October 17th

A beautiful Autumn day at Wrens Nest! The forest has been lit with a blaze of colors and what better way to enjoy it than to get out and explore the forest. We decided that today would be perfect for a big hike on the yellow trail, start to finish. Before we left though we had some important morning tasks...

Checking the weather! The air smelled sweet and the sky was full of big puffy clouds with lots of colors. 

Today, Julian was in charge of checking the wind for us. Not too windy...We all agreed that we would want raincoats and sturdy boots or sneakers for our hike. Not quite cold enough for hats and gloves yet, unless you want them of course!

Before crossing the road to the yellow trail we always practice looking both ways and listening for cars with our deer ears. Even though we often hear cars we make sure it doesn't sound like the car is coming towards us. Then we know its safe to cross all together. 

Before we head into the forest on the yellow trail we are sure to ask the kind and gentle forest first. We have to listen very very carefully but the answer is always a resounding "yes!"

We started at the steepest part of the yellow trail, by Footprint Farm which took a lot of strength and coordination especially with all of the slippery leaves we had to walk on.

Our first stop was at a shelter and downed log. We repaired some of the walls that had fallen down and thought about how to make it bigger. 

Julian was shaking raindrops from a small tree and it popped right out of the ground! We looked at the wood where the tree had broken and felt that the wood inside was soft and squishy "like a sponge." We decided that the soft wood and wet ground are probably why it broke so easily. We used the young tree for our shelter and realized that even though trees are tall we might be stronger than some of them. 

We walked as quietly as we could because we new we were passing a neighbors house. Sammy and Samantha told us all about the porcupine who lives along the yellow trail. He has a house in the rocks that is surrounded by scat, a new word for poop, and porcupine quills. Last year he watched all the children look at his house from up high in a tree! 

We checked out out his house (the dark hole in the rocks) which was still surrounded by scat and quills. Some of the children noticed that the scat was very dry so we wondered if he still lived there or if he made a new house. 

We looked in every tree for porcupine, but he was nowhere in sight! 

Some of the children turned into coyotes, climbing to the top of the mossy rocks and howling to the rest of their pack. 

We found something! Layla almost stepped right on top of this garter snake! We knew it was a garter because of the long yellow stripes that run all along its body. 

We were all gathered around watching his tongue wiggle and "smell" when a little red eft crawled out from under the leaf litter right next to the garter! (If you zoom in on the picture you can see him to the right of snakes head!)

We all held our breath and wondered if the snake would eat the red eft, but the snake hardly moved and little eft was safe beneath the leaves again (you can see his tail poking from under the yellow/brown leaf if you look really closely!) We wondered why he didn't try and eat the eft and thought maybe he was distracted by us or maybe he was cold. 

The sun dappled yellow trail...

A wonderful moist day for mushrooming! There was a beautiful circle formation of mushrooms we didn't recognize growing from a hemlock (above) and a huge family of turkey tails on a downed log along the path (below)

Our hike made us hungry and we were surprised to see that the weather had changed since we checked it! The big grey clouds had disappeared and the sun was keeping us warm, so warm that we decided to eat our lunch outside! 

While Samantha was visiting her Grandmother, a ruffed grouse flew into their window and died. Samantha brought the beautiful bird in for us to see. Many of the children wanted to feel its feathers and feet. We decided that it looked peaceful. 

We love the common ground center and all of its land, people, and animals. As a thank you we decided to plant some bulbs near the yellow trail where we had been hiking. We planted daffodils and crocus that will sleep underground all winter long until the snow melts and days grow longer. When spring comes and earth begins to wake we can watch them grow, catch sunbeams in their cups, and feed the bees.  

Planting bulbs and marking them with our decorated sticks.