What the Raven says . . . and other fortuitous tracking moments

Guess What happened to this guy?

On a snowy December day, we were in the Boyne River area heading up a steep, steep deer trail as we began the morning. Following deer tracks on a slope placed perfectly one after the other is a hilarious thing to try and do as a human. The snow was wet and heavy and there was a tiny layer of water/ice that made us slip, slide, and wonder about the amazing ability of deer hooves to grip this wild substrate - no boots necessary for the creatures of the wild. 

Following the rambling deer through the forest, we came to an interesting little intersection. On one side tracks were leading from a bramble covered thicket with willow and dogwood in the background and then headed towards a cedar grove. What was that little miss-step that happened in the middle of the trail? The stride of the deer grew by almost a third, and as we put together pieces, you could almost see the deer emerging from cover, stopping, looking and quickly moving through the clearing to get to the dense cedars on the other side. How often do we do this when crossing the road? Human nature or deer nature?

Later, after identifying the sex of a deer based on back legs and urine location, we crossed back down the hill and over the road. From a distance, this wet bog held the allure of some exciting beaver evidence. Fresh chews and trails perhaps? As we walked closer, there was an even more exciting find - a shed antler?!?? Looking closer, this antler appeared to be attached to a big lump covered in snow. . .a whole deer! We had found a dead buck, completely covered in snow, with hair that detached from the hide easily, dating it a week or more old we thought. With a beautiful big rack and thick, strong, neck, we puzzled about its death whether through harsh conditions? old age? car accident? This mystery held us in its grip for a while before we moved on to the beaver trail and found a spot to lunch in among the cedars at the edge of the wetland. 

As we munched and chatted, we heard a strange squawk from where we had left our friend the deer. Who was that and was he saying? Squawking/gurgling/shrieking - the raven had come down to announce this bounty of the deer carcass for anyone who was within earshot. Listening to ravens can be tricky business, but in this case it seemed clear to all of us that he said "Yes! look what I have found!"

After lunch, we hiked past the edge of the wetland, trailing deer to see who and how many went which way. We past evidence of grouse life, and insects burrowing and engraving the trees, until we came across another mystery - what were those snails doing on the snow?? As we investigated the live snails laying across the top of the snow, we wondered - how did they get here? Why? There was a tiny mammal tunnel that led to where these snails looked like been tossed out the window of this subnivean creature. Alexis thinks he knows what it was - ask him if you get the chance.

Fisher Tracks

But the deer trails pulled us forward, and we ventured up the hill to find fresh deer beds, and some bounding deer going - you guessed it- right up a steep and slippery slope. 

Porcupine Trail

Almost at the top of the ridge, there was an interesting interloper. This trail led west down and towards the road, and had five perfect toes in each track. A fisher! This was the biggest mustelid we had seen evidence of this wild and crazy weasel weekend. We followed it over hill and dale, up and down, noticing where it had dug a snack from below the snow - old deer bits? - and where it finally disappeared into thin air?! Or perhaps that shadow up overhead in the spruces was where the fisher napped?

After looking on the ground for an arboreal predator grew tiresome, we found some tracks that looked like a tiny cross country skier had come by - a wild turkey in the deep snow can really help one appreciate the dexterity of their toes. 

As we came to the edge of a field, we found a wide porcupine trail and a den underneath a rocky cliff clinging cedar. Slip sliding our way down to walk the road back, I thought about the sleeping fisher, the walking turkey, the cold snails, the dead deer and the hungry raven and I was grateful to have met them all. 

Written by Lee Earl - 2nd Year Earth Tracks Tracking Apprentice

Porcupine Trail to den site

Weasel 'Madness' and other Tracking Adventures

Mother Nature had gifted us with more than foot of snow, and the Year 2 apprentices were excited to see what animals had left tracks for us this weekend in Mono Cliffs. Our theme was trailing, and we were curious to see how our animal friends had reacted to so much snow on the ground.

After a quick opening circle to set our intentions, we struck out east across the top edge of the old farmer’s field. Diamond strands of silk encased in ice dazzled us; deer tracks in the trees challenged us. How different those tracks looked in snow! How many deer were there? Which way were they going? When were the tracks made? We decided to follow them for a while to see where they were going.

