In a previous post, I wrote about the ongoing discussion with a couple families at Youth School regarding this initial incident. So my boss called the two moms to try to discuss with them further. She only got a hold of one of them, but that one was the one who had misunderstood my statement about the brambles. Once my boss relayed that to me, I understood how the misunderstanding happened. I had said, "I was looking for some brambles to take them through." In my mind , I was picturing us on a *trail* through some brambles, sort a challenging, Follow The Leader sort of thing. But I understand how the mom could have been alarmed at the idea of me making her kid actually walk through a blackberry bush as some sort of punishment. So I offered to write a letter to the moms to clarify that statement, and to just re-iterate that my intentions weren’t punitive.

I spent a couple days writing a very honest letter that I felt like was coming from my heart. I tried really hard to stay emotionally open and take responsibility for the fact that, intentions aside, my plan didn’t work. But it was important to me that they understand that I’m not some sort of sadist intent on harming their children. I just made an honest mistake, which I have learned immensely from.

I was pretty blown away by their responses. I won’t quote them here, but they were not conducive to further conversation. Well, okay, just one quote, "I do not find your explanations to be credible." which I think is just a semantically complicated way of saying, "You are a liar." You know, once someone has decided that you are a liar, there’s really nowhere else you can go. "No, I’m not" seem pretty ineffective.

My mom made a suggestion for a response which would at least be momentarily satisfying, but we both agreed that it probably wasn’t appropriate, although it did at least provide a little comic relief to a situation that has my head spinning. But seriously, she and I agreed that anything more I say to someone who has already decided not to believe me will just fuel the problem.

My boss is on vacation until Monday, so I just sent her a note letting her know that I don’t know where else to go from here. She was copied in on the whole conversation, so she’ll have all the information I have, and maybe she’ll come up with a solution that I haven’t thought of.

Geez, this stuff should pay better.

Tags: boundaries, child psychology, parents, credibility

I struggled with the Thanksgiving Address quite a bit at first. Coming from a religious childhood, the Address felt suspiciously like praying. And when I tried to make it less like praying and more like ritual, then it felt, well, like ritual. So, if I don’t believe in God, but I’m praying, then who am I talking to? The explanation in the Awareness Trail book describes bringing your mind together with all of the other beings at your sit spot. So I started with making it feel less like a prayer and more like a conversation. I was thankful that I had the in-person model of seeing and hearing people at WAS do the Thanksgiving with time for everyone in the group to agree at the end of each section that they also feel thankful for those things. So I started pausing at the end of each category to try to listen to what the other beings at my Sit Spot were thankful for, and in what ways.

And a sort of extra-ordinary thing happened. All the other beings started agreeing. I don’t have any really outstanding stories like I’ve heard other people mention. No song sparrows landed on my head and started singing while I was saying the Thanksgiving. No small mammals curled up in my lap to take a nap, unless you count my cat, which I might. But there was a real simple clear sense that all the bugs and grasses and flowers and trees and birds and deer all gave me an “uh-huh!” at the end of each category. And when I really started paying attention I realized that it wasn’t so much that they were responding to me, as that they were always giving thanks. I was only hearing the “uh-huh!” because that was the only time I was stopping to listen. But if I stopped to listen at other times, it was going on always at every moment. Every single being in my sit spot, from the grains of dirt on up to the Douglas Fir were singing praises with every action and every inaction at every moment, night and day, rain and shine.

And that gave me awhole new sense of what prayer is all about. I think that monks and other mystics have been saying stuff like this for centuries now, but it seems that all of creation is singing a Thanksgiving. I don’t know who they’re singing it to. Maybe no one. But they are singing nonetheless, and if I want to be a full participant in all of creation, I sing too. Not just when I’m saying the words of the Thanksgiving Address, but with every action and inaction, night and day, rain and shine. And it seems to me that this is the key to being a good naturalist. Once you’ve learned to sing the same song that all the rest of creation sings, all the rest is style. I’m still off-key more often than not, and I forget the words to the song, and I throw down the songbook and refuse to practice every now and then. But it’s a compelling song, and I keep coming back to it.

In the name of the Sun, the Moon, and the Chestnut-Backed Chickadee,
Amen.

Tags: prayer, thanksgiving, naturalist, kamana

One of the fun and/or annoying things about living in the country is the rampant racism/sexism/everything-ism. And when I say "fun", I mean it in the "what else can you do but laugh" sort of way. And every once in a while, they make it so easy. This billboard always has something fun on it, but rarely this fun. It’s right down the freeway from our exit.

