Hawk Circle and Waldorf Education

Waldorf education has had a huge influence on me. I will come right out and admit it. My mom was brilliant in putting me in the Sacramento Waldorf School in my early grades, then I was part of the Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School in their pioneering years from fourth to eighth grade. We lived in Camphill Village in Copake, NY, too. The philosophy wasn't something I read about, studied and thought about. It was something I lived, for much of my youth.

Even as I studied my wilderness skills throughout the country, I was never far away from Waldorf communities. I worked with Tamara Slayton in Sebastapol, developing Rites of Passage and Coming of Age events for young men and women. I worked for a summer at the Summerfield Waldorf School's summer day camp in Santa Rosa, and worked at the Hawthorne Valley Farm store for years as I developed the Hawk Circle Summer Camp on the land in that community.

I also worked at Hawthorne Valley School cleaning and doing maintenance projects, as well as being part of the Visiting Students Program on the Farm for several years. It was Nancy Dill, the director of that program, who helped me get Hawk Circle started on the old Agawamuck campsite location. Those were pioneering days!

For me, Waldorf education and the community environment shows up all of the time. I sew, draw, build cabins and teach through storytelling, all skills whose foundations were laid in my early classes at those schools. I am comfortable in front of large groups of people, usually! (Thanks, school play!) and I feel good about creating safe spaces where campers and students can grow and thrive, where they have a good balance of challenge and inner connection to nature that is unique to each group.

I guess this post is a small way of saying thank you to all of my teachers, who were patient with me while I knitted, drew with block crayons, painted in dark colors (I'm colorblind!) and goofed my way through eurythmy! I know I wasn't the easiest person to mentor and bring through the process, so I know it was a labor of love. Yeah, the pay probably wasn't that great either! Hopefully, the work I have tried to develop here at Hawk Circle is part of the growing unfoldment of positive leadership, change and transformation that is taking hold in our world today.

This year, we are working with the Minnesota Waldorf School, the Waldorf School of Garden City, the River Valley Waldorf School, the Rudolf Steiner School in NYC, the Aurora Waldorf School and a number of other schools. They come to Hawk Circle with their sixth grade, or seventh or eighth grade, for a week of immersion into nature, as a group. We work with the class teacher to develop a program that is customized to each class's unique needs, modifying native crafts, skills, adventures and experiences that will help ensure an awesome experience.

It is a great feeling to go into those schools and visit their class/parents, (as we do for each group that comes to Hawk Circle). We can really feel the strength, the caring and the dedication that is present, and to see the effect it has on the youth, on everyone, really. It makes me proud to have been and still be a part of this movement, and to support it with our wilderness camps and class trips.

I have a small article coming out in the next issue of LILIPOH, the unofficial publication of the expanding Waldorf influenced universe, as well as mention in a similar Waldorf education meets wilderness education article in Renewal (the official publication of Waldorf!) We look forward to continued collaboration and support in these movements, for the benefit of our children and young adults, and, well, all of us!

Please note: By the way, the pic above is of the October 2007 Baltimore Waldorf Coming of Age program at the Gunpowder Falls State Park in Maryland.

The Blog is Born: Hawk Circle gets interactive!

Well, we did it. We have a blog online, and you can leave comments about any of the things we have written here. Questions. Comments. Ideas and suggestions. Heck, you can even leave poetry!

But I will be realistic. You probably won't.

I am not thinking negative here, just observing human nature. My nature, even. I read blogs from time to time, and really enjoy them, but rarely ever leave comments. I will read the comments too, but still rarely leave anything behind for the writers/creators to see.

Overall, I understand it, because I have an excuse. We're busy! All of us.

But, if you like anything we put up here, and if it resonates with you, feel free to leave us a comment.

Just in case!

Either way, I am writing to give you insight into who we are, in a way that we can't do on the main website, in our course description or brochures, that gives you a sense of our personalities and our outlook on our work at Hawk Circle. Because there is a lot of variety out there when it comes to Wilderness Schools and their philosophies. Some are pretty radical, by some measures. Others are pretty mainstream. It is good to make sure the course, camp or program you select matches what you are looking for.

Anyway, I will do my best, and you can feel free to e-mail me with any questions, too.

More, much more, is coming soon. Prepare for content, people! This has been a long time coming, and it is going to be fun!

See you soon!

Welcome to Hawk Circle 2.0!

If you are looking at the pictures over there to the right, you will see some of what I was working on during all of those months that I wasn't writing in my journal!

Yeah, that's right! Cabins! And not just any cabins, either, but beautiful, traditional timberframed cabins....

We cut this frame this summer, before and during the workshop with Craig Boynton, and raised the frame as part of the Sustainability Basecamp experience. (Thanks, guys!) We put the first cabin high in the meadow, because it is the first of four new cabins here at Hawk Circle. They will transform our programs, both in making them more sustainable, more protected and less seasonal. Currently, our tents are made overseas, last a couple of months and then are wrecked, leading to a continuation of the cycle. They don't hold up well in snow, or winds or heavy rains, and they make everyone damp and cramped. I'm not trying to badmouth tenting, because we have been able to have some great camps for 16 years using them and they have been ok.

