The warmth of Spring greeted Mentors and Vespula Veterans alike in the parking area above Clayton Beach. As the mentors and boys visited during the arrival time the scent of fallen Cottonwood buds filled the air with its rich and sweet aroma. Our opening meeting was short and efficient and we decided to hike up the road towards Fragrance and Lost lakes until we found a suitable place to play a long game of Spider’s Web.
The boys have been working hard to learn the various wilderness skills Steve and Greg have been teaching, but the Vespula Veterans have been craving a chance to play a long game of spiders web. So after hiking up the road for a few minutes we left the road and hiked up through a Salal thicket to a narrow ridge. We stopped and ate some lunch and after looking around we decided to return to a patch of forest that was better suited to a long game.
The Vespula demonstrated some pretty rusty stealth skills, and clearly forgot that in Spider’s Web “Slow is fast and fast is slow.” The understory and forest floor was difficult to sneak in despite the abundance of large ferns. The quiet of the forest made the rattle of the ferns and Salal seem incredibly loud. Watching over our game was a Pileated Wood Pecker, who was calling and drumming throughout our time in the forest.
For the last part of our outing we practiced some skills: half of the group worked on lighting our stove and the other half worked on rigging a tarp. The stove group quickly assembled, primed and lit the Wisperlight stove reassuring the mentors that they were in fact paying attention on our last outing. They filled a pot of water and put it on to boil for tea. The boys working on the tarp remembered some of the knots and by the time we started our closing meeting had nearly set up a tarp, despite not having practiced since the summer backpacking trips (if at all!)
At the opening meeting Greg distributed a three-foot length of purple rope to each Vespula for the purpose of practicing knots. The closing meeting started off with a quick refresher on the bowline knot, which is a very strong knot that can be used to tie a line to the corner grommet of a tarp. Following tradition we cut apples and offered gratitude for the forest, oxygen, Explorer’s Club, and a few others.
Looking towards the future our next outing is a service outing. In addition to continuing work on our service site, we will spend some more time practicing skills that will come in handy for our final outing this spring at racehorse falls. Thank you for another wonderful day in the woods!
Resources for knot tying and tarp rigging:
YouTube Demonstrations
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