So, do you think the author is actually an immigrant, and therefore is from some country where the voting age is 21? Or do you think the author is such a loser that they have actually got the voting age and the drinking age mixed up?

Tags: immigration policy, redneck, billboard wisdom, country living

This is definitely where I would go to church, if I was going to go to church.

The baby spiders are so cute! Sarah, don’t even think about clicking on this picture in order to see the larger version. Really.

Tags: spider hatch, picture, nature

"So, wait. How do you do G again? Like this?"

"No, you want that finger down one fret."

"Are you sure? I think this sounds right. Listen." (strumming)

"Yes, that sounds really nice. I often like those dissonant chords. "

Tags: guitar, teaching, dialogue

Well, Youth School ended last week, so I don’t have the usual kid story today, but I thought I would share a little story from another kid who visited here this week. Phoenix brought along her little charge to visit on Wednesday. While I usually use real names on my blog, I’ve had the impression that this little one’s parents don’t like his real name out there, so I’ll just call him the Kidlet.

In keeping with my usual Friday style, I’m not going to tell the story of the whole day because it’s overwhelming, and who really wants to read that much all at once anyway? But the thing that stands out to me about the day is the realization that one of the reasons I like hanging out with kids is that they force me to recognize and push boundaries that I didn’t even know I had. So at one point, the Kidlet wades across a muddy part of the spring to chase down some wild salmonberries, which he was very excited about. He stepped into some of that particularly gooey, sticky mud that you often get in springs, and his foot got stuck. If he hadn’t been so panicked, it would have been hilarious, since I couldn’t help picturing Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby as he tried to push off with his second foot, which also got stuck, and then found himself off balance but with both foot firmly planted but *really* not wanting to touch the obviously demon-possessed mud bog with his hands in order to catch his balance, he wavered and wobbled there in the bog like one of those air-powered balloon men that you see out in front of car lots. Screaming at the top of his lungs the whole time for someone to come help him. I didn’t laugh, because I knew that for him this was a genuinely terrifying experience.

Had it been up to me, I may have stood nearby, repeating calmly that everything was okay, and that he was in control of the situation until he just calmed down and stopped yelling long enough to get his balance. He was in a spot where he couldn’t possibly hurt himself no matter how panicked he had become, and I sort of get the impression that he’s not used to having to solve a lot of problems for himself. Or perhaps he’s just really smart, and good at getting other people to solve his problems for him no matter how many times he’s done it himself. It is certainly true that he’s very smart, but I don’t know about the second part. I can relate, I was a bit like that too. Some folks might find this a bit uncouth, comparing horses and children, but it’s a technique we used to use with training horses and it works really well. You put them in a situation that you know will bother them, but you also know poses no real danger. And you just let them be afraid until they figure out how to deal with it on their own, and then they are never afraid of that thing again.

With horses, one of the things that is hard to train a horse to deal with is the rider putting on a rain slicker while mounted. Horses are instinctively against the idea of things on their backs in general (being prey animals and all), so once they’ve been trained to allow a rider on their backs, it’s still often pushes them over the edge to have a loud, often brightly-colored, rain slicker flapping around in the wind just out of the corner of their peripheral vision somewhere over their backs. Many a rider has found themselves plopped right in the mud on their backsides as a result of trying to pull a rainslicker out of a saddlebag and slide into it. So to train them not to do that, you take them out in the middle of a corral where there’s nothing much to run into. You hold onto the leadrope with one hand, so you can keep up with the horse as it circles away from your other hand, in which you are holding a big black plastic trashbag. You rub that trashbag all over them, making as much noise with it as you can, and it freaks that horse right the fuck out. That horse will buck and run and circle around the corral. Depending on the horse, it might take five minutes or it might take an hour for it to realize, “Hey wait a minute, this isn’t hurting. I’m expending a lot of energy here for no reason.” Horses, like people, don’t like to expend energy for no reason. So once this occurs to them, you’ve pretty much proven your point.

Of course, there are horses that this doesn’t work with. My mom has a horse who, if it was allowed to diagnose horses with autism, I would definitely call autistic. I don’t know if she’s tried this “sacking out” technique with him, but I’d say its possible that he would never stop being freaked out. So I don’t really know the Kidlet that well, and maybe in the moment I would have decided that that wasn’t the way to go, but in any case, the choice wasn’t mine, since Phoenix had spent rather longer with the Kidlet than I had, and had reached her tolerance limit for The Loud Shrieking (as I believe she calls it). So she stepped over to haul him out of the mud by his armpits, which action left her with an armful of Kidlet, and the bog with a score of two small tennis shoes. This caused the Kidlet to engage in further Loud Shrieking while I held him and his stocking feet out of the mud and Phoenix retrieved the shoes.

