Lightning Tree School

I am a mentor - of children and of adult mentors, too. I spend two days a week in the woods with these amazing humans, and it is my life work. What a gift.
It is so important, and it is ever in danger.
There is a link below: Let us be conspirators.

What are we conspiring in? We call it Durango Wild Soul, and we grow children into adults that can use their senses, that can trust their intuition, that know how to find food, make medicine, and take care of each other in the woods. And in life.

We’re growing humans outside, mingling their laughter with the calls of birds, scraping knees and growing bruises along the rocks and tree branches, giving back to the land with our gratitude, with our songs.

We know that this grows people who have innate self worth, who are motivated by internal drive rather than external approval, who say things that are true, necessary, and kind.

We grow people who fiercely love the world around them, the people around them, and themselves.

This thing called “Nature Connection” is the most effective system for growing humans that I’ve ever encountered. Some would call it teaching. It is an education, and one more vital and innate than anything else I’ve seen available to date.

Kids who grow up in programs like Wild Soul are resilient. We’re outside, all the time.
They’ve been cold: They’ve made fire to stay warm.
They’ve been uncomfortable: They’ve laid upside down in a bush for fifteen minutes because they were playing a hiding game and then a lizard came by that they’ve never seen before, so they had to stay still to watch.
They’ve been trained in regulating their nervous systems: They can breathe slowly to bring themselves back after a shock - physical or emotional. They know that sitting by a tree is simply the best.

They’ve done all of this and so much more, not by themselves, but in community, alongside dedicated mentors who work with them for years, pushing, pulling, often invisibly setting up the next challenge, the next quest, the next step in growing a robust and invaluable human heart. We’re growing children, and we’re growing adults into these skills, too.

If this doesn’t convey the value of the work, then I’ve done a poor job here.

So don't listen to me, just go watch a “difficult child” build a fort, cooperating with others. Follow an “antisocial loner” as they lead another blindfolded child through a cactus forest with unflagging care. Look at a “delayed learner” spend hours looking up and journaling a skunk (and skunk den and skunk food and skunk s**t) because they found amazing skunk tracks in the dust. Listen to a “highly distractible” kid recite the five rules of knife safety and then watch them work on carving a spoon for an hour without stopping. Warm yourself by the fire made with wood chopped by the "lazy kid".

Sit in a circle around that fire with an “angry teen” as they share their deepest fears, their secret hopes, and their soaring dreams for the first time in front of others.

Come along as an “apprentice instructor” weaves a story, mesmerizing the group, leaving them wanting desperately to go out into the world to be like those characters, to live that story.

Listen to a “busy parent” share a personal story around the fire while the children are tended to elsewhere by this growing network of “aunties & uncles”, as we remake a community more resilient than the nuclear.

Pay attention as a “senior citizen” speaks. These elders have wisdom beyond their accumulation of years and experiences. Helping children learn to tend to these elders is one of my joys.

Feel your own self. You know the difference between a day spent feeling isolated, stressed, and unappreciated compared to one feeling profoundly connected to dear friends, in wonder with the natural world, and grounded in your deepest self.

This is the work I do, and it can’t happen in this form, as Wild Soul of Durango, without money to fund it.

There are many causes, there is much good to be done in the world, and I venture that growing humans in this way is one of the most important things there is to do.

Please help.

Thank you so much for helping.

We grew to over 20 students and 4 instructors this year, and we’re making it - but barely. There are costs to this work, from insurance to paid staff, and we are working hard to make this program accessible to everyone.

I was not being over-dramatic at the beginning, just dramatic. Hopefully attention-grabbing. I’m not above that in this moment.

Wild Soul has an urgent need for more funding. We lost a couple enrolled kids to outside circumstances, and our bottom line is weathering. We are working to get more enrolled, but this far into a school year, that’s a hard thing to do. And I know that most of you reading this don’t live here. There’s another way to help.

This program is in need of a donor base. This is not at all unusual for non-profit Nature Connection programs like ours. I’ve been told, in warning, that these programs run in the red for years doing the kind of deep mentoring and immersive weekly programming that we do. We are setting our sights higher than that, but we do need help getting there.

And it’s worth it. The profound impact on the kids, on the families, on the community, on the earth as a place that humans deserve to keep inhabiting - well, it’s big.

So, thank you for donating if you can. Literally any little bit helps us. We’re small. The impact that donations have here is huge. The link is below.

