The Daredevil’s Club was the first group to arrive on site after last week’s initial evaluation by the Firestalkers. The mission: to follow directions and plans from the oldest boys. The outcome: build a stewardship ethic, heal the land, and bring salmon back to Connelly Creek!
Despite the rain, or perhaps because of it, four hours went by extremely fast. What started off as a blackberry thicket ended in a pile of wreckage and ruin! Boys collected trinkets buried by the years of invasive plant growth and uncovered a land that has been neglected for a long time.
The group was excited to learn about and use all the tools that our partners loaned us. Big thank you’s go toNooksack Salmon Enhancement Association (NSEA) and the City of Bellingham for partnering with us on this project. With their encouragement and resources, Boys Explorers Club has a chance to heal a part of the Connelly Creek watershed. We deeply appreciate everything you have given us for this project!
Daredevil’s Club members used loppers, shears/clippers, hori-hori’s, and shovels. Mentors even worked one-on-one with Explorers to learn the art of machete-wielding. As a result of responsible tool usage, we accurately and effectively followed the Firestalker’s plan in the first step which was removal of blackberry from the up-creek side of our service site. Please ask your Explorer(s) which tools he used during the outing… and feel free to put them to work in your yard too :)
Explorers dutifully followed the mottos: A Tool is an Extension of the Body andThe Difference between a Tool and a Weapon is You. It is inspiring to know that Mentors’ constant reminders of these mottos have finally sunk in because the boys knew exactly how to practice these sayings during the outing.
Before we nourished the land through stewardship, however, we nourished it with a ceremony. Boys scattered bits of salmon carcasses in and around the creek as a way of telling the creek that one day salmon will swim up its currents and hide in its nooks. When we left, we discovered that the creek had swollen because of the rains. Or maybe it was getting the taste of wild salmon that we threw upon its banks.
Hopefully through the course of this blog and the pictures here and in the photo gallery you can see the progress we made at Connelly Creek. Please ask your Explorer to show you the site sometime. We mentors are truly inspired and impressed by the work of these dedicated Explorers club members. You should also be proud of your boys for the work they did, do, and are capable of doing. It is exciting to know that we have years of work to do and that we’ll make a huge impact. Maybe we’ll see the salmon swimming up-creek in the next couple of years.
We also should remember the motto, Many Hands, Light Work. As there were fourteen people serving the land, we made quite a bit of progress. This gets even more impressive when we consider that two other groups (of twelve) will work on the site this season and as many as eleven groups in the fall! Indeed our efforts are important and part of a much bigger project than boys may even realize. As such, please head out there from time to time and see how the land is healing!
Boys ended the day with some games (with sports balls they found) and hiked through the site to appreciate the area. We had a circle of thanks, embracing our motto,Attitude of Gratitude, and walked back to the cars.
Thank you Explorers for the great stewardship that you exemplified! Parents, thank you for your support and encouragement of these boys and this program.
We’ll see you next outing at Sehome Haggen at 11am on May 19th as we get aboard Stubbs and drive out to Racehorse Falls. It’s not too late to sign up for summer campand backpacking trips so check out the summer page and get the information you need!
No comments:
Post a Comment