Okay, so here we are where I get to the point about stretching my own boundaries (did you remember that that was the point?). So, as it happens, I don’t really like the mud either. I don’t like my feet sinking down into stuff that I can’t see and I don’t know what’s down there. I’m thankful that I live in a place where there are no snapping turtles, but I still don’t like the idea of not being able to see my feet. That suction feeling doesn’t make me shriek out loud, but I can relate to feeling that way. But it seemed really important in the moment to show the Kidlet that mud isn’t something to be afraid of. I had convinced him to breathe (”Take a deep breath, Kidlet. Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath. Here, like this..Innn……Ouuut. Take a deep breath.”) and asked him if he wanted to see something cool. He was sceptical, but ya, he wanted to see something cool. I told him we’d have to take his socks off, and he agreed to that. And then I was going to have to set him down on some rocks in the water, and he agreed to that. And then I whipped off my boots and socks, which made him giggle, and stomped right out into the boggy mud.

“Look, Kidlet, it’s just mud.” I sank up to my ankles, took a few more steps, and sank up to mid-calf. All the while, I’m watching Kidlet, who still looks very sceptical. I scoop up a double handful of mud and ask if he wants to touch it. He doesn’t. About then,  Phoenix sees the game, and comes up with a brilliant touch. Getting his attention, she grabs a couple fingerfulls of mud and applies war paint to her face. Kidlet giggles. Following her lead, I take my double handful of mud, cover my whole face, and even smear it all over my hair. Kidlet giggles. We explain about camo for hiding. He’s interested, but he still doesn’t want war paint. Okay, that’s cool, because at least he’s not doing the Loud Shrieking. We get his shoes back on him, and head up the trail.

It wasn’t until later that it occurs to me that under no other circumstance would I have been wading around in calf-deep mud without a really high anxiety level. It was only because it seemed important to model to him a level of comfort with mud that I was able to actually have a level of comfort with mud. So I don’t know if Kidlet actually learned anything from the experience. He never did go back in the mud. But he definitely helped me to learn something from the experience. Turns out that I’ve been expending a lot of energy for no real reason in order to avoid stepping in deep mud. It doesn’t really hurt. Huh.

Tags: horse training, kid training, boundaries, mud, behavior modeling

We spent 2 nights at La Push, and even without the grey whale sighting, it would have been a really cool weekend. It’s always hard to put a finger on exactly what makes this place so special for us. It’s almost like a love at first sight, chemistry sort of thing. It’s the same way that I can list some of the attributes that I love about Preston, but I can’t really tell you why I like him. So, I don’t know, it’s like the energy of the place is just groovy, man. Or whatever.

Preston had a good time with his ongoing attempts to teach himself to surf. He tried to say that he didn’t really get up this time, but I have the photographic evidence that can’t be argued with. I will concede that he didn’t stay up for very long. And in fact, this picture might be misleading in that he probably wasn’t up as long as it takes you to glance at the picture. It was a rather transitory thing which I lucked out and was able to freeze at exactly the right frame. But just getting up at all is a huge step if you ask me. Particularly since he’s starting out on a board shorter than recommended.

When we left on Sunday, we decided to take our time and stop at some of the places we always say we’re going to check out but never do. Two of those places were the two pieces of property that we were *this close* to buying last year before we decided to quit our jobs and live in the country with no money. I don’t know if it was good or bad to learn that both places are still for sale. We really wanted either one of them, and now our desire is renewed afresh. One of them was this place. They’ve cleaned up all the crap from the yard and house. We’d totally love to have it. The other is the 11 acres on a branch of the Bogachiel River. I don’t think I have any pictures online, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s breathtaking. So it’s time to send our real estate agent a gift certificate to a nice restaurant in her town. Then in a few weeks we’ll get back in touch with her and see if there’s a way that we can make this happen. Even though we’re both still poor, and don’t really have much credit to speak of, and aren’t planning to live anywhere near Forks for quite a while. We’ll see.

Then Preston decided that just surfing hadn’t been enough of a workout for him, so we decided to stop at this little backwoods gym that we know about in order for Preston to put in some time on the stationary bike.

He was even feeling froggy enough that he showed of a few of his bike stunts for me.

I actually talked him into getting naked and posing for a few very surreal shots here, which I’m planning to PhotoShop up into some crazy Wicked Witch thing. SEAF 07, here we come!

