The Vesupla Veterans came to Connelly Creek on the heels of the Daredevil’s Club who came out the day before. The mission: to follow directions and plans from the oldest boys and to pick up where the DDC left off. The outcome: build a stewardship ethic, heal the land, and bring salmon back to Connelly Creek!
Under sunny skies and a celebration of Gus’s birthday, four hours of service was enjoyable and exciting. Blackberry thickets were removed, the roots were exposed and uprooted, and boys morphed into treasure hunters while sifting through the trinkets buried by years of invasive plant growth. We cleaned up trash and learned of the salmon offering made the day before; Connelly Creek welcomes our service.
We want to thank two EMAs from the Firestalkers who volunteered their afternoon to assist in making sure that the plans were being carried-out properly. Kyle and Marcus, thank you so much for being good mentors and showing these Vespula Veterans how to have fun while being good stewards. Be proud of how your planning has come to fruition! Moreover you have inspired more boys to become future members of the Four Shields program.
Another thank you goes to Jake who recently offered to volunteer with the Boys Explorers Club program. We appreciate your interest in mentoring and thank you for a job very well done. Boys certainly learned a lot from you this outing.
The group was excited to learn about and use all the tools that our partners loaned us. Big thank you’s go to Nooksack 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!
Explorers 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.
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. Here is a video that shows the fun we had and the work we did!
We also should remember the motto, Many Hands, Light Work. As there were fifteen people serving the land, we made quite a bit of progress. This gets even more impressive when we consider that fourteen people did work the day before and another group (of twelve) will work on the site later this season. As many as eleven Explorers Club groups will serve this land 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 a rendition of “Happy Birthday,” played Tree Tag, and took a hike through the site to appreciate the area. We had a circle of thanks, embracing our motto, Attitude of Gratitude, and stalked back to the cars. Nat’s dad said that we were always so loud that he knew where we’d be. We accepted the challenge and tried to sneak up on the parents, but they were all hiding in their 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.
I made a small error about the next outing. We’ll still meet at Sehome Haggen at 11am but on June 15th (not May 19th) as we get aboard Stubbs and drive out to Racehorse Falls. It’s not too late to sign up for summer camp and backpacking trips so check out the summer page and get the information you need!
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