I have a cold...

So this is Shovel Point on Lake Superior where we rock climbing yesterday. It was a way to celebrate our first week of teaching (woo-hoo!). I really need to start planning for next weeks lessons... I also really should be writing my first assignment....but I know how you guys want to know about this stuff.

It's a popular place to climb so they have permanent hooks at some of the runs to hook into. You start at the top, get lowered down, and climb back up. I had crazy anxiety to be completely honest. But how gorgeous is this view?!?! I live 10 minutes from this...

This is not me. But it's a friend and a good shot of the climb. If you can see the dead tree way down there....that's where the climb officially starts. I didn't even go down as far as she did. I was more worried about not being about to get back up since I started climbing about 1 week ago. Also it's crazy scary when you're that high with the lake below you.

That's me. I think at this moment I'm looking below me at the lake crashing against the cliffs....Thankfully the friend belaying me (keeping from dying) was also keeping me calm and walking me through it. To be totally honest my heart was going crazy, and when I got back up I almost shed a few tears of relief. Very powerful experience. Hopefully next time we go (after lots of practice on our indoor walls) I'll be able to go down farther. Worst part was definitely trusting the equipment though and hanging off the edge. 

Today I hung out with our wildlife naturalist. She takes care of Thistle, Elsie the chicken, Ruby the red-tailed hawk, Chup the perigan falcon, Hunter the great horned owl and the raven who hasn't been named yet. I'm going to be one of two wildlife interns this year. This means on top of full teaching schedule, 18 grad schools credits, I'll also  be working to learn all the care and handling of the animals. Elsie is like a dog- she comes when called and stays when told, it's freaky. We took Thistle on a walk to the nat wing (where we live) today for a visit. I learned how to gut mice and quail and about the diets of the raptors. Then I got to hold my first raptor! I handled Hunter and fed him some mice bits out of my hand. It was crazy awesome. I have to work a lot with him before handling the other raptors since they are a lot more intimidating. Ruby is also super strong. 

I also did some ropes course tonight. Here's a couple photos of the course. First is the Indiana Jones Bridge.

Next is the Burma Bridge. That's not me, but that's what it looks like when I demo the course for classes. 

Here's a gorgoeous view of Superior. So rewarding. 

There's a double log, a single wire with no handles, a single log.....and a view from the zipline. Jumping off the zipline tower is hard every time. I have the class countdown because it forces me to go in a reasonable time :) 

Brrrrr It's Cold Today

So getting up extra early to do the weather this week really stinks. I have to try to announce/scream it to everyone over the chaos in the dining hall as well. Also I've taken my first naps this week to try to compensate for the sleep loss.

Yesterday I taught high ropes. It was my first time so I had a permanent staffer evaluating me, mainly for safety concerns. I passed woohoo! Now I'm teaching it again today by myself. It's weird to have everyone watching you from the ground as you go through the course to explain it all... I do some great demo falls as well, just saying.

Yesterday the student nats did our first official botany exploration. Apparently I think naturalist eat everything... But for reals, apparently you can make yogurt with bed straw....

But I didn't actually eat it.

Also check out our snazzy Wolf Ridge Staff rain jackets.

The sky is on fire! Sunset yesterday from our telescope deck. 

 And some pictures of my room...
Yes I know it's messy...
Yes it's small, but it will be cozy in winter.

Day 2 Plus Phenology

 I'm rushing this post before I pass out for the night. So this morning, and for the rest of the week I am the meteorologist at Wolf Ridge! This means I get up super early check the weather, take some measurements outside, do a little forecasting and announce the weather to the dining hall at breakfast. It also means I get to spend some time this week doing phenology. To put it simply, phenology is the study of change in the environment marked by natural occurences. Birds migrating, leaves changing colors, crickets disappearing are all signs of change. So I get to go around and look for things changing, then I compare that to the  average date of the year this normally takes place. On the left is some high bush cranberry (different from the bog cranberries you eat at Christmas) and the namesake of the WR driveway - Cranberry Road. I tasted one today and the berries are mature/ripe. It's a little bit early for this, they usually ripen after 1st frost. 