Tags: la push, surfing, pictures, real estate

Bit of a crazy couple days it’s been. My first real flub-up at the school, and conversations with parents and all sorts of not-so-fun stuff. It all started last week when I had some trouble with the two boys running ahead of the group and decided to try to impress upon them that it wasn’t okay. I’ve already written about that, and about how I would have done it differently now that I’ve had a chance to think about it.

Apparently, the boys agreed that I should have done it differently, and complained to their moms. One of the moms then called Evan to complain. Evan didn’t really know the whole story, but he backed me up on the phone with the mom, saying that he didn’t know the whole story but he knows that I wouldn’t have had any malicious intent. He encouraged the moms to talk to me about it on the next Friday, since he was sure that would take care of the concerns. I don’t know if it was better or worse that he forgot to tell me about any of that, so I was caught fairly off guard when the two moms approached me on Friday morning. Fortunately, I had been debating about whether I wanted to have a conversation with the boys anyway, explaining to them where I was coming from and how I would have done things differently. I had already felt like my actions hadn’t come across the way they were intended, so I was somewhat prepared for a conversation, although not for one with the parents involved. But, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

So the two boy and the two moms and I had a quick conversation. I started by just going through the story of what happened, in order to make sure we’re all on the same page, and getting the boys buy-in in front of their moms that we were all on the same page. As soon as I explained the part where I thought they had run up the narrow dirt road with all the blind corners, the moms totally understood where I was coming from. One of the moms turned to her son and explained to him how us instructors have a lot of responsibility and they trust us to ensure the kids safety and some other things along those lines. So I felt like she was really getting where I was coming from.

From there, I explained how I would have done things differently, essentially the same things that I already wrote about last week. Both moms nodded their heads and agreed with that, and both seemed to agree that those would have been better choices. I specifically apologized to the one boy who had the reaction to the stinging nettle, telling him that I wouldn’t have done that on purpose. He accepted the apology and seemed cool. I asked both the boys if that made the situation better for them, or if there was anything else they needed to understand or needed to say. Neither of them had anything, and both kids seemed okay. The moms told them they could go. The moms and I talked for a couple more minutes, mostly about the bigger picture of the fact that this clan hasn’t had a consistent leader, and that I agree with them that that hindered the development of the group. Before we wrapped up, I asked them if we were cool, or if there was anything more we needed to talk about in order for them to feel good about the situation. They said they were cool.

So I left that feeling pretty good about having been up front with everyone, and everyone leaving the interaction understanding each other a little better. But then…

I went in to the office for an End of Year Wrap-Up Meeting yesterday, and learn that apparently there was still some lack of understanding somewhere, although I don’t know where it happened. Apparently, another parent, uninvolved in the original issue, brought it up with Evan last Friday. This mom said that one of the original moms said that I said (did you follow that?) that the punishment should have been even worse and that I was trying to find something even worse than nettles to take them through.

Huh.

I have no idea where that came from, but I’m really bummed that that’s the message that got through to someone, since it’s pretty much exactly the opposite of what I said. I felt pretty sure that the two moms and I were clear by the end of our talk, so I don’t know how it got twisted around so quickly. But Evan tells me about this in our final meeting. Evan was the only other instructor who knew most of the story, so I told the rest of the instructors the whole story that I’ve already written here. All of them were suppoortive and offered suggestions for how they might have done things differently, which mostly were the things that I have already suggested for myself. Sol said, “I just want to say that you are responding to this exaclty the way an instructor should. This is part of the job. You make mistakes, and then you scramble to fix them, and then you figure out how you can avoid ever having to do that again.” At some point, Evan used the word “mistake” also, and then tried to backpeddle “not that anyone necessarily made any mistakes” and I interrupted and said that I felt fine about owning this situation as a mistake.

From there we went on with the rest of the meeting (which was good). After the meeting, Evan passed all this information on to Laura, who is actually the Director (or whatever her title is) of the Vashon Youth School. So then I met with her, so she could be sure to hear my thoughts on the situation before she called the moms to talk them down. She said that she wanted to be able to call them and be my advocate, and she wanted to hear from me the specifics, so that she could call them with specific information, rather than calling them to say, “Well, I know that DeAnna is a really nice person.” I also told her that I was really open to hearing feedback from her, either before or after she talked to the parents. She said that the only feedback she really had for me was to not let this situation make me question my own talents or gifts. She said that if I was anything like her, I would be tempted to start thinking that maybe I’m not really cut out for this. She was pretty adamant that I shouldn’t think that, and that this is just one part of the job. Everyone has 20/20 hidsight, but when you’re right there in the thick of it, and you need to make a decision on the spur of the moment, everyone makes less than ideal choices sometimes. So that felt good, but the wole thing was still pretty stressful. I haven’t heard back from her yet how the conversation went with the moms.

