Thursday, October 13, 2005

The Beginning

I am currently a student in the Wilderness Awareness School residential program (they also have a correspondence program called Kamana which is also incorprated into the residential program). While here I thought it would be fun to start a blog journaling some of the activities, skills, and mysteries that are a part of my life.

One of the core routines of WAS is the sit spot (or secret spot). The idea is that if you spend some time (preferably 15 minutes to an hour) almost every day at your spot you will learn a lot about the nature there, and that knowledge will generalize well to the whole world around you. Actually the sitspot is more of an area, 100 paces in any direction from the anchor point (the place you sit for some amount of time when you go to your sitspot).

This evening when I went to my sitspot I first visited a little muddy patch on the outskirts of my area. While exploring the animal trails around my spot as part of a mapping assignment, I found this patch which seems to be the convergence of several animal trails. Unfortunately, when I found it it was getting dark so I couldn't make out the tracks very well. Today it was also getting dark, but this time I had a flashlight. There were black bear tracks (of at least two different ages), deer tracks, and some others. I think it's pretty exciting to think of those big animals hanging out so close to where I spend time regularly and quite close to where I live (less than five minute's walk away).

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