And if you don’t have the money to spare, I get it. If Wild Soul sounds like something your family or your very successful friends with a second home want to keep happening in the world, please pass this along.

There are infinite causes worth supporting, and I believe that this one might just keep humanity here.

I love Wild Soul - these kids, these instructors, these families, are the best thing to happen in my life in a long time.

Help us keep doing this vital work.

I don’t do this alone. I couldn’t. The team of Ashley Grandkoski, Kyler Grandkoski, Heidi Patton, Kelly Sheridan, and Robin Brodsky is hard working, and working far too many unpaid hours in service of this dream.

Ashley and Kyler are our administrative wizards and find-its and fix-its, and they make this possible. Heidi is our lead instructor with the Leaf Hoppers, our new 5&6 year-old program, and is grounded, joyous and reverent. Robin is her assistant instructor, and an amazing elder in helping guide us as an instructor team while bringing her wisdom and humor to the kiddos. Kelly is my assistant instructor with the Wild Tenders, our 7-12 program, and is as tricksy & clever as she is loving. Which is so much. I am wearing many hats: Program Director and Lead Instructor with the Wild Tenders. May we grow these hats right off my head and onto others!

In gratitude for the stewards of this land, the Southern Ute Tribe, my mentors at Wilderness Awareness School at Quiet Heart Wilderness School, at The Attic Learning Community at Vashon Wilderness Program, for Gil Crippen at Christopher Newport University, for Richard Gillespie and Kris Lincicome at Loudoun Valley High School, for my parents Pat Londner Packard and William Packard, Aunt Millie Packard, cousin Tiffany Hawkins, and my grandmothers Jane and Rita, for you: unnamed but felt, for pushing and pulling and invisibly mentoring me to this place. I say thank you and I say thank you and I say thank you.

Our twined basket class last weekend was a lovely time. Our dedicated students focused in and went deep into the warp and weft, losing themselves and sometimes finding that dropped warp… It is so nourishing to work hard and create something beautiful, unique, and years-long-useful. Two baskets were finished, two well on their way.

If you missed it and are interested in this craft, let us know!

With gratitude for the jute warps, the wool weft, the humans, plants, and animals who helped these fibers and skills get to our hands. To the moose and lion who walk the lands upon which we wove.

Come to our soft twined basket workshop next Saturday! In this class, you'll learn this wonderful simple basket making technique, go home with a basket made of sturdy jute and soft beautiful wool, and be able to make your own baskets of any size and shape thereafter!

Saturday, Sept 30, 10-4p
$80 +$15 materials - $20 discount each if you sign up with a friend!

I'm super excited to make salve with the students of the Herbal Medicine workshop in a couple weeks! I have been making herbal salves for years and love not only the silky, aromatic, powerful medicine it makes, but also the fun and easy process of making them! Here are some pics from my most recent batch of salve - a balm for those itchy bites we're all getting these days.

There's still space in the class on August 5th! Sign up on the website! We'll be making an herbal salve, an herbal vinegar, and learning local plants to use fresh for burns, cuts, stings, and the like.

Update 7/13: Hey all! Back in spring when we planned this day, 1-4pm seemed like a great time of day to play games, but now that it's hot as, well, Joo-ly, we just gotta change the time.

So we'll see you on Sunday, 4-7pm. There’s lovely green grass, big shady trees, the shadows will be longer, and maybe there'll be a breeze. 🙂

Bring ice in your water! And if you have a water shooter, I'm sure we could find a way to play with it!!!

You can be an herbal healer.

Humans since the beginning have known that the plant world around them provided not only food, but also powerful medicines. The precious knowledge of which plants to use, for what, and how to harvest and prepare them has been handed down generation to generation. But it is also an innate human ability to communicate and learn directly from the plants themselves.

In this workshop, you will get to know several powerful medicinal plants, what to use them for, and how to prepare them. And you will also be guided to and practice listening to the plants themselves to receive directly from them what virtues they have for you and your loved ones. You will make an herbal salve, an herbal vinegar tincture, and learn local plants that you can harvest fresh in the field for burns, cuts, stings, bruises, and aches & pains!

Registration on our website, link in the comments.

Check out Lightning Tree's Workshop schedule for 2023! Will you come play games with us, learn to be an invisible protector, communicate and make powerful medicines with plants, make a beautiful soft basket, challenge and level up your survival skills, or make a ring from an antler?

Or maybe all of the above!!!???

Sign up at our website, in the comments below : )

What do you do when you suddenly have a ton of soaked willow? Make a lot of BIG baskets!