Their gait changed suddenly from a walk to a gallop — or was it a bound? The tracks led to the southern edge of the field, where we were distracted by the discovery of a new trail. Alexis stopped us and used this as a warm-up question for the Track and Sign Evaluation some of us would be taking in January. He circled one section and asked, who made these tracks? Which direction was it travelling in? What gait? Our energy surged as we stooped to examine tracks inside and outside the circle. Was it a canine? Yes. Was it going west? Yes. Was it walking or trotting? Not sure. After a few minutes, Alexis asked us what we thought. Tamara said she thought the coyote was walking. She had gone a little farther ahead in the trail and seen where it had emerged into a more open area; subsequently, the stride had lengthened and narrowed. It made sense: The section that had been circled was winding through stalks of grasses and under a tree. It would have been hard to navigate at speed.

Did we want to keep following the deer or switch to the coyote? It was unanimous: Coyote. The group continued walking west. Along the way we saw tiny mouse tracks circling the tree trunks. At the southern tree line, we found more of the same, mixed in with skunk and Short-Tailed Weasel. Excited, we followed the skunk and the weasel for some time before settling down to have lunch.

Tamara and Alex wanted to see where the skunk went, so we split up: They followed the skunk while we followed the weasel — which was easier said than done! I couldn’t help but think of the movie Flubber. The weasel seemed to be bouncing everywhere, above and below the snow. The mouse trail seemed much more straightforward in comparison!

Short TailWeasel

At the southwest corner of the field, Alexis and Lee found a mysterious hunk of flesh hanging from the branch of a tiny shrub. Thinking something so red could only be berries, Lee even picked it up with her bare hand! A quick sniff proved it was something entirely different, and after holding it, she knew it hadn’t been left there long.

Small Rodent Remains

Alex and Tamara joined us shortly. They had also had some success: The trail had led to a burrow! They too examined the fleshy weasel offering, then we returned to the coyote trail and continued on. We saw bird tracks and vole scats — and a vole trail? A peculiarly-spaced set of tiny tracks led us away from the coyote to the road. They were the same width as a vole’s, and seemed the right size for a vole, but why was it in a 2-by-2 lope?

Short Tail and Least Weasel trails

“I think this is a Least Weasel,” Alexis said finally. Our first one! Rulers materialized almost as quickly as questions. How could he tell? Were they really that small? Why wasn’t it a vole? We opened up our guides and did some quick field research. Typically, the trail had gone from a walk to a lope, then back again. Voles like to trot, and generally don’t stay above the snowpack for very long distances.

It was fascinating to see so many small mammal tracks in such a short space of time. In one area, we saw mouse, Short-Tailed Weasel and Least Weasel trails running side by side and over one another, an excellent opportunity to compare and contrast their tracks, their gaits and their strides.

Vole Feeding Sign

The road marked the edge of crown land, so we turned around and went back into the trees. Soon we found ourselves hiking uphill, passing the work of a hungry vole who had completely devoured the seeds of a milkweed pod. Then we came across another small mammal trail: a cinereus shrew, whose tracks were the tiniest of all!

Eventually, we made our way into the valley next to Mono Cliffs. The group stopped to examine three fresh deer beds; we had likely pushed the deer out of them as we made our way down. Lots of scat and urine to look at here. Alexis pointed to one patch of urine in the snow. Was this left by a male or a female? How could you tell?

Least Weasel and Vole Trails

At the top of the cliffs, the six of us had circled up when the sky suddenly darkened, as though a veil had been pulled over the sun. It was time to head out. We went back to the coyote trail once again, and it led us up to the southern edge of the field, right to the skunk burrow Tamara and Alex had found at lunch. We took the most direct route and hiked across the field to our cars. Several Short-Tailed Weasel trails raced among the grasses around us. We even found a burrow and some scat!

Porcupine Trail

As we ended the day with our closing circle, our thanksgivings came quickly and sounded much the same: gratitude for the snow to track in, gratitude for the tiny tracks we came across, gratitude for new knowledge of our animal friends, who are always there, but whose tracks we don’t often get to see. Last, but not least, Alexis announced that Christina, one of his first-year apprentices, had handed in her completed homework. With smiles and applause, he presented her with the first Earth Tracks Advanced Level Tracking Certificate.

Hopefully, we’ll have some more graduations to report in the months to come! But for now, that’s the news from Day 1.