So I spent about two hours out with our staff phenology expert as he showed me the ropes and what I should be looking for this week. There was tons and tons of stuff, but don't worry I won't bore you....too much. The paper birch tree leave moved on from flecking (starting to change color) to first solid color (a whole branch or whole tree has changed) but not peak color (all birch trees have changed). This is on time, but for a lot of individual trees it has been happening since a few weeks ago. This is due to some leaf miners! This is a generic term for insects that only eat the middle layer of a leaf. So you can see in the close up photo the part of the leaf that is dark brown. The brown is the top and bottom outside layers of the leaf, and the inside has been munched away.

Then this afternoon I taught Geology, which totally rocked :) Overall I think it went really well. It was a rowdy bunch and I struggled a lot with trying to keep them from jumping off a cliff, but most seemed to retain a lot of information. I was worried about content, but I think I was as great as I could have expected for a first time. I was worried about time, but got back even a little early from the hike. And like I said, when we reviewed at the end, they knew a lot more than they started out with. 

I'm getting up crazy early again tomorrow to check the weather than teaching Adventure Ropes! I'm being observed since it's my first time so let's hope I remember all that safety stuff and don't drop a fourth grader 30 feet :)

First Day!

Well I survived my class. In fact, I think I did a little better than survive. This afternoon I taught GPS and Geochaching to a group of 6th graders, and they left with smiles on their faces!

(classroom before they arrived!)

I actually never really had a freak out moment and went in pretty confident. I was worried about some things I shouldn't have worried about and maybe should have thought about others a little more. I was great with time and content, but classroom management was a little tougher. In my defense, the group had just arrived an hour before and it was their first class - so they were a bundle of energy. I feel pretty darn good about the class though. 

I also observed a high ropes course tonight with a bunch of fourth graders. They are so tiny, it's amazing. They all seemed to fly through it no problem as well. I will be teaching a two high ropes courses this week, one with fourth graders and one with sixth graders. I think the most important part of the class is to stress patience as they usually have to wait a bit before they can go through the course. Obviously being supportive and positive to others is right up there as well. 

But now I desperately need to go to sleep. The excitement has worn me out for the day. This week I am doing the weather forecast every morning so I have to get up at 6:15 to take all the weather measurements....yikes. Then I'll be cramming all kinds of material in my head because I'm teaching geology in the afternoon. Then I'll get to watch the raptor program after dinner. 

Fourth grader quote "It was really scary, but also really fun!"

A Beauty and a Challenge

So I am desperately in love with Lake Superior. Every time it takes my breath away. This is a view from Palisade Head. We hung over the cliffs a bit, I of course was terrified of the height.

Below is a picture of Shovel Point where we are going rock climbing next Friday. I'm still not sure if I'll be able to actually do it, but I really want to. We have two rock climbing walls here, and I've been on them both. I know that out there though will be a lot more fears. They are going to set it up so you start at the top, get lowered down, then climb back up...but I'm worried I'll just have to make them pull me back up. Also there isn't that direct line of communication/sight that you get with indoor climbing. I'll let you know how it goes...

Yesterday was matriculation, or a big party to officially welcome us into the community. A few showers and a gorgeous rainbow made the party exciting, and everyone was super sweet about it being my birthday as well. Everyone here is ridiculously nice and community is central to everything. First school is arriving tomorrow and classes start Monday! Eeek! 

"Quit Naturalizing!"

This is a shot of a sunset from my window, from the west side of the ridge. Once the trees lose their leaves I expect to be able to get a much better view of the valley.

This is the severe thunderstorm moving in last night. I was terrified. It started hailing when we were having a meeting in the conference room and I wanted to curl into a ball. The building is my dorm.

Above is a great shot from the geology class hike. You can see Raven Lake which is smaller than Wolf Lake and more marshy. Wetlands class is taught on the edge of it. And in the back is the endless expanse of Lake Superior. Takes my breath away every time. I had to bring myself back down to earth, because I'm teaching geology next Tuesday!

