The Jumping Mice kicked off their second year with a traverse in one of BEC’s favorite locations, Lake Padden Park. Lake Padden offers so much wonderful forest for us to explore and learn in. This park is seemingly right in town but as soon as the exploration begins, we often find ourselves marveling at large Douglas fir trees or crawling alongside spiders underneath the camouflage of sword fern fronds!
After spending a whole summer apart the Jumping Mice were quite excited to see each other again as we started our outing gathering our group members in the Galby Lane parking lot. Many of us dove into the woods, hooting, hollering, running, jumping, sticks already in hand even before all of us had showed up.
Once we were all there and accounted for we decided to play a few games of Hungry Hungry Marten before having an opening circle because we knew we were not going to be able to sit still with all of this energy and anticipation! The squirrels largely prevailed and a few Pine Marten went hungry during these rounds, but we were all glad to be able to run and jump and use some of that wonderful energy that sometimes seems to come from nowhere at all.
We had a new member of BEC joining our group for the day, so during opening circle we took turns explaining certain aspects of the BEC culture such as Attitude of Gratitude, Challenge by Choice (mottos) and jobs. It took us a while to get through opening circle because many of us had trouble maintaining focus and respect for others while they were speaking. This was the first outing of the year, and the mentors expected some of this. As we grow in our second year as a group, the mentors are excited to watch us seize opportunities to grow in our listening skills and our understanding of respect for each other.
As we transition from the last days of summer into early fall, we enjoy turning our attention to all the ways in which the forest changes at this time of harvest. To grow our awareness skills so that we can see some of these changes, we played a game of Wildlife is Watching. We all began to Lose Our Minds and Come to Our Senses (mottos) as we became focused and more in tune with our surroundings as we either hid or tried to spot the hidden.
Because this was a traverse as opposed to an out and back style exploration, we had multiple opportunities to use our group decision making skills to decide which direction to go when we were faced with a fork in the trail. Luckily for us, the explorer who was our Tribal Elder today did a fantastic job of Widening Our Circle (mottos) by making sure all voices in the group were heard. He seemed to have a magical ability to read the pulse of the group and help guide us to consensus.
These decision making sessions were interspersed with many games of Hide! and plenty of general romping about through the understory.
Toward the end of our day we came across the “Big Fallen Trees” of Lake Padden and couldn't resist running up and down their long trunks. While most of us managed to stay out of the knee deep mud, some of us couldn’t resist our natural urge to jump in, splash around and act like the young boys that we are!
As always we ended our day together with a closing circle of thanks. Some of us gave thanks for having the opportunity to enjoy natural spaces and a few of us expressed gratitude for our group, th Jumping Mice. The mentors were happy to see that we still had our energy, curiosity and excitement and also were encouraged by the moments where our squirreliness took a backseat to some serious maturity and good group cohesion.