This Post was written by Christina Yu - 2nd Year Earth Tracks Tracking Apprentice

The Value of Journaling in Tracking Training

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently working on tracking journals. For the past year and a half or so, I’ve been involved in a tracking apprenticeship program through Earth Tracks Outdoor School. The year before – having  developed a deep curiosity about plants, especially their edible and medicinal uses – I’d signed up for a wild plants apprenticeship with Earth Tracks. I signed up impulsively, but with an instinct I trusted. I had taken a couple of workshops with Alexis and had a really good feeling about his teaching style. I knew I wanted more grounded knowledge of ecology and nature. After many years of education, I was suddenly stunned by my own ignorance about the natural world. I wanted to zoom in on things, see the details, really know what was around me. I wanted to be outside all day, learning cool stuff.

The monthly commitment felt daring and kind of improbable – my younger child was only three, and we had rarely been apart. But sometimes I set my mind to something, and I can’t turn back.

From the first weekend, the time and space and all-day immersion in nature tapped into to something that I had been longing for. As the eight-month plant apprenticeship wound down, I wanted to continue learning in exactly this way. I found out that Alexis was offering a ten-month tracking program, which would start just a week after the plant course finished. As we drove back and forth together the last months of the course, my new friend Lee and I gradually talked each other into it. It was a leap of faith, because at that time I knew little about tracking, but it also felt right, because I knew how much the weekends had nourished me the previous year. I knew also that in nature nothing is separate. Tracking was connected to a huge web of naturalist learning that I wanted to dig into. And I also felt, in a way, that a wave was carrying me that I couldn’t really stop. And didn’t want to.

Now, I am in the second year of tracking apprenticeship with Earth Tracks. Along with a couple of others, I’m participating in a pilot second year program in a work/trade role. I’ve also practiced tracking in other contexts over the same period, in the midst of homeschooling my kids and other responsibilities: a week-long immersion course in Algonquin Park run by Earth Tracks and White Pine Programs; helping run a monthly drop-in tracking program for the PINE Project; and time on my own when possible. And now, I’m also working my way through lots and lots of tracking journals. The ones we use for the apprenticeship are based on the Shikari template, with two pages of more reflective questions added by Alexis. Each journal is six pages long in total, and completing one involves mapping, sketching, measurement, weather observations, ecological observations, species research, observations on one’s own patterns and gaps, and reflection on the more intuitive and personal aspects of tracking. Another set of journal pages, also part of the homework, are focused on species research and field observation. With these, I was initially a bit fixated on making them “complete” and now I’d like to work on making them shorter and more concise instead.

On top of all that are ecological mapping exercises, seasonal nature observations, and tracking exercises of various kinds. Whew! It’s going to take me a while to get through it all. But as with so many things, I’m finding that as I make a habit of it, I’m drawn further in. I’m learning to love my tracking journals, picking away at the homework bit by bit each day. And doing this kind of recording, questioning and puzzle-solving is reinforcing the experiential naturalist learning I’ve been doing the past couple of years. This is field research, but it’s not detached. It’s detailed, but it’s also personal and reflective and connecting. In the past, most of the academic work I did involved writing and more writing: long essays about patterns and theories. I liked making leaps of intuition; I avoided methodical work. This uses a different part of my brain, one which needs to be present to the details. Slowly I can see that paying close attention and recording observations is training me to see better. The more I learn, the more questions I have. I’ve realized that this kind of learning is a life-long commitment.

Here are some more (non-matching) example of individual journal pages. Some of these are finished, some are not quite. They are teaching me the importance of just showing up and doing the work, of slowly bringing small pieces together into something substantial, of creating methodical habits that over time create big changes of perspective. 

 

By Malgosia Halliop (2nd year Tracking Apprentice)  

 

* Previously published on Between These Rivers Blog:
http://mhalliop.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/creating-habits-of-awareness-or-why-im-spending-so-much-time-on-tracking-journals/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 2 - Pressure Releases - Sunday November 2, 2014

On a bright and crisp morning in Grey County, a group of trackers could be found building a "Tracking Box". To the untrained eye, it may look like a sand box, but it is also a fascinating tool that helped unlock some of the mysteries of the pressure releases as outlined in "The Science and Art of Tracking" by Tom Brown, Jr. 

So first, a little lesson on a Do-It-Yourself Tracking Box. 