But the time has come to change this. Time to upgrade. Okay isn't good enough, and we want to move towards something more, something deeper, something awesome....

I think when you see them, you are going to be surprised. Impressed, maybe, or even a little excited! They are so beautiful and strong and solid. They laugh at blizzards. Strong winds are like a backrub to these fellows! You will have to come and visit to find out more!

We are in the process of cutting two more cabins this winter, and fundraising for the last cabin as well. We will raise them this spring, when the snow melts, and get the roof shingles on, then the siding and windows and doors. Jerry and I will be working long hours, and it will be good. Honest work. Fun work. Rewarding work!

The staff are excited, but for different reasons. No more tarp repairs at midnight when the wind has ripped them down in a rainstorm. No more bug netting repairs of zippers by headlamp. No more taking them down, storinng them for next year, and trying to find the right stakes, poles or rainflies! No more leaks that lead to wet clothes, sleeping bags, washing machines, dryers, wasted time, wasted energy..... Can you imagine? They can!

Translation: Better sleep for all. Less time spent on logistics. More time for stories, mentoring, learning, growing. Safer, in the worst thunderstorm. Good Times!

For me, personally, I am living the dream. I see these cabins built and lasting for a hundred years or more. Your grandchildren could sleep in the cabins we have made, with our own hands, some chisels and handsaws, and experience Hawk Circle in ways that will be traditions for us all. We are building a legacy that will change the lives of many.

The pictures tell the story of the cutting, raising, and something about what the campfire circle looks like now.... A new camp firewood shed. A staff Cabin, with new First Aid deck and the Incredible Handwashing Station.....

Ok, I will take a break now, because I think you get it!

I will tell you more about the Fall Earth Skills Semester too, and also a bit about the Winter Intensive, going on now!

Ciao!

Ricardo

Technical Difficulties

Well, here is how it played out: We went on the Tracking Expedition out in Cape Cod, and it was really successful and amazing. When we returned, I was all set to upload pictures and stories and showcase our new summer workshops and stuff like that. And that is when the trouble started.

We use Adobe Contribute to make changes or additions to our website, and it began to malfunction. I started to find out why, and learned that I needed to get the latest version of the software. Being that we are a non-profit organization, we had to go through the non-profit and educational department of the company, and then order the software, verify that we are indeed who we say we are, and this took several weeks. People, this stuff takes time!

There is installation, connecting to the website securely and lots of other details that are in the way before I could actually sit here and start this update! Whew!

In between all of this ordering, updating and stuff like that, I managed to visit about eight schools, talk to countless parents, visit some colleges, move the cabin from the lower parking area to the new campsite, built an adirondack lean-to cabin, installed our new bridge railing and deck, started getting the camp road intensely upgraded and countless other big and small projects completed....

And guess what? I didn't do it all by myself, either! I had a lot of help from everyone here at Hawk Circle, and lots of volunteers too. Barry, Luke, Matt, Jerry, Amy, Sean, Lyn, Trista, Dave, Matt and Ryan all kicked butt under pressure, and we excelled and it was good. Come to Hawk Circle and see for yourself. Or just look at the pictures!

But, seriously, back to the Tracking Expedition....

It is hard to describe the feeling of leading someone to seeing more in the forest. To become closer to nature, to the animals, the plants and trees, we spent time with these things. We studied the sands, and the way the sands moved and aged. We studied our own footprints, and those of each other. We tracked in deep leaves and pine needles, finding each footprint by sight and then later, by feel. We went out in the night and experienced the ocean in a storm, and found the red fox who had walked there before us. We gathered kinickkinick, sweet fern, reeds for arrows and beautiful stones and shells.

Frankly, I was amazed at the speed with which every student learned and grew. We challenged and tested each other, even as we practiced reading the very emotion of the person we were following. The last few days we tracked deer, rabbits, skunks, coyotes and crows, and followed these extensively, learning so much about track indentification, varied ageing, animal behavior and how they moved and responded to the landscape, weather, presence of people, cars, birds and other animals. We not only learned intensely but we also played intensely, with whateve was available, and it was good. It was healing. It was powerful. I thought of the countless days of my own training under the relentless guidance of my mentor and teacher Tom Brown, Jr, and how he pushed me to be the best I could be. I thought often of my own independent study of months and months, and how much I learned on my own, in the woods, trails, deserts or mountains, with few people to share my discoveries and I thought of how special it was for us all to be together, learning with each other and being able to talk about what we did, how it felt, and the wonder of it all... I feel truly thankful and blessed to have been a part of it all. Luke Gaillard was so great, so detailed and carefully prepared that it made the trip seem effortless. I learned a lot from his teaching and rolemodeling the very best traits and ideals of what a tracker is. If you get a chance to learn and explore the natural world with Luke, don't walk but run to be a part of it! All in all, it was much too short, and we left so grateful for the land, the learning and the use of Luke's family's house, which gave us a special place to renew ourselves between outings... Thank you so much!

