It is just as important to understand our environment as it is to understand ourselves. Indeed, the two are linked, and the interaction is what makes us. This week we pondered the questions: where does our energy come from and go? As well as: what patterns do I have?
Potentially these questions can give us valuable insight into why and how we get the results we do and also what we may be able to change when we aren't getting the results we want. We walked East Lomond – and discovered the difference between the times we projected and the actual time it took us. This helped to hone our instincts. Looking at the energy flow of land through connections and using word chain association was very useful. It was illuminating to notice the subjective differences between what we picked up on from the landscape. For a bit of light relief we played the zombie apocalypse game. Who knows it may come in useful sometime. We also had a go at scale mapping; this hones our communication and observation skills no end. Henry led a creative writing session, and we sowed many seeds for ideas for us to develop in our own time. Thank you, Henry, In the end, there was nothing left to do but express our gratitude for another fun, exploratory day.
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Every month Wilder Ways includes a Saturday date so that people who are ordinarily at school can join us, this was our weekend and was also Imbolc, a traditional Gaelic festival marking the start of Spring!
Friday A cold crisp day, we met at Pillars of Hercules the perfect spot to pick up any additional food or supplies for the day too. We checked in with our inner compass – our yes and no. It is such a vital tool and skill for life, it was interesting to find out what that felt like for each of us. Surveying of the woodland using quadrants and the DAFOR scale. The DAFOR scale is a way of understanding an area and in this case what tree species make up a particular area of woodland. DAFOR is an acronym which stands for Dominant, Abundant, Frequent, Occasional and Rare. It's generally used for plants and gives an idea of what types of trees are in an are, which is good for management and also for understanding the soil and age/maturity of the land as well as the larger ecosystem and what other creatures may find the woodland hospitable. The teenagers have started to bring their gifts to the fore and will be leading sessions. Today it was Rhiannon's turn. Rhiannon has been learning about taxidermy over the past year or so and was keen to test and share her skills so she brought along some deceased mice which had been frozen and her equipment. We also did some more den building and were ambushed by the Flexi Friday group. It almost goes without saying but we rounded our session up with a sit spot and a story of the day before discussing our personal goal setting for the term to come. Saturday Saturday we learned a lot about working all sorts of tools and several people who can only join us on non-school days came along. This filled in much of our day as you may see from the images amongst other things we practiced on the pole lathe, starting rolling pins, baseball bats, torch handles. Once you master these time tested tools the sky ( or torch handle ) is the limit... We played a torch game to symbolise Imbolc, a reminder that the days are getting surely and steadily lighter and brighter. To mark this we lit a torch and walked clear paths setting intentions for the next part of the year What a tiring day, we also played a lot of games! More next time.... and as always get in touch if you are interested in finding out more. It seemed like a long break over the holiday season and a while since we had all been together, yet once we gathered it was as if we had never been away. We started with a sit spot to ground ourselves and gather our thoughts. Do try one if you haven't - no equipment required.
At Wilder Ways we are working hard on finding and setting our intentions. Connecting to nature or at least bringing our attention to the connections that string lightly between us, silver thin like spider webs and the quiet but very much alive world around us is a surefire way of quieting our superficial chatter and finding our inner voice. As well as hearing the occasional rustle and insistent chirps of our non-human friends. When we had grounded ourselves, we then gathered together and considered what wisdom we had won from the last term... There was a lot to recall and harvest here so this took some time. After that, we marked the boundaries of the base camp reflected on what the camp and the act of making boundaries meant to us as individuals. Mapping is such a huge part of permaculture - Wilder Ways has always had a strong permaculture ethos at its core. To understand and work with a site to it's fullest it is helpful/essential to know it deeply - to do this we measured and observed again and drew maps with the TOADS method ( clue this has nothing to do with our amphibian pals.) It is an abbreviation that means that we look at and record the Time, Orientation, Author ( who wrote/drew the map) Date and Scale. Understanding these things is great if we want to revisit and change anything down the line of what we recorded. The Wilder Ways crew are all pretty adept at cooking outdoors, once again we practiced our fire lighting skills and cooked langoustines for a hot and nourishing lunch. After lunch, we played oreo games ( you had to be there, but biscuits were involved ) and set goals for physical challenges and then we designed physical challenges on site. We shared gifts – Henry shared a very lovely poem and we talked about our birthing stories To get an idea of what our goals may-be we did a visualization – if it were our last camp day, this is remarkably useful too to discover our hidden wishes and hopes for the time to come... It was a tiringly satisfying day! And we are all looking forward to next week. Over the past few weeks we have: foraged for food in the rockpools while thinking and talking about our ancestors
