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.

Foraging, Feasting & Felting

What a lovely afternoon on Poppy Mountain! Mr. and Mrs. Quail have babies, the sun is high but not too hot, the dandelions are in full bloom. A perfect day, really, for fun with food and water and wool.

Right away the children went to work laying out their "cloud" of wool, separating light and airy pieces of roving that would make the background of their felted wool landscape. I poured soap and very hot water over the wool and busy fingers pressed and rubbed the fibers until they were entwined, forming a small mat of brown, white and blue.

While the wool mats dried in the warm sun, we harvested a basketful of dandelion leaves. Oh, how I would love to make baskets in a future session... Back in the kitchen, the day's kid-made snack began. First, we made dandelion pesto. *Most* everyone tasted a little bit, and we decided that it wasn't too bad -- a little bitter, however.

Next up: bean and tomato salad with garlic rosemary infused olive oil dressing. The children did all the work, from slicing the cherry tomatoes to chopping garlic and parsley and squeezing lemons.

We laid out and enjoyed our modest feast: dandelion pesto on homemade seed crackers (chia, pumpkin, sesame and sunflower); cream cheese and hummus for those not desiring the pesto; and of course, the bean and tomato salad. Yummy! Everyone found something they loved.

After doing all the dishes, the children went out to find their wet-felted wool mats had dried and were ready for needle-felting. Each one imagined and created a wool scene from the Poppy Mountain story.

It's hard to believe we have only one more day in our June session of Poppy Mountain. And it's going to be a great one! Stay tuned...

How Sage and Cottontail Rabbit Became Friends

"Now, I think we can all imagine how Sage and his family found the food they ate. Either by foraging and gathering berries and acorns and mushrooms. Or by hunting. Sage's family hunted many animals for their food. They hunted big animals like deer, elk, bear, and antelope. They didn't let any of the animal that they caught go to waste, using skin and fur, meat and bone. And they thanked the animal's spirit before skinning and preparing the meat for eating.

One of the smaller animals that Sage and his older brothers and father hunted was rabbit.

One day the hunters found an abandoned rabbit den with a lone baby rabbit left to perish. Sage begged his father to let him take the baby rabbit home and nurse him. His father reluctantly agreed..."

Today we cooked our food with the sun: we made a solar oven! With a pizza box, foil, black construction paper and plastic wrap. It was a great project and fun experiment harnessing the sun's power to help us make our lunch.

While the oven preheated, the children played in the woods, building up the walls of their fort. The ground is now neatly swept, and stone chairs are placed in the center.

Back in the kitchen, we assembled quesadillas and put them into the solar oven. While we waited for them to cook, we munched on apples with peanut butter and sipped herbal sun tea. The tea was made with mint, rosemary, sage, lavender and hibiscus. It was delicious and refreshing.

While the quesadillas were /still/ cooking, the children made shaded drawings of suns. Shaded drawing -- which encourages drawing with form and tone rather than line -- was developed out of suggestions and directions given by the Austrian philosopher and founder of Waldorf Education, Rudolf Steiner.

Before the day ended, we were finally able to enjoy the quesadillas. :o)

New Moon

"Once there was an Ohlone Indian boy who lived with his family on this very hill. His name was Sage. Sage had straight dark brown hair and brown skin. He wasn't very tall, but then again he was only 8....

"One morning as Sage rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stretched out his lanky limbs, he heard quite a racket of chatter and excitement outside. It was normal to hear the birds shouting in the morning and maybe a rustle from someone slinking through the dried leaves, but this was unusual. Sage poked his head out of the tipi and looked around. He wondered if maybe the earth was going to rumble. But he heard no sounds from deep below the ground. Sage picked up his satchel and went out in search of the commotion... "

The children had gathered under the wisteria and this became the story place. While I told the story of Sage and his animal friends, one of the girls spied a bird's nest tucked away above where we were sitting! Such a sweet little diversion; we all had to get up and take a peek at the bird sitting in its nest.

An unplanned excursion down the road to the swimming hole proved my amazing flexibility and spontaneity and the kids loved it. It wasn't hot enough to swim today, but I'm hoping that we will go back next week.

Just through the woods is the place where Sage and his family once lived. We walked there and the children began clearing and planning for fort-building.

With tomorrow being the first day of summer, the story today brought the meaning of the solstice. A craft honoring the sun followed. We gathered sticks and created "God's Eye"-like weavings. But with four sticks crossed (rather than the two used to make God's Eyes), the shape of the yarn turned out round like a sun.

It was a wonderful first day of Poppy Mountain. Now that feeling of anticipation, nerves and excitement will transform into the creation of a new rhythm, one that will carry us onward into story, imagination and wholesome summer fun.

She'll be Comin' Round the Poppy Mountain

I set up this blog four years ago. So I thought it would be nice to have a little resurrection, so to speak. Because right now it is a new beginning. I am starting along a new path: home schooling.

(And not only home schooling my Waldorf daughter. That's big news -- and for some perhaps shocking news. Considering I am a Waldorf teacher. But for others it may not be so surprising. Since my sons have home schooled through their high school career. They're going into their senior year this fall.)

I am also starting a small Waldorf enrichment program from my home. It's called Poppy Mountain. This summer, a story is going to come alive. A story about Billie the Blue Bellied Lizard, Mr. and Mrs. Quail, Cottontail Rabbit, Sage Boy and others. They all live on Poppy Mountain. And they will be the inspiration for all our fun, summery activities. The children with me will paint, cook, build forts, make clay, draw, and much more. My hope is that come autumn time, Poppy Mountain will continue to inspire home schooling youngsters with it's Waldorf flavor.

I thought it would be fun to chronicle our summer adventures on Poppy Mountain by waking up this little blog and giving her a kick start. Won't you join me?