The dimensions of the one we built were 4 ft X 8 ft out of 2 in x 10 in lumber (tip - if you get three 8 ft long sections of 2x10 then you just need to make one cut to have all the pieces). A rectangular frame was then placed in a good location on the property, lined with a tarp and filled with sand. The best sand for the job is play sand that can be found at an aggregate supplier. Being on a farm with cats, it is important to think about how to cover the tracking box (in this case with a piece of ply), before it becomes the kittie's domain. . . ! Et voila - get ready to get detailed tracking information!

After we had constructed the tracking box, and warmed ourselves with red clover and hibiscus tea from the expertly built fire, it was time to smooth the sand (anything flat and the right length will work, in this case - a piece of lumber 4 ft wide). With a blank slate in front of us, it was up to Alexis to start the study of the first type of pressure release we would study - Pressure against the walls indicating a change in direction. 

Now looking at this image you can get an idea about the level of detail that we were discussing. The principle at play here is the way that sand reacts to shifts in direction or turning. Try it yourself by comparing tracks that were moving forward with a set of tracks where you initiate a sharp turn. With twelve faces close to each grain of sand and the corresponding charts and reference books we happily spent hours discussing slight movements on the each part of the foot. 

The second set of pressure releases we looked at were about what happens when an animal changes or maintains forward motion. A great example of how to understand the principle at play is to find some sand and walk across. Then sprint beside it. A quick comparison of these two sets of tracks will demonstrate the backwards motion of the sand as momentum increases.

The third and last pressure release we looked at in detail was the roll and head position. To feel this in your body, close your eyes and reach to the sky, paying attention to the movement in your feet. Now, touch the ground still feeling your feet. You will hopefully notice the way that your balance point changes depending on the position of your head and upper body. 

All of these pressure releases can help trackers identify the subtle shifts in direction, speed and body position that a given animal made. These subtleties are etched into the earth and can last longer than the fleeting image of a deer in the distance, but it is important to acknowledge the distortions that can come into play based upon things like rocks, sticks, slopes, water, etc. The controlled environment of the tracking box can be our laboratory and then with fresh "search images" in our brains we can go out into the field to read even deeper into the tracks. 

We ended our day by playing a fun game that can work in a tracking box, or a smoothed beach, or untouched snow. One member of the group would walk through the sand, turning, jumping or running as they pleased. Next, the other trackers would come back to the tracking box, having not seen what had taken place, and we would use all the evidence in the tracks we could find to piece together what happened. This way we could test our observations against the direct experience of the track maker. It was amazing to see the way that even within one day, we were able to notice tiny ridges and plates of sand that could then create a whole story. Now to learn the language of pressure releases and the way that they translate into clay mud, snow, pine needle debris and frozen leaves . . .

Written by:  Lee Earl - 2nd Year Earth Tracks Tracking Apprentice

November Tracking Weekend - Pressure Releases - Day one

The first snow of the season had fallen in the area the day before, and as Lee, Christina and I drove north amidst light flurries we hoped for the snow to linger.   We’re all a little impatient to start tracking on that white winter canvas again. But by the time our whole group had gathered together at Allan Park, the temperature rose, the sun came out, and the snow hastily retreated, not ready to commit.

However, we were all eager to explore and learn in this brand new location on a beautiful November morning. Heading south from the parking lot, we took the main trail towards a large, flat pond, faintly rippled by wind. “Please, no horses in pond,” a sign next to it read, which was surprising but sensible advice, and conjured up amusing images in my head. We swung left to a slope next to the pond and encountered crisscrossed deer tracks. We examined, marked with popsicle sticks, and discussed our observations. The general consensus was that there were two trails, one going down the hill and one going up. The theme of the weekend was pressure releases, so Alexis took the opportunity to tease out some ways in which these particular tracks had moved the earth around them, indicating changes of direction, slight turns, and other specific movements. 

Snowshoe Hare

Leaving the deer tracks and heading along a new trail, we came across a wide sand path, covered with a wealth of tracks. Some prints with five clear claw marks were briefly confusing, until we backtracked slightly and identified the tell-tale J-shaped asymmetry of hare tracks in one of them.  Zooming out, we could see the track pattern of a snowshoe hare moving at high speed: its feet spread wide, back feet well ahead of front, and even the front feet staggered one in front of the other, creating a stretched-out set of tracks for each bound. 