Leaf fossil! There are really interesting rocks up here and I'm doing my best to learn them fast! This class is cool because it centers on a hike to observe the formations, but it is also very content heavy. I need to get my but in gear to study!

The geology hike goes to the top of Marshall Mtn, which is where my sunrise pictures were from :) You can see from the elevation it is not actually a mountain, but it is one of the highest points in the area.

Other classes I've done this week include FIRST Games, Orienteering, Forest Ecology, and Beavers. FIRST Games is team  building types of exercises - Fun but kind of exhausting. Orienteering is crazy intense. We were doing it on two different courses,  no one finished, and one student nat got stung by wasps and almost had to go to hospital. We are all coming out of orienteering with negative outlooks on teaching it. 

Forest Ecology was fun, cool hike, and I learned a lot more about identifying trees. The class mostly focuses on succession and balancing the needs of wildlife, water, logging, and recreation. 

Just finished Beavers which was fun even though we didn't see any beavers. Because of a lame winter, flooding earlier this summer followed by very dry months has really affected the beavers. We did find some very fresh signs though! A lot of speckled alders had been freshly chomped, fresh drag paths down to the water, and a brand new dam! The new dam has already dropped the water level dramatically. It's probably 6-7 feet deep behind the dam and only 1-3 feet deep on the other side. As we walked downstream for awhile there was a lot of freshly exposed mud and loose grass in the water that also showed evidence of the dropping water level. And we saw some beaver tracks! You don't see them often because they're usually in mud, but they look fairly recent. The mud was also firm enough to hold the print and you could see toe-nail prints (not in the picture though...)

And I leave you with a picture of wolf scat :)

Did I already tell you I saw a bear on our driveway on Saturday? Well I did. It was probably just a year old or so and crossed right in front of the car. It was using our stream study trails. 

We are a Dawdle of Naturalists

Tomorrow is the start of my second week of training, but first I wanted to tell you about my first week. So much has happened, and I've learned so much already. Everyday we have three different three hour classes and fall into bed afterward most of the time. The classes we are going through are the ones we will be teaching on our own soon enough. This is only a fraction of courses though, so throughout the year we'll observe a course once or twice before teaching it ourselves. We have also been spending so much time building our community. The other 15 Nats (student naturalists) and I have been bonding more than anyone could imagine this first week. We are like minded and full of excitement and passion, and already showing our abilities to support each other in almost every way. It's truly amazing, but I'll move on to talking about classes now. Well actually, here's a picture of Thistle. How cute is he? I'm gonna get to know him better and bring him to a class with me :)

Also, a pic of most of us from our sunrise hike last Monday.

Okay, so first class was Superior View Hike. It involved a 3 mile round trip hike to a peak for a gorgeous view of Lake Superior. We did fun activities along the way, such as a watershed activity (eek!) as shown in the photo. I also want to take this opportunity to explain that stories are a very integral part of the Wolf Ridge experience. Obviously for us nats, we'll be building our stories individually and as a community, and with the staff throughout the year. But story is also a large part of every student that visits. We're here to facilitate a learning experience but each student's story is added to Wolf Ridge's. So naturally every class has a focus on story. Along our hike we told stories of geographic past, human past in the area, as well as personal stories connected to the lake.

 Tuesday afternoon we did Ojibwe Heritage which may be a total chaotic class but probably one of the most fun as well. Ojibwe is the tribe native to the north shore, and we have two sites on campus that have a summer home (what all of us are scrunched into), a winter home (teepee) and a fire area to cook.

 The class mainly focuses on skills. So we practiced starting fires both with flint and with a bow drill. I got smoke with the bow drill, but I actually got fire with the flint! Other skills include banging wet logs (black ash)-to remove strips for basket weaving, making bracelets from the inside of a basswood tree, wild rice processing, as well as cooking and eating the rice and raspberry tea.