We way overestimated how much willow we would need for the basket workshop, and since it doesn't work well to re-dry and re-soak later, we had to get to work quick to not waste the materials we had already put so much time and effort into harvesting, processing, drying and soaking.

I decided to try a new basket style for me: an oval shaped harvest basket. I couldn't find a you-tube video, so I just figured out how to make it by looking at photos of baskets I like on the internets. I also made a large shallow drying tray, an oval market basket, and a willow bean trellis. Like I said, we waaaaay overestimated.

I love the new oval basket shape! And the large tray was hilarious to make. It took up the whole living room and I had to climb around and into it as I wove around the huge disk of the bottom. I tried it out right away, harvesting and drying mint from the garden. Perfect!

The beans seem to like their woven trellis. I started one last basket with a loose spiral on the bottom, but I'd finally ran out of basket making steam and instead incorporated it into the trellis, which gave it a beautiful center design and also echoes the tender seeking spiraling tip of the bean vine as it feels around for support.

Yeah, that's me in a duff bed, all cozy in a quickly constructed nest of ponderosa pine needles and oak leaves. Ted and I spent a chilly October night in the San Juan mountains in this duff bed and slept like two little squirrels ready for winter.

Join our 9 weekend intensive to learn this and other wilderness survival skills, naturalist skills, wildlife tracking, edible & medicinal plants, ancestral skills (crafting, weaving, leather work, carving, etc), ecology and more!

**Challenge who you think you are and what you can do.

**Reconnect to your ancestral belonging in the natural world.

**Forge friendships and community with shared experiences and values.

Now enrolling for the 2023-24 cohort of 12.

9 Month Adult Nature Connection Intensive | Durango, CO Our curriculum and philosophy encourages participation with the natural world, whether you are carving a piece of wood harvested from the landscape, eating wild edibles as you wander the woods like a deer, sleeping under the night sky in a bed you made ma

This is a celebration post to gush over our amazing Basketry, Cordage, and Tracking students from our recent workshop in Crawford, CO.

These folks showed up to put their hands and minds to work, and, with a willingness to make mistakes and just keep learning, made beautiful creations of local Coyote Willow (Salix exigua). We kept our fingers moving by diving into the enormous and incredible world of cordage. These first-time-makers created strong and elegant twine, and are now probably eyeing every stand of milkweed, dogbane, and yucca, thinking, “that could be fiber..and that could be fiber…and that…”. Our stalwarts came back for animal tracking the next day, as we were visited by amazing fresh sign from raccoon, muskrat, and bear! These folks are probably eyeing every muddy spot and animal trail, thinking, “Animals are real, and they live right here with us!”

In the last month, we’ve played nature games, made willow baskets, twined yucca cordage, and tracked animals with students in our programs. We’ve sung songs, shared gratitude, moved through challenging blocks (like remembering that it’s okay to not be good at something we’ve never done before…), laughed, told stories, nerded out hard on animal habits & habitat, and the whole way through, sought the threads of connection with the more-than-human world.

We have more coming, so check out our web site for upcoming workshops and details about the 9-month intensive!

With gratitude to The Wild Cooperative and Ewelina Ba for incredible hosting and support - visit them for other wonderful events.
With gratitude to excellent human Kelly Moody for the basket assistance and photography. Many of the following photos were taken by her. Check out her immersive and expansive podcast The Ground Shots Podcast for incredible topics and discussions. You might even find one with someone you know in the archive…

Trailing an animal. Part following tracks on the ground and part following the energy signature through space. Both are our human inheritance from our ancestors who spent their whole lives outside with animals.

We were all wild then.

Sometimes when I’m up in national forest land and see cows, instead of feeling Irritation at seeing such a domesticated animal on a supposedly wild adventure, or anger at the trampling and devouring of wildflowers, instead I feel … envy.

These big dumb cows, through no merit or intention of their own, get to spend all summer living on the land in the most beautiful places. They know these hills and valleys, creeks and lakes, nighttime sounds and starry skies, bird alarms and animal trails better than I will ever ever ever possibly know them.

That longing, I believe, comes from the 99.9% of my ancestors who lived-breathed-loved-hunted-gathered-wandered-pondered their whole lives without setting foot in a building, in a car, on a sidewalk, in an airplane; never held a phone, never paid a bill, never filled out a timesheet, never went to school.