And from there, I went right in to an interview with John for the Youth Instructor position. Yikes! John also re-iterated that this is just part of the job, and it had no effect on his decision for the hiring. I’m not sure how it could have no effect, since it’s an indicator of whether or not I’m capable of handling something that’s an inherent part of the job. But I hope that I handled the aftermath well enough that it made a good impression, or at least cancelled out the bad. Maybe that’s what he meant about it having no effect, maybe he meant that it was a net zero effect.

So I went through the interview well, I think, talking about everything from chaos and emergence theory, to women’s issues (and their lack of presence in WAS curriculum), to the fallacy of the binary gender system. I made it through the interview before the headache really kicked in, and I still have it now. Hopefully, it will go away when I hear from Laura that everything’s cool. At least, i hope that’s what I hear from her.

UPDATE: There’s more about this ongoing saga here

Tags: child psychology, parents, boundaries

Preston and I are staying at the La Push Ocean Park Resort, on the Quileute Indian Reservation on the northwest part of the Washington Peninsula. We used to stay here quite a bit when we were DINKs living in Seattle. But we haven’t been here in close to a year. We’re back in our favorite cabin, both pleased and sad that our resident mouse doesn’t seem to be here any more.

We got in late last night, got up this morning to walk to the one restaurant in town for breakfast. But the doors were locked and things looked under construction. We stopped by to talk to the local harbormaster, who said that the restaurant is supposed to be opened up again on the 8th “or so I hear”, which I think is Native for “ya, right”. Seeing all the fish heads and skeletons in the marina, I asked if they ever get bears down in town, but he sounded surprised by the question. They hear reports of bears occasionally out in the parks (by which I assume he means Olympic National) , but never in town.

So we headed back to the cabin to have the standby breakfast wraps, and then headed to the beach (100 yards from our front door). I’ve been reading Tom Brown Jr.’s Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking, and spent most of the morning having Preston do various moves in the sand, and then trying to read the pressure releases. I haven’t ever done any work with pressure releases, havng been mostly at the stage where it’s exciting to just identify a track without needing to figure out what it was doing. But hte book presented the releases in such an easy way that I can’t help but see them now. Really cool stuff. I don’t understand what he means by “waves” though. Apparently there is a wave present in a walking person’s track. When they speed up it turns into two waves, and when they are going really fast, it’s a more complicated wave pattern. I don’t get this one, but was able to see most of the others in tracks on the beach today.

In the late afternoon, as we were walking over to the grocery store for milk, we stopped to watch the surfers. Rather close in to the beach, closer than several of the surfers, inside the breakers, I suddenly saw a solid grey triangle sticking up. At first I wondered, “Has there been a rock outcropping there all this time that I’ve never noticed?” But then it sank below the surface, and I thought, “could there possibly be a whale this close in to shore?” A minute later, I saw a blow, but still thought it possible that the wind had just picked up some wave spray in a funny way. But a minute later, Preston and I both saw the back line arc out of the water for a couple seconds and sink back under. Sure enough, we watched that whale play in the surf for 30 minutes or more. I’m not the sort of girl that jumps up and down with glee, but the next time that whale spyhopped, and we saw the grey triangle of its snout up to its eye peering out over the breakers, I grabbed Preston’s arm and jumped up and down and squeeled like a schoolgirl. It was just about one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen. It didn’t ever breach like in the movies, but it stuck its nose up out of the water several times, far enough that it could get its eye above water to look around. And once it was rolling on its back, with its eye above water, and that meant that its tail was above water also, so we got to estimate its size. After looking through the whale ID book that Preston bought me last year, we’re pretty sure that we agree on the grey whale as an identification. Possibly a smaller one than average, but certainly possible that it was about the size of a school bus, which is the comparison the guide book uses. Freaking cool! It makes sense that the mothers with calves would be migrating through here on their way to the Arctic about now, and we confirmed at least two whales out there, although we only got the size reference on one of them.

A few of the surfers also saw it, including one guy who was fairly startled when it came up right next to his board. He surfed in to shore, and hung out near us watching for quite a while, but didn’t seem in a hurry to get back out there. I asked Preston, an aspiring surfer, how he would feel to look over and see A FREAKING GREY WHALE surfacing next to him. After pondering for a minute, he said, “Pretty awestruck.” And with that we hurried back to the cabin so Preston could grab his board and wetsuit. By the time we got back, the whale(s?) were gone. But Preston stil had a good session. Pictures to follow once I get them uploaded.

Tags: grey whale, surfing, tracking, pressure releases, tom brown jr, la push