 Processing the wild rice means parching it with the fire and dancing on the rice with moccasins to separate the chaff. The tea is made with real raspberry leaves, and then of course there is maple sugar (I'll get to tap trees later this year for syrup) to use for sweetening both. Also in this class we'll tell an old Ojibwe story in the teepee which is exciting but I'll have to work on my storytelling voice. Other fun part is everyone gets to adopt an Ojibwe nickname as we play the part of a giant family. I'm still working on my final one so I'll let you know when I feel good about it.

So one of our group activities separate from classes was for us to create the ultimate naturalist that we all aspire to be. As you can maybe see from this drawing, we're a crazy group and want it all. We're all so excited to build our skills and start carrying field guides everywhere with us. It's insane to think we're going through these classes as students and in a week will be teaching them on our own. Our learning process is a huge part of our experience though. We will be evaluated multiple times throughout the year as teachers by staff, peers, and ourselves. We are also all taking at least 9 credits through Wolf Ridge, but I'm taking an additional 9 credits through University of Minnesota. Credits here at WR will be through seminars by staff and individual projects such as a nature journal. I know a lot of people are still confused about this, and to be honest I still don't know all the logistics.

 So we started off Wednesday morning with Adventure Ropes which I was so excited for but soooo  nervous as well. Check out the photo of my chilling in my harness :) So WR has two high ropes courses and it's without a doubt one of the most popular classes. I'll have more pictures of the course/me on it later. I will say I've gone through, between the two courses, seven times and I still get super scared. I mean I go through the whole thing smoothish, but inside I'm freaking out. I've also done practice falls (we have to demonstrate to our classes) and they scare me still. Working on conquering it though. It actually is crazy fun though, especially the zip lines.

 In the afternoon we did Stream Study which  you all know I loved :) It's basically a hike to a stream and measuring chemical/physical characteristics, than catching fun creatures to identify! We caught a 3 inch long giant water beetle that was eating a crawdad. Cool stuff. That night we did Starlab and Astronomy which are two different evening activities. Picture of starlab - It's a giant dome where you project the stars. It's sweet trust me. Outside we have a killer huge telescope to see the real stars. Anyone that visits will need to spend a night out with it. I also want to use this as an opportunity to say how nice everyone is. They repeatedly tell us that all of it is ours. We can use whatever we want whenever we want. Ropes course, starlab, telescope, canoes and gear galore and free to us whenever. So lucky.

 Thursday was Renewable Energy where you tour all the awesome sources of energy here at WR including a wind turbine and solar panels. There's a lot more to it, and we make a cake with a solar oven.
In the afternoon we did Seeds of Change which focused more on awareness of the food we eat and how our choices affect the world. A fun activity was grinding our own corn and wheat to make muffins. They were pretty fantastic.

Friday exploring classes. In the morning we did Animal Signs which means you get to bring Thistle into the class to talk about the different sign you can see, then hike around looking for new signs. Obviously with most signs you find you can tell a story which makes it fun (not that already isn't).
In the afternoon was Wetlands which of course I loved. We didn't so much follow the lesson plan, but identified all kinds of plants which was really helpful. Fun poem I learned:
Sedges have edges
Rushes are round
Grass has noes and grows from the ground.

After dinner we went canoeing on Wolf Lake, which will be a class but they said we might each teach it once and that's it because of weather/temperature issues. So this first photo is after we put everything away from canoeing and watched the moon rise over the ridge.

Then to celebrate our first week we took an evening swim/ made a bonfire on the beach of Superior under the full moon. Pretty amazing sight. You should be jealous. This weekend I've mostly relaxed. Checked out Grand Marais which is a touristy town about 45 min north along the shore, did the ropes course a couple times, and slept most importantly. 

Quotable moment:

Having lunch on the deck today and someone noticed a dead bird that had hit the window. Someone right away grabs it as we check it out and say things like:

What kind is it?

Is it a male or female?

Can is see the patch?

What kind of condition is it in?

Let's take it to the dead animal freezer. 

The reason that we have a dead animal freezer is for our taxidermy seminar later this year.