The slow and and now accelerating Anthropocene extinction had not even been fathomed and everywhere ecosystems were intact, skies were darkened by migrating smocks, you could walk across the river on the backs of the spawning salmon, animals were everywhere. Can you imagine it? I don’t think I can. Really.

Animals were everywhere, and you needed to know where they were. Whether as hunter or as prey. For we were both.

So the tracks and sign of animals stood out to the human eye like neon signs. They were glaringly advertised from every rock scrape, hoof print, scent marking scrape, broken twig, bruised leaf, chewed branch, urine accumulation, midden, burrow, or tuft of fur like a sponsored Facebook post or a Times Square billboard, a commercial at the gas pump or someone handing out flyers at a festival.

My nervous system, the way my brain tracks and catalogs patterns, deviations from patterns, and search images, are the result of thousands of generations of noticing the signs of habitation and passage, hunting and feeding that animals leave behind.

So really, learning animal wildlife track and sign is not learning something new. It is only remembering a language that we are hardwired to speak.

So trailing an animal.

Last night, from my sleeping porch, I saw a doe and her no-longer spotted faun moving through the trees at the edge of the wood behind my house. They were moving slow and cautiously, as always and I stood perfectly still watching them. The doe waited patiently for the faun, who seemed interested and curious about lots of things as they moved through the wood. Was this a new trail for this faun? I hadn’t seen this pair before. Or were they just full of the natural curiosity of the young?

I only saw them briefly before they moved away into the denser forest. I was comfortable on my cozy porch, but something pushed me to go see if I could find their tracks.

It was evening and the light was failing, but going to where I had seen them I quickly found their trail. The faun’s tracks were easiest to find, being smaller than all the other tracks around. The length was a little shorter than my pinky, so delicate and crisp. The bare soil of the pinyon-juniper forest had a dry crust formed by the rain the night before. The tracks broke through the crust and left crisp prints in the powdery soil below. There was a slight reddish hue to the newly pressed soil that even tracks from earlier in the day no longer had.

The faun’s trail was less direct than the doe’s, with little explorations to either side.

The light was failing quickly now and I struggled to see the tracks. I began to rely on my sense of “where might these hard footed, long legged, big warm bodied mammals like to move through this irregular and varied terrain?” The easy path seemed clear and I stayed on it more or less in their original direction. Where are might they have been headed to? Probably the faun didn’t know, but likely the doe had an idea of where she wanted to go.

Amongst all the older tracks, vegetation and duff, I could no longer see their trail and just continued following their likely trajectory. My kitty Tesla found me and walked with me. He had probably heard something moving quietly and stealthily through the woods and wanted to go see who it was. He often finds me like that. Not so stealthy, I guess.

I was keeping my eyes up as much as possible in case I came upon the little family if they stopped to browse. The driveway and the road we’re up ahead. In the dim light, something dark on the ground caught my eye. A very small pile of deer s**t. Tiny little pellets. Their very dark color and slight sheen got me excited and I reached out to touch them. Cold, but slightly damp. The day had been hot and sunny and would have dried these out if they had been even from this morning. I had found the droppings of my faun! So somehow I was still on their trail. My intention to follow them, initially depending on seeing their tracks, had carried through beyond my ability to see them, and I was following the path of the animals through the forest unaided by vision.

The driveway, the road, the powerline cut. The possibilities of a path opened up and the darkness closed in. Tesla and I returned home to sleep in a in a bed, in a building, perhaps to dream the dreams of my ancestors, following tracks through the night.

“Um, Ted…come look at this.” There was excitement and a touch of worry in the voice.

The elk trail had taken us to the edge of the mesa, where they curved downhill into the wide beauty of the Animas River Valley. Yucca tips sprouted from the deep bed of snow, prickly pear lay buried beneath. The group talked, deciding whether to follow the elk onto the steep hillside, when it happened.

Fresh cougar tracks.

Winding along the edge of the mesa, easily overlooking both valley and piñon forest, lay a trail of cougar tracks. Four toes, M-shaped heel pad, asymmetrical, large. The claws, normally invisible in the dust, were sharp little pin pricks hovering half an inch above the bottom of the track in the snow.

We could have stayed there all day, teasing out the nuances of identification, talking about habitat, drawing and journaling exactly what we see, smell, feel, hear, and think about this awesome trail. We could have, but we didn’t.

“Let’s follow the trail!”

They started along, moving in the direction the cougar had walked.

“Hold up, y’all, let’s think about this.”

It didn’t take much imagining for us to all imagine a harried cougar being pushed along their normal territorial route by a group of excited and well-meaning trackers. Luckily, this empathy didn’t mean we had to give up the trail.

