Joy. Joy and connection. Joy and connection, and gardens, funerals, trials, tracking, dunking, cairn building, and navigating. Joy in sun, clouds, and water, connection with nature and one another. A perfect Explorers' day.
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| Pure joy! |
The Trilliums have evolved to represent the best of EC: deep, heartfelt, trusting connection with one another; unrestrained joy in nature; curious and compassionate; stellar stewards; making memories together to last a lifetime.
Sunday was a combination of all of the above, as all embraced the exploring spirit to explore connections to oneself, to one another, and finding joy together in skipping, splashing, jumping, discovering; to nature.
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| Bushwacking |
We started our day with an opening circle where girls joked about the end of the year, told about upcoming summer adventures, and shared how things were going for them. From there we talked about how this day was all about the Trilliums and their explorers' fever; meaning: we would go where ever the Trilliums wanted. We made a plan for how to stay oriented to the place, how we would make decisions as a group, and we were off exploring.
We navigated our way through a flooded side channel and then built cairns to mark where we had walked along the explansive banks of the Nooksack. Using our navigation skills, we determined where the river was located, and worked our way through baby cottonwoods, japanese knotweed groves, and new alders to finally come out to the Nooksack.
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| River Garden |
After arriving at the Nooksack girls set their sights on making it to an island across a few side channels. Working together, we all found the safest/dryest way across. However, the goal of staying dry quickly evaporated, and girls decided to swamp their boots, rollup their pants, and just plow through the river's side channels.
We set up a basecamp and some girls explored further down the river while others stayed close to basecamp and created a garden with all the baby plants they could find in the area. The river explorers quickly suberged themselves in various parts of the Nooksack while the gardeners built a garden and used recycled plastic bags to water the transplants. We all came back together for a stick funeral, peaceful place, and tons of goofiness.
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| Stick funeral |
Our trek back to the bus was made easier by our cairns, stick arrows, and really keen observation skills. When back, we had an epic closing circle with a human knot and really complicated web of life activity. The Trilliums led every part of this activity and it was awesome to see them take ownwership of how the traditional EC activities look for them.