We all visited Scotland the Bread and learned about the nutritious ancient grains we used for sustainability. We walked the chain walk in Elie, which was an exciting challenge. We cooked potatoes, bedouin bread, seafood - limpets and whelks on the fire. We made a quiz - on the creatures we foraged for, and even got some of the answers right. Played ninja again! There is a pattern forming... The next week: We reflected on personal food choices and considered alternatives that take the planet into account. Considered trapping today - Henry experienced it first hand! The Estate gamekeeper visited with the deer manager - we talked about trapping animals, stalking deer and regulations Played an anatomy game - getting into the anatomy of pigeon, rabbit, deer, and pheasant Played water ninja. We worked on building projects, researched grey/red squirrels and re-set the camera trap We reflected on trap designs and also did a visualization of what being trapped like an animal would feel like and we also and wrote about what the outcome could be. We played games to explore questions such as Who Are We? Who Am I? Identity is such a slippery thing and it was so good to do this exercise in a group. Sharpened axes and knives, felled a tree and made mallets. All useful instruments helping anyone be at one with living a little wilder. Stay in touch. It has been great to get to a point where we are seeing real progress with our personal goals - one thing we have been exploring in particular is seeing the unseen - and delving into risk and benefit. Now, this may sound obscure so here is an example this week we started by considering a risk situation we have been in and ended the day writing about a risky we'd like to be in. Instead of just seeing the risks and dangers we thought about what the benefits were in that situation ? How does risk help us grow and is risk ever avoidable or do we always just trade for another set of risks including not growing our resilliences and abilities to handle what life throws at us? We had time at our sit spots considering hazards and their benefits. Lots to think about ! Felled a small tree the classic 3 cut way - risks and benefits came into how we approached this. We cooked and eat road kill vension stew on the fire - with foraged and ingredients that we collectively brought along. As well as this we:
All this while keeping as warm and dry as we can - the winter weather has well and truly set in.... . It is incredible how much food comes from Fife and is grown and made locally, when you start looking it feels very empowering to know so much is on our doorsteps - no bananas or chocolate grows locally sadly ( that we know of...so far but happy to be corrected ! ) but there is much wholesome fare to be had. This week the wilder ways wanderers had a challenge to buy and forage local food and turn it into lunch. Thankfully this was not hard as we were all pretty hungry. We had leek and potato soup with freshly baked bread. Not to be sniffed at ! The energy we gained stood us in good stead to play a game called Get Off The Couch -looking at what motivates us to do those things we need to do but don't love doing. Essential life skill 247 covered at Wilder Ways ! We also explored leaders and followers through practical tasks and journalling followed by discussion to expand our comfort with being able to take both roles - all essential for successful teambuilding. We looked at SMARTER goals too which is way of framing what we want to achieve and making sure that we have ways to get there. SMARTER is an acronym for Specific Measurable Achieveable Realistic Time Bound Ecological and Responsible .. Having a goal framed in this way means that we have hope of getting where we want to and also have an awareness of where our responsibilities lie. We also had our routine sit spots - a core part of the wilderness awareness school. Last week was our two day session too so on Saturday we welcomed new faces to play ninja games of theft and daring. This and building took up much of our day with intrepid adventure. We curled up like hibernating animals mirroring what will be happening in the wild and observed nature from this space with all of our senses... Well it was a packed and pleasant time and next it will be Samhain ! Stay Wild and stay in touch... It seems like a while ago now but the of last term was as eventful as ever... We explored using a wider variety of our senses including our body awareness and internal compassing when we had a blindfold car journey. This was challenging and fun in equal measure with resulting chaos. Then from that we found our way to camp using some of the skills we had honed with our earlier jaunt. When we arrived at camp we made ourselves comfortable and started to make the place suitable with a dakota fire and paracute to keep us sheltered,warm and with something to cook on. The den, as ever needed work and the crew brought their by now well developed den building expertise to the fore with that. It wouldn't be a day at Wilder Ways without games and we explored how we saw things in a fun collaborative way, before eating our Dakota fire cooked pasta and harvesting our valuable moments from the last few weeks and taking time to pause and also look forward to what's coming up after the break. The week before this one - we didn't update the blog. Life simply got too exciting !
This week was really based on orientating... We did an interesting challenge walk to camp, blindfolded in a chain were we were not able to walk on the road or verge - how did we do ! Well we are still here - I promise. We worked collectively on the design of the day and camp design - developing a den and did some more work on the toilet and also did more renovations on the main shelter. We played a game called Ruminant Bellies. Sit spots were a big feature as they always are, they help to settle us down and orient to our surroundings and ourselves. We also did some journalling in this space which helped us dig deeper. For lunch we cooked lasagne together and it got a large thumbs up from everyone. Cooking together has so many functions and also keeps our energy high and stomachs from rumbling. We played more games, really too many to sum up. We used our visualising skills to visualise a path... Have a look at our photos and stay in touch !! We arrived to West Sands beach early to help prepare the area for a Climate Change march coming from the centre of St Andrews town today. The march was loud and triumphant and we were there ready to greet the large snaking line of people with the sand art we had been working on all morning. The art and writing we worked on represented the goals of the campaign, which was being observed around the world today in cities, towns, schools and workplaces and seeks to heighten awareness about ecological matters and sustainable ways of living.
The turn out which stood at over 1200 people was unprecedented and many schools, nurseries and community groups were in attendance to show their concern and commitment to finding ecological and sane solutions to life on earth. We look forward to staying involved in community engagement and learning more about our responsibilities and abilities in these changing times.
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