Mentors here at Wild Whatcom are connection lovers. And we're not talking about the internet, but rather the connection that happens in realtime, between humans interacting with their physical environment. This type of connection was really strong during our service project last Saturday with the Washington Trails Association (WTA).
The WTA builds and maintains trails over the entire state of Washington, and their volunteer trail maintenance program is among the largest in the nation. They log more than 105,000 volunteer hours statewide each year, and over 2500 volunteers giving back to the trails they love. Our group hiked in over a mile with tools, hardhats, and full packs to work on a section of the trail to Fragrance Lake.
Highlights from the day include:
* Gathering in the sunny c-c-c-cold and sharing an honest update about life's changes.
* Finding the zen of log-peeling. Some of the girls used draw-knives to peel the outer layers of bark and cambium from the massive cedar logs that became part of the cribbing supporting our section of trail. Removing these layers lets the moisture escape the wood and keeps it from decomposing too quickly.
* We learned the art of communicating as a team to maximize safety and efficiency while working together to reshape a trail that is regularly flooded, cleaning out a culvert, and sawing a large log that fell in a windstorm and was blocking the trail.
* A lunch time check in on the bluff looking over the sea and islands, sharing honestly and listening from our hearts about our lives and challenges.
* The joy of setting up and operating the zip-line to transport buckets of rocks and soil down the slope to help build up the trail. The girls and a funny WTA volunteer set up a call and response system when the zip line was sent down and up using fast food jargon.
* Celebrating the fantastic crew of older seasoned WTA volunteers who were open-hearted, generous in their teachings, and made this day one of beautiful connection between young and old, tool and task, girl and group, and the empowerment of giving back to nature.
Towards the close of our the day we shared our practice of Attitude of Gratitude and stood together with our WTA crew as each shared something they were grateful for today. We have a motto, Our Cups Overflow, that describes that feeling of many blessings that we carry over into our service days, and it literally felt like our cups had created a river of overflow today. While basking in this river of gratitude, we each shared our thanks for things like the sun, the company of one another, love and loss, meaningful work, strength, service, Explorers Club and WTA.
Reflecting on the season past, we ended our day by creating the Web of Life from things in nature we'd connected to this season: cedar, birds, rain, sun, Salish Sea, fog, strength, stone, and more. We agreed that humans are connected to every aspectof this web, and have tremendous power to impact it in both positive and negative ways. This underlines our GEC motto All Things Are Connected, and helps us understand that whenever one thing in the web is altered, it affects all the other aspects. We reiterated that GEC is all about strengthening the web of life, as well as the bonds between each other, and invited all Flying Squirrels who wish to continue to be part of that to return in the spring. We hope they will!
Our words of the day? Trees, Trails and Turnpikes!
We hope you'll get a chance to look at the slideshow from our day here.
