And so another adventure is wrapped up in the books. As most of you may know, the past 10 weeks or so I have been in Ithaca, NY working at Primitive Pursuits. A summer day camp for kids ranging from preschool-14 year olds and 14+ can become counselors in training. And the whole goal of the camp is to bring kids out into the woods and teach them not only survival skills such as fire making, shelter building, edible plants, tracking, etc., but also to teach them caretaking, respect for everything around them, thankfulness, and passion.
So anyway the whole teepee thing. Tim and Jed (The Directors and Friends) have recently been putting up teepees on the land so that way they can attract counselors from out of state and bring in more knowledge. They are so smart. There was a small kitchen which on average 7 of us shared and bathrooms with showers and a small amount of internet connection. I also had no phone service unless i went to a certain field. So that was my living situation and if I ever needed groceries or things from downtown I would have to bum rides. So many thanks to all who chauffeured me around.
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Sorry for lack of pictures as well, but my ipod broke, my phone started freaking out, and i was also too busy and too scared to even touch to see if my camera was working at all, but that just means you'll have to bring back that childhood imagination a little bit. It's good for yah ;-)
One of my main goals for the summer was to get better at story telling and man did work on that. I learned a lot more than I expected this summer all the way from teaching to personally and skills to singing! (Although now that camp is over it'll still be special occasions where you catch me singing). And so because each week 2 instructors were assigned to a group of 12 kids and only a general outline was given for the week, it allows for each group to plan what sorts of games, skills, crafts, and activities you want to do. Which I loved because it really taught me how to find my teaching identity and the unique mentoring skills which are hard to come by these days. I also loved how everyone brought their own set of skills so when planning you would account for that and notice how one week flows differently from another.
I could spend awhile listing off all the new amazing friends that I made over the summer, but that would take a while and I definitely wouldn't want to forget anyone. So if you're reading this, you KNOW who you are. :)
So camp would end at 4pm and I would have the rest of the sunlit day to myself to do whatever. So typically that would involve working on a skill or craft that I was currently inspired about for an hour or so then making dinner then hangin out then bedtime. And weekends were off so that was when the real big projects and adventures got done. Some cool projects worth mentioning that i worked on: I made a couple bows, tanned a buffalo hide (but w/o fur {a longer story}), tried some primitive fishing, made a shelter, made buckskin shorts, worked on some traps, and mink and aaron taught me a lot about flint knapping (the art of making stone tools such as arrowheads).
I have a lot of cool stories but they can only be told in person but I list a couple if you see me and wanna ask about id love to tell them:
-A Gray Fox
-Woodchucks
-Atlatls
-The torrential downpour
-The Primitive "Frat" House
-My group overnight with campers
That's all I can think of for now...
Some of my favorite weeks of camp to teach was the hide tanning week, bow camp, and scout camp. Raven's camp was decent too.
So after all that experience, all that knowledge gained, and meeting new friends. Now I am here on Blake and Alec's couch bumming around, doing crafts, reading, applying for engineering jobs, trying to figure my next move out, and working part-time for a sustainable landscaper. Right now the plan is to come back home the 1st weekend of October. Hang with family and friends for a few weeks and figure out my next move. Hopefully Colorado ;-)
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