bacon. Yummy. Everything's better with bacon. While the cookies were baking, the children went on a scavenger hunt.

 

There are three big blackberry bushes on the way to Zayante Creek. I would say the picking today was fair. There are still many unripe berries. But we managed to find enough sweet ones to satisfy ourselves.

At last. With our bellies full of breakfast cookies, bacon and berries, we made it to the creek. Exploring, wading, and splashing ensued for the rest of the afternoon.

Success! What a super fun day. It's wonderful to end this session on such a high.

It was a wacky day :P

We had an unexpected series of events on Poppy Mountain today.

First of all, what boys wouldn't love to build a fort in the woods? Well, apparently the ones who would rather find a place to slide down a steep hill on their bums! Alrighty, then. I thought about mandated fort building, but that didn't seem right for a fun summer adventure. So hill sliding was now on the menu.

While we were in the forest, I had the children collect items that could be used to paint with. Instead of brushes. They found a bunch of possibilities: ferns, clovers, bark, redwood cones, lichen, moss, etc. we brought those back to the house and rinsed them off.

Before painting, though, we had some snack preparation to do.

Today the children made a hearty snack that included a quinoa salad with mango, avocado, tomato and a lime dressing. They also made black bean and sweet potato quesadillas. Both were delicious!

Back to wackiness. After snack, we set out to paint with our tools from nature. It was such a fun exploration that any sort of form went out the window. I had thought we would paint the bum-sliding hill, but it was so much fun just to try the different plants and see which ones painted the best.

In the end, I challenged the children to see if they could find all the colors in the rainbow in their painting. Otherwise they were completely free to paint as they wished. It was delightful to see all of them spending time with the colors, and although the end result was on the *ahem* abstract side, the process was priceless.

I tried once more to encourage some fort-building. Some things, I guess, are best left for another day...

A Day of Scorpions and Gnomes

Who knew that they had so much in common, scorpions and gnomes. Scorpions have been on this earth for millions of years. So have gnomes. Scorpions live in the rocks. So do gnomes. Of course scorpions don't wear pointy hats and gnomes don't eat insects (as far as I know).

If you read my last post, then you know the story of Sage and Luna and the Scorpion family. Today, the children made a soft pastel drawing of that story on black paper. I love pastels. They are so forgiving and so alive. Form and color melt under your fingertips almost like you are sculpting. We practiced blending and creating edges of rock and luminous mountaintops.

And then the gnomes came in. I had read about a sweet wood carving project and wanted to bring that to Poppy Mountain. So simple, really. We found some fairly thin branches. About one inch wide or even less, and cut them into three-inch lengths.

The children carved first the pointy hat atop the gnome's head, next the face. Then, they scored the branch where they wanted the beard and carved that out. Finally, they colored their gnome's hat in pencil and drew on a face. Voila!

Wood carving is the kind of activity one can get immersed in and forget about all her troubles. It's meditative. Oh, and if you happen to carve with a dull knife like I did, the experience lasts even longer.

One of the children today was so focused on his carving that he had time to make two gnomes. It was a great project to get into deeply. We took a snack break and also explored the forest for the makings of gnome dwellings. Then back to whittling. At the end of the day, some wonderful gnome homes were built. The gnomes looked pretty happy about the whole thing. Maybe they'll invite their scorpion friends over.

Sleepless Night

Sage couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned and rolled and sat up. Looking around, he watched his sleeping family nearby. He listened to the sounds of the night forest outside. He heard the scurrying of a raccoon. He heard the hoot of an owl and the rush of feathers as it took flight from a nearby redwood tree. Crickets played a symphony of chirping. Rather than lulling him to sleep, all the sounds were making him even more awake. Sage quietly got up, put on his satchel and went out into the night.

The night forest was so different from the day. The moon was bright so he could see well. His feet stepped lightly on the ground. Sage wasn't sure where he was going. He let his feet carry him on the path.

Sage stopped to watch the owl pass over his head. He heard the howls of a distant coyote pack. Nature was busy at this time of night!

Sage looked up and his eyes were surprised to meet the eyes of another person! A young girl who he hadn't ever seen before. "Hello," he said. "Hello," said the girl. "What are you doing out here?" she asked. "I couldn't sleep. How about you?" "Me neither," she said. "My name is Luna. What's your name?" "Sage," he told her. Luna told him, "My family is traveling through. We are traders. We have feathers and abalone shells and want to trade them for obsidian. We stopped on this mountain since it has such a special feel and such abundance of food and water. We aren't planning to stay very long."

Sage was happy to meet this girl. He didn't have a lot of friends on Poppy Mountain. He looked at her long braided hair and her angled nose and jaw. She looked familiar, like he had known her before. But he knew he had never met her until now. Her eyes were bright in the moonlight and she looked like she may have just a little mischief in her.