On the same sand path, Alexis took advantage of some human boot prints to delve more deeply into pressure releases.  We had a brief introduction to some of Tom Brown Jr.’s terminology on the subject – expecting more focused study with a tracking box the next day - and some new tools to use in interpreting animal (and human) movement. Approaching each track as a miniature landscape, we heard about ridges, peaks, caves, plates, fissures, and other specific terms used to describe the precise impact increases in movement and speed have on the soil in and around the track. This is the micro perspective: tracks as miniature geological events, each tiny formation giving precise clues as to its big picture meaning.

We shifted our attention, walked uphill. On the way, a predated turtle’s nest, with scattered fragments of rubbery egg-shells, inspired many questions.  After lunch, we found more deer tracks to study and to test what we’d learned about pressure releases.  Here, we found pressure on the left side of the tracks that showed us a turn to the right.

Heading deeper into the woods, a semi-regular line of depressions in the leaf-litter along the trail gave us pause. So regular, and yet… something was off.  The depressions were circular and the leaves looked to have been pushed outwards, almost swirled, instead of showing momentum in any one direction.  Hmm… A good test of our perception.  We clicked in to see that the pattern showed a small animal bounding along the path, stopping to dig in each spot – the fall larder-building of a squirrel.

Flying Squirrel Latrine

The clouds shifted. Several sprinklings of light snow and hail let us know the temperature was around freezing. Further through the woods, as we scampered up and down slopes, more finds: small pellets of scat piled up in tree cavities, in a pattern characteristic of a specific small forest animal (any guesses?); bitternut hickory nuts, and the trees themselves with their faintly striped bark; a pile of crow tail and flight feathers, intact at the shaft tips, as if they had been plucked carefully one by one; another pile of beautiful black, blue and white feathers – some with hints of other jewel-like colours – beside a small beak on a mound of earth. What was the story here?  Who was this bird and what had happened to it?  What other animal was involved?



Bitternut Hickory

The sun was moving westward; our afternoon was nearing its end.  But a few more discoveries were ahead of us: a tiny and perfect nest; a tall grass meadow; a fox’s den, in an ideal location to survey and hunt smaller creatures in that same meadow.  And, a little later, as we reconnected with the trail back to the parking lot, two sets of tracks.  The first, a single, clear canine track, walking straight as an arrow across the human path instead of meanderingly parallel to it – so much information to be gleaned from one track in the right location.  Beside it, some other tiny tracks, easy to mistake for chipmunk, but with other clues pointing to the possibility of a short-tailed weasel. 

A great day of shifting weather and shifting perspectives; zooming in and out of details; seeing patterns large and small making their impact on the landscape and on our ways of seeing.

By: Malgosia Halliop - 2nd year tracking student

August Algonquin Tracking Weekend

This is the post from our second day in Algonquin......Day one post to come soon.....

 

Heading out for a day of tracking

On our second day in Algonquin, we decided to stay near the research station and explore the area on the far side of Lake Sasajewun. Again, we grabbed our life jackets and paddles and pushed out onto the water, with last night’s moonlit paddle still fresh in our minds. Too bad Alexis got the leaky canoe!

Fortunately, it didn’t take too long to arrive at the northern part of the lake; and in the grassy, boggy shoreline, we found lots and lots of tracks. There were heron, muskrat, raccoon, fox, and moose and wolf – our first of the apprenticeship! For the better part of an hour, we trailed the moose and the wolf, pausing occasionally to ask, “What made the track look this way?” The variation in the substrate – how squishy it was in some places and how firm it was in others – really affected how much of the track we saw, or if we even saw one at all. Several of us stopped to take measurements; this would be a much-journalled set of tracks!



Eastern Wolf Tracks

Both trails led into the trees, and we followed using our eyes and hands, putting our new debris-trailing skills to good use. Now bear tracks were appearing on the same trail; this was a multiple-species highway. And it wasn’t just for the large: Over and over again, we found mustelid scats deposited right in the middle of the trail, a potent reminder that Martens were in the area, too.

But it wasn’t just tracks and scat we were finding. Mark was picking up Blue Jay feathers wherever he went, and on one part of the trail, we found cones from some Red Spruce. Algonquin is on the westernmost edge of the Red Spruce’s range. They are much more common in eastern Canada.

After stopping for lunch on the trail, we doubled back and went uphill into a drier area of the forest. The group was bustling along as only trackers can when Alexis called us to a halt. There was a grouse tail feather on the ground, and nearby, a wing feather! Then another wing feather and some breast feathers! Taking the tail feather, Lee gave a short talk on how to tell if it had come from a male or a female grouse; then she showed us how well the structure of the wing feathers affected airflow. Guest tracker Sue got several feathery souvenirs from that spot!