I will write more about the last few weeks here, the school groups, the gardens, the new campsites and stuff like that in a few days. Now that my software is up and running, I can write anytime I want! Until then, have a great day!

The Valentine's Day Blizzard

or How My Week's Plans Changed from Meetings to Digging and Shoveling and Moving Snow

I guess you can't call it a blizzard, really, because technically, a blizzard is a complete white-out, where you cannot see anything except snow, and you have trouble knowing which way is up. We didn't have that in this storm, although it was close, especially as it got dark. However, I wouldn't call this snowstorm 'weak' in any way either! It managed to drop over three and a half feet of snow in one day and caused me and the rest of our community here at Hawk Circle a lot of hard, physical work just to dig out and reopen our road the the outside world.

We woke on Wednesday to about ten inches of fresh powder snow, on top of the foot of powder we already had. It was still snowing hard and it continued all day, and into the evening, when it finally subsided. By that time, we had spent about five or six hours plowing the snow into deep banks on the side of the road, shoveled our paths out of the houses to the woodsheds and roads countless times, trying to keep up with the storm. In the end, we slept and waited for the storm to move on.

On Thursday, Barry Keegan, our awesome Head Instructor, hiked in on snowshoes to see how we were all doing. We began to plow again, and dig and shovel, and probably made it halfway out of the driveway with Sean, myself and Barry alternating and digging out the truck when it got stuck. We would ram the snow into piles and then try to move those piles further off of the road, and every once in a while we would get stuck, the friction of the snow around, under, on top and alongside the truck just too much for the tires to pull us free. Then the digging started, and we would get out, and then start all over again. Progress was measured in feet, and each push brought us a few inches closer to our goal: Route 166!

All in all, we were in good spirits, although we were tired, sore and ready to be out by Friday! We almost ran out of gas, so we had to hike out to the road with gas cans in a sled, by snowshoe, and hike back with full cans so we could keep on plowing and pushing.

We felt free and excited to be out when we finally met Ken Haggerty coming in along the last stretch, and after a few more hours of clean up and scraping, we were done. We laughed at how much snow this storm brought us, and how glad we were that it wasn't rain and floods, and also at how beautiful the land was all covered in fresh powder.

I wanted to get these pictures up just to show you that we survived this massive storm and that we did well, and that it was amazing and awesome and also very tiring! I am still recovering from the full body workout, but it felt good too, to be so fully focused and work so hard. Kind of like doing a summer camp or school group program!

I will write more soon, but just look at the amazing depth of this snowfall and come visit if you have a chance! We would love to see you and take you out skiing or sledding or whatever!

This sure makes my last post seem a bit off, doesn't it? Irony. Well, we got plenty of that around here to go around. Help yourself to a plateful!

Ricardo

A New Year

There is something weird going on with the weather around here. Plants budding and leafing out. Bats coming out of hibernation to search for non-existent insects. Spring peepers singing for mates. Grouse drumming on fallen logs. No snow. No cold. Southern winds blowing and thick clouds racing like a chinook storm in March.....

Yeah, it is probably just La Niña.

Right.

Well, if it doesn't get cold, this is what it means. More deer and wood ticks. More tent and gypsy moth caterpillars. No soil aeration from freezing and expanding. No seeds awakened by the cold frost. No other pests killed by cold. Expanded deer herds leading to more car accidents. No maple syrup season.

And on and on and on....

So what can we do? I mean, honestly, what can we do about any of this?

We can pray. We can ask for help from something greater, that balance be restored in time for a real (short) winter. We can even ask ourselves what is in our hearts and seek our own personal changes that will help bring about this balance.

Meditate. Take a walk. Talk to the trees and the winds. Ask whoever you talk to when you need strength, to guide us all, and listen carefully for the answer.

It might take some time, but listen anyway. We are all counting on you to share your message and your heart's voice, that we all might learn and find common ground. Perhaps this can be a good thing, this out of balance crazy world, if it can help to bring us closer together.

Good luck and if you feel called, please write to me about anything you find out. My heart is with you and the nature around you. Be well, and may this year bring us closer together, in spirit and in purpose.

Ricardo

The Last Day of Walkabout Camp

This summer has been intense. Both for me and the camps, as well as our staff and all of the many volunteers and students here this summer. It started off with a great staff training, waaaaay back in June, and then we had the most severe flooding we have ever had here in the county. The water ran over our bridge, and washed out a lot of our road, and we had to do some filling of ditches to make things safe for travel. Our newsletters alerted our friends and supporters about the situation, