Wildlife Walking & Watching: Tracking and Eagles on the Nooksack 1-10-1

We started at the beginning, as we all do. On this beautiful sunny day we met potential friends at Samish Woods to load up on Stubbs. Except Stubbs was out getting tanked up for our journey and wasn't in the parking lot, so we stood around a little awkwardly in our group talking about our winter preparedness until we decided to play a quick game of hide to play a trick on Tim. Quickly, the children scattered behind trees, fence and stone. Lots of giggling ensued. Tim pulled up in the bus and Holly loudly proclaimed that she had no idea where everybody was! What? There is nothing like a little fun and games to dispel the social awkwardness of not knowing each other. Play is unifying. And with that, we hit the road out for our adventure together.

Out at the Eagle Park we picked up two more adventurers, and had a discussion about tracking, what animal "sign" is, and what evidence animals leave behind as clues. So of course, we talked about poop. Technically, scat. A story of "consider the bore hole" came out when we discovered some scat and contemplated how big the animal might have been that left it behind. For an entertaining conversation, ask your explorer what a "bore hole" is. We delved into animal prints, animal gaits and how animal's legs move when on the go. This lead us to several races in our animal selves. Pretending to be bears, raccoons, deer, rabbits and cougars was a fun way explore animal movement!

Now we were ready to explore the riverbed of the Nooksack. Down the steep bank we scrambled, smack into a shallow rivulet of a stream frozen in time. We could have stayed here for hours as we marveled and explored the beautiful, interesting forms captured for those moments in the sunshine. We mentors underestimated the draw of cracking and stomping ice. These explorers had so much fun playing with the ice! Eventually, we moved on to the sand and headed towards the river in search of tracks and making "paw prints" with the plaster of paris.

The sandy riverbed provided tons of examples of animal sign. On our way out to the river we stopped many, many times to peer intensely at tracks and chewed branches, pondering what family the animal was from. We found evidence of dog, weasel, rodent and bird families. Tracking is about keen observation of the tiniest details, and learning how to read a landscape for clues. We practiced observation skills and found beaver evidence and mole tracks, as well as loads of foot prints. See our photo gallery for loads more pictures of what we found!

And then, we found the biggest snack log of all time! Best place to have lunch, ever. We spread out, enjoying the sunshine and each other's company and let the conversations take over while we nourished our bodies. The sunshine and good company warmed us through and through. 

After lunch we continued our quest to find the river. We looked up and over the brushy layers of shrubs on the riverbed to see where we should head, and then a Bald Eagle soared over us, as if to point the way. We followed, right to a braided section of the Nooksack. These relatively shallow streams flow rapidly downstream and spread out where the substrate and slope allows. The shallowness makes for a great Eagle buffet as they can easily see and forage for their supper, the spawning Chum Salmon.

However the shallowness is relative, and still too deep and dangerously fast and cold for us humans. We played on the riverbank, chucked rocks into the river, splashed in the rivulets, watched Eagles, and played sink or float with driftwood. And then, a few explorers got "Explorer Fever", and headed off on a journey a little too far for comfort, as they would be out of earshot. Tim rallied these folks, had a serious chat about what risk management looks like when exploring in a group and the importance of staying in a group. Taking care of a group can be a tough challenge for folks who think that leadership means being first and out in front, and is an important skill to foster, practice and encourage in this world. Cooperation doesn't mean getting people to do what you want them to do. It means involving all parties, and in Explorers, it may mean compromising your personal interests for the benefit of the group. We are all still learning this one.

We came together to learn how to make plaster casts, which is harder than we thought! We watched Tim demonstrate the whole process, and then struck out on our own to find a paw print in the sand that might work. That alone was challenging considering how much detail we wanted to capture and how weathered most of the tracks were from a week of rain.

Some folks found the casting activity as a fun experiment, and tried casting paw prints and their own made up track.  A few others found it very challenging physically and emotionally. Turns out perfect prints and plaster casting don't always match up and it was harder than we expected to accomplish the goal of a perfectly cast track. We mentors watched these children make several decisions as this conflict arose. We can give up and go backwards on your heels when faced with a blockage, keep flowing around the obstacle, find a new channel, and keep heading downstream until you finally find what you are looking for. Learning how to be resilient when our perceived ideal faces a disappointing reality, is a life lesson that need lots of opportunities to practice. Funny what you can learn from a river. : )

The light falling around us, we quickly gathered our plaster casts and hiked back to our bus in the parking lot. This was a much quicker trip than our leisurely wandering mode from the morning. Given our different individuals hiking speeds and need to be in front, the emphasis was on keeping our group together and maintaining awareness/accounting for everyone in the group. Lots of opportunities to practice this care.

Our circle of gratitude gave voice to our thanks for water, sunshine, river, ice, animals that made tracks, and opportunities for personal growth while exploring the land. We popped back into the bus for snacks and laughs on our way back home. We pulled Stubbs into the school parking lot with a bunch of smiles from our sunshine filled day of exploring, much dirtier and wetter than when we left!

Please see the full gallery of our outing here. 

Tim and Holly
Explorers Club mentors