The Fall Semester at Hawk Circle: September 5th-October 30, 2010

Have you ever shot a real bow and arrow? Gathered your dinner from a mountain meadow or grove of trees? Do you know how to skin and prepare good meat from a hunt? Can you make a warm shelter to spend a cold night in the woods?

These are some of the skills offered in the Fall Semester at Hawk Circle.

It's not just skills, though. It is about wandering, connecting, and exploring yourself as you connect to the natural world.

Time changes at Hawk Circle. You can read for hours in the sun or grass, then be inspired to make indian curries for

dinner with your fellow students. You can make your own buckskin, or an ash splint packbasket that you will have for generations. You can sleep under a star filled sky so clear that it takes your breath away.

Insight, healing, rejuvenation and finding one's path are what this program is all about. It will change you in a good way. You will find strength, knowledge, direction and friendship.

Autumn is my favorite season, and the colors of the leaves, the frost, the fresh berries and foods are all amazing. I love giving someone their first taste of cattails, or wild game cooked over the fire. I like sitting out in the pre dawn on someone's first bow hunt, waiting to see what comes along, while we are invisible.

You can build a shelter with sticks, leaves and bark. You

can draw sketches of plants, or carve a bow and arrow. You can learn to timberframe cabins and homes using sustainable methods our ancestors used for hundreds of years, too. You can spend time in the garden, harvesting the remains of the summer crops and planting new seeds for the spring.

Later, as the season winds down, we sit around the woodstove, working on our projects, playing guitar or drums, and share our stories along with sweet birch or pine needle tea. "Will it snow tonight?" someone will ask. "If it gets cold enough!" I will answer, and we go to sleep wondering what the morning will bring.

Eventually, we find our spots on the mountain where we will go to seek our vision, our inner path and truth and purpose. Here we sit for day, or several, some without food, asking for guidance and direction. We support each other in our

seeking and inner journey, under the guidance of our mentors and staff. "It's hard" I say, "but it's worth it."

There is a light that begins to shine in a person's eyes when

they uncover their truth and discover their own path. It is a shine that comes from within and it let's part of their spirit out into the world, seeing things in new ways, with hope and trust and brightness.

If you need a little inner light, or the taste of autumn olive jam on fresh baked bread, come spend a season here at Hawk Circle. We'd love to have you around our campfire.