beach Day: chert & bobcat tracks

Youth Wilderness Immersion Story of the Day: October 26, 2014
Tracking at the Beach: Chert and Bobcat Tracks

Today was full of many discoveries and full-body connection with the landscape as we chased waves, tracked each other, rolled off sand dunes, and buried each other in the sand.

After the rain yesterday, the air was fresh and the weather was warm and clear, and many of the kids observed the water felt warm too. After our opening circle, we headed to the beach where we successfully passed a flock of Western Gulls without scaring them into flight (until later when we were running from the waves!). We heard a story about Elephant Seals, played “Ocean Relay,” and ate snack, watching the waves, surfers, cormorants and a sea lion from our warm base camp on top of a tall sand dune.

We spent a long time playing wave tag and jumping off the sand cliffs, testing our speed and trying to stay dry but laughing as we got soaked. The ocean has a great way of bringing out the attribute of aliveness and vitality. We eventually found a large knot of seaweed and untangled it so we could use it as a ‘climbing rope’ for the ‘cliff’ of sand, and we actually could team up and hold it so that everyone got a turn to climb the ‘cliff’ (slope) holding onto the rope - even me (at 190 lbs!) without the kelp rope breaking.

We ate lunch and then played Flags, renamed ‘seaweed,’ and then headed up to the terrace where each half of the group took a turn running, leaving a long (5 minute) trail in the dusty road, and hiding while the other half carefully tracked them. As we tracked we ended up discovering lots of beautiful coastal chert, the stone used by American Indians for arrowheads and stone tools. One of the kids found an arrowhead, missing it’s base. I was impressed by the focus and real tracking that took place during these scenarios without my direction: Tracks were circled, the teen’s track was distinguished from the kids,’ the false trails were identified and avoided. We even used Pressure Releases (see The Science and Art of Tracking, by Tom Brown, Jr) to tell when they were walking backwards, trying to trick us!

After these adventures we returned to the beach by a different trail and found fresh Bobcat tracks and a complete skeleton of some sort of prey (any guesses based on the photo?).

After a water/snack break, at their request, we buried two people in the sand. The wind had picked up and the tide was going out. On the way back, the wind was blowing so hard someone’s hat flew off and rolled on its brim right towards the ocean, leading to an eager chase/sprint...and recovery of the hat.

In our closing circle, we played Finger Catching and shared stories and highlights from the day, and then went our separate ways.