Even though it wasn’t very late in the day, it was time to start making our way back to the canoes. We cut down across the forest back to the trail we had followed to our lunch spot. It took a little while to recognize it because the sun had changed its angle, and we really were seeing things in a new light. Alexis, Tamara, Ann and Lee found an old wolf scat, and when they dissected it, they pulled out what seemed like a dew claw. When they looked closer, they discovered it was actually the toe of an unborn deer.

Ruffed Grouse Feather Site



It was late afternoon and we had returned to our canoes. We had one last goal before paddling back to the research station: otter scat. Alexis knew from years past that they liked to use the big rocks at the mouth of the narrows as a latrine. He and Christina got out on the rocks to scout, and it proved fruitful. Piles of dried otter scat decorated the rock face, some speckled with reddish-orange crayfish shells. One specimen was placed on a paddle and passed around for the apprentices to examine. What did it smell like? Fishy, of course!

Too soon afterwards, we had put away the canoes and were sitting in the research station. Our gratitudes came quickly: our time in Algonquin, the animals we had seen, the tracks we followed, the moonlight paddle and the moon. Then there was a little packing up, cleaning up, lots of hugs and warm goodbyes. This was a fantastic weekend for us all, and I can’t wait to go back in February!

 

By:  Christina Yu - 2nd year Tracking Student

Urban Edible and Medicinal Plants Class 2014

We spent the last few days in High Park with the Urban Edibles and Medicinals course.  What a weekend! We started on Friday night with introductions to each other and to some wild plants. First was some plants made into teas, one with Lemon balm and one with Red raspberry.  Then we made some infused oils, breaking up some St. John’s wort that was harvested from a family acreage-great to be used in a healing salve for wounds. The flowers of Common elderberry were put into a tincture with some vodka, in preparation for cold and flu season in the winter. Alexis’ slideshow highlighted some key harvesting tips, especially the golden rule: “make sure you have 100% identification before you harvest something”. We also learned about some of the key medicinal plants in our area, including Burdock, Red clover, Dandelion, Coltsfoot and Milkweed.

 

Saturday started with a field guides primer, including how to use using Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide and what books were great to get started with. We set to the trail with our field guides and hadn’t even gone very far when we saw a broad-winged hawk just ahead of us on the trail.  As a jogger scared the bird from it’s spot, instead of flying away, the hawk perched right above us and ate it’s meal, likely a small songbird.  We continued along the trail and found some False Solomon’s seal, Wild sarsparilla, and Mayapple, as well as some other common deciduous forest plants. After lunch we considered why it is that invasive plants species like Garlic mustard have come to our areas and talked about making pesto with the stems. The day culminated with a Sit Spot and Fox Walk in a quiet forested area where we each spent a little time with one plant.  We walked out to our spot slowly, took our time coming back in and had a nice moment of contemplation before we shared some stories and ended with some gratitude.

 

Sunday was Harvesting Day! The morning started off with an excursion to harvest plants to take home with us. We made some teas from Red raspberry, White pine, Wood sorrel and Bee balm.  They were put on top of Alexis’ pick-up truck where lots of passers by were curious of the colourful glass jars as they steeped in the sun. A Sassafras tree was spotted as we started an afternoon walk with some tree ID, including some deciduous, opposite-branching trees like Maple, Ash, Dogwood and Horsechestnut. We looked at several pines trees and headed into a Black Oak Savannah, a unique ecosystem in these parts and a highlight of High Park.  Certain species grow here that are rare in Canada including the Cup or Compass Plant and Butterfly weed.  We did an awareness activity where we were challenged to find a plant that we had been introduced to while blindfolded –opening up our senses beyond simply using sight to get to know a plant.  Returning to the sun teas we’d made in the morning, we tasted them all, including some teas left out overnight-to see the difference in steeping methods.  There was a toss up for favourite tea between Red raspberry and the moon steeped White pine “Moon Pine”. We shared a round of gratitude before our circle broke for the day and we headed home, hopefully to dreams of Stinging nettle and Yarrow to keep ourselves motivated to keep working with the plants. 

 

Post by Alex Thomson - Earth Tracks Intern 2014