"Want to see something I just found?" she asked. "Sure," said Sage. Luna walked him over to a rocky ridge. He followed silently. Only a very careful listener could have heard their footsteps. She stopped in front of a large boulder. "Look there," she pointed at the rock.

The two children watched as a family of scorpions came out from under the boulder. There was a father and a mother. The mother scorpion was carrying her litter of babies on her back! They were going out to hunt for their meal. Scorpions eat insects. The scorpion has two pinchers and a tail that curves up and over its back with a stinging tip. The scorpion stings it's prey, releasing a toxic venom and paralyzing the insect. Sage and Luna silently followed the scorpion family from a distance and watched as they hunted. They had a lot of babies to feed! About a dozen baby scorpions clung to their mother's back. They were almost white and see-through because their exoskeleton hadn't formed yet. The babies were totally dependent on their mother for their survival, until they became strong enough to venture on their own.

Eventually the scorpion family made their way back to the boulder where they lived, having hunted and eaten their fill for the night. The moon sat low in the sky. The crickets and night bugs were silent. Sage and Luna didn't think the scorpions had known they were there, since it seemed they had no notice or fear of them. But after the scorpions had gone away, the moonlight revealed a small gift left behind for Sage and Luna. It was a complete exoskeleton, that father scorpion had recently shed. It was left just outside the entrance to their home. Sage picked it up gingerly, holding it in his palm. Luna looked at it with wonder, realizing that the scorpions had known they were there the whole time. She said to Sage, "You keep it. You can look at it and remember this special night." He gently placed it in his satchel, and when he looked up to thank her, Luna had disappeared.

A Second Chance at a Last Day

"Sage got to the creek and laid down his water baskets, letting them soak and expand in the shallow water's edge. It was a warm day, and he splashed the cold water over his face, arms and head. If he caught at least six fish, he reasoned, he would allow himself a long swim in the hole before heading back up the steep mountain. Watching the water carefully, Sage began tracking the fishes below the surface. He concentrated so hard at becoming one with the fish that the rest of the world didn't matter. One by one, Sage pulled fish out of the creek. He had just caught his sixth fish when his senses alerted him to something moving toward him from the woods. Bear! The bear hadn't yet seen him, though he knew it could smell him. The bear might have been coming for a drink or perhaps to fish as well. But it was acting rather strangely and moving fast. It didn't take long for Sage to realize that this was the bear his brothers and father had been tracking. A faint bird call let Sage know he was correct. It was his father's signal. He had to move..."

In the end, I decided to do a "make-up day" so that we could have a proper closing to our first session of Poppy Mountain. It turned out to be a beautiful day in many ways. The children were captivated by the story of Sage and the bear. Working with clay was so satisfying . And, the weather was perfect for a trip to the swimming hole, which everyone was so excited to do.

I am getting into the groove, and allowing the rhythms to carry me through the afternoons. It's a lovely creative process for me, and a lot of work as I find my way managing a program in my home and with my own children. I am grateful for the children who came to me as I began this adventure. I'm also looking forward to growing and stretching, and welcoming more children as the summer unfolds. The second session of Poppy Mountain begins next Tuesday, so stay tuned. Until then...

Letdown: the low down.

Letdown. No, I'm not referring to my breastfeeding relationship with my baby. That sensation when the ducts open, the milk flows with abandon, and baby is satisfied with his sucking efforts. No, this is a different kind. It's kind of like disappointment. Or disillusionment. Like when you're on a high and then something happens, and you are, well, let down. Down to earth. Down to what happens sometimes in life. No biggie.

Well, this happened last week on the very last day of our first session of Poppy Mountain. It wasn't a traumatic letdown. It was more like an easy landing. One of the kids became ill and could not come. Then another was in the middle of moving house and was just too tired and stressed to come, and may we do it another day? Before I knew what was happening, the last day of Poppy Mountain was not as I had imagined it... There was no last day.

As I look back now on the story I was planning to unfold, isn't it interesting that Sage was in a somewhat sullen and disappointed mood:

"Older brothers and father were gone hunting. They were after a bear they had been tracking for some time. Sage wished he could go on the big hunts. He imagined how exciting it would be to target a huge beautiful creature like that. But no. He had to stay close to home and watch his sister make baskets and help his mother gather acorns. Well, at least he got to go on his own to the creek for water. And to catch a few fish. [Sage was not only an excellent swimmer, he also was an excellent fisherman.] And that's where he was going just now..."

This chapter of the story will have to wait and be told at a different time, and it's perhaps even waiting for different children to hear it.

We still made our way down to the creek that day. The creek where Sage was going. It was the perfect creek day: warm and buggy. My littlest delighted in digging his toes into the mud and crawling into the water.

Our July session of Poppy Mountain begins a week from tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to the continuation of the story about Sage, to new friends, and to the activities we will be doing together in the heart of summer.