We simply went backwards!

And what a trail this was. Almost immediately, the cougar was up on a log, perched and looking farther, then they snaked their way into a curved tunnel of oak, their branch tips held down by the snow. We crawled, hands and feet to enter through this portal, our bodies now required to travel on the exact steps this cougar had taken.

In and down, the trail hugged the hillside, showing us a trail we had never imagined taking. We crossed known deer trails, passed fresh jackrabbit s**t, and were watched and alarmed at by suspicious jays.

Then we came to the Ponderosa Pine.
�On this piece of land, these are rare trees, only growing in the lush cleft of ravine that the cougar had deftly used to climb from the valley bottom up to the mesa. The morning sun had warmed the bark, and the smell of butterscotch lured us closer. With my nose pressed to the tree, I opened my eyes and stepped back, amazed.

Claw marks. At eye level. Four of them. Thin, sharp, and fresh.

The ponderosa was covered in them.

We took turns putting our hands on the scrapes, our feet in the cougar’s tracks, and we imagined where they had come from that morning, where they had gone to, and whether the hair on the back of their neck was raising, with so many human hands and feet standing in their recent path.

***

In the spring, with the snow melted, we returned to that overlook, to that trail, to that ponderosa. The marks are aging, day by day. The path of that cougar during that pass along their territorial wander was not unique. We now had eyes to see layers of old scratches, years of marking their place. Perhaps their predecessor’s scents and signs are still present for them. Perhaps this spring, they are not walking alone, but instead tending to little kits.

Perhaps not.

Perhaps they are just out of sight, tucked against a hillside tree, snacking on a cached deer kill, listening to the jays alarm at us, smelling a ponderosa pine.

Where is the last animal whose tracks you walked within?

And how well do you think they know you?

Whether you have no experience or a practiced eye for tracking, come on out to our tracking workshop in Crawford on June 18!

The Basketry Workshop has filled and is wait-list-only, so sign up fast for the Tracking Workshop to secure your spot!

https://wildcooperative.wordpress.com/2023/05/21/willow-basket-weaving-and-wildlife-tracking-workshops-with-lightning-tree-animist-nature-school-june-16-18-2023/?fbclid=IwAR17x3BupdgYE5_XB6ie_xw_dPq1s1aFdTxe5BDY8HRYz7Sn7-vcLsNZwXk

Lightning Tree Animist Nature School | Durango, CO Lightning Tree Animist Nature School, based in Durango, Colorado provides outdoor education experiences and immersive nature-based education programs for adults in southwest Colorado to support students in deepening their connection to self, community and

EDIT 6/7/23: Basket workshop is FULL! If you are still interested, sign up to get on the waitlist. Or join the Wildlife Track and Sign workshop on Sunday June 18!

TLDR: Come learn to make a willow basket and/or learn wildlife tracking in Crawford, CO June 17-18. Workshops are $90 each day, plus $15 materials for the basket workshop.

Announcing: Wild Willow Basket Weaving & Wildlife Tracking Workshops June 17 & 18 at the Wild Cooperative, Permaculture & Regenerative Culture Community in Crawford, Colorado
Free Campfire Evening Hangout on Friday, June 16!

We hold these two workshops very dearly, and are thrilled to be bringing them to a rooted community in Western Colorado!

Come do ancient human things with us: We'll shape the wild willow into a beautiful vessel for carrying what you love. We'll follow animal trails and zoom out to see what these signs mean for the bigger story of life, death, and connection playing out like Shakespeare all around us!

Come for one event, come for all! Here is the schedule of the weekend:

Friday, June 16, 6pm – 8pm – free campfire gathering and potluck with sharing food and nature stories EVERYONE IS WELCOME!

Saturday, June 17, 10am – 4pm – Wild Willow Basket Weaving and Yucca Cordage Workshop, $90 + $15 for materials - FULL! New sign ups will go on the waitlist.

Sunday, June 18, 10am – 4pm – Wildlife Tracking as a Lens for Ecological Thinking Workshop, $90 - A few spots left! Sign up NOW!

Did you know you can take something 1-dimensional and transform it into something 3-dimensional??

Ted and I have been making baskets with the local wild willow to prep for our basket making workshop in Crawford, CO in 2 weeks. It’s so fun. The wild willow has a vibrant wiliness. The local willow found in all the irrigation ditches around here is coyote willow, so that makes sense.

So you take a bundle of sticks which have “length” (essentially 1-dimensional) and through bending, twisting, wrapping, kinking, threading, and a little grunting, you make a basket which has volume, shape, and depth - 3 dimensions! It always blows my mind.

And right away, before the weaving is even done, you can feel that you are birthing a being. Not a thing, but a person. A basket person. They have their own personality and gifts and flaws. And you and the willow plant, the sun and wind and rain, the birds that nested in the willow thicket, the snake that slithered through it, all these and more are their parents/creators/kin. You are family now. You have relationships. You belong to them all.

So I hope you will come join us in 2 weeks and birth a basket of your own, remembering your place in the family of things, as Mary Oliver says.

The workshop is in Crawford, CO at the wonderful Wild Collective permaculture and wild tending site.

Edit 6/7/23: The Basket workshop in Crawford is FULL. If you would like to get on the waitlist fill out the form here:

https://lightningtreeschool.weebly.com/upcoming-events-and-programs.html

Or sign up for our Wildlife Track & Sign workshop in Crawford on Sunday June 18, or check out our other offerings in Durango, including a soft twined basket workshop in August.

Announcing: Wild Willow Basket Weaving & Wildlife Tracking Workshops
June 17 & 18
at the Wild Cooperative, Permaculture & Regenerative Culture Community
in Crawford, Colorado
Free Campfire Evening Hangout on Friday, June 16!

We hold these two workshops very dearly, and are thrilled to be bringing them to a rooted community in Western Colorado!

Come do ancient human things with us: We'll shape the wild willow into a beautiful vessel for carrying what you love. We'll follow animal trails and zoom out to see what these signs mean for the bigger story of life, death, and connection playing out like Shakespeare all around us!

Come for one event, come for all! Here is the schedule of the weekend:

Friday, June 16, 6pm – 8pm – free campfire gathering and potluck with sharing food and nature stories EVERYONE IS WELCOME!

Saturday, June 17, 10am – 4pm – Wild Willow Basket Weaving and Yucca Cordage Workshop, $90 + $15 for materials

Sunday, June 18, 10am – 4pm – Wildlife Tracking as a Lens for Ecological Thinking Workshop, $90

Here are details about each workshop:

WILD WILLOW BASKET WEAVING AND YUCCA CORDAGE WORKSHOP
Humans must carry things.

Whether traveling great distances, or tending the same patch of earth for generations, we carry so much. And we need something to hold and keep what is precious to us.

Water, food, shelter, sacred objects and everyday tools – we carry these, and so much more, in vessels found and those we make.

Whether out of clay, hides, or fiber, we craft protective coverings to hold what is important to us.

In this workshop, we will weave baskets with wild willow and cordage we twine from yucca fiber, learning two skills that you can carry with you for the rest of your life, able to create beautiful and functional baskets and twine to carry what is precious to you.

Bring a sharp knife if you have one, but we will also have tools for the group to use. Bring a sack lunch.

WILDLIFE TRACKING AS A LENS FOR ECOLOGICAL THINKING WORKSHOP
To look at marks on the ground, and to see the story of an animal, moving stealthily in the night, hunting, hiding, to see written on the land, the rich tapestry of life in movement, this is the feeling of tracking animals.

And it is no fantasy, as we are, perhaps, led to believe in story, but a real and inherently human ability that has been honed over thousands of years. Questions of who left this mark? Where were they going? Why were they here? Where are they now? And what rich treasure might we find if we follow?

As we track animals, we learn to read landscapes, to predict, to understand the movement of water and light, wind, and even the path of the moon. As we learn to see and read these patterns in the world around us, those inside of our heads and hearts reveal themselves.

To track an animal is to track ourselves. Come tracking with us, and we will see what is revealed!

In this workshop, we will get familiar with local species and their commonly found track and sign, then get out and read the stories written on the landscape. Our field work will include introduction to using field guides, species journaling and how to use the clues found in the tracks and the surrounding landscape to identify such questions as Who, What, Where, When, and even sometimes Why!

Have sun protection (sunscreen, hat, long sleeves) and a journal/notebook and pen/pencil. Bring a sack lunch.

https://wildcooperative.wordpress.com/2023/05/21/willow-basket-weaving-and-wildlife-tracking-workshops-with-lightning-tree-animist-nature-school-june-16-18-2023/?fbclid=IwAR17x3BupdgYE5_XB6ie_xw_dPq1s1aFdTxe5BDY8HRYz7Sn7-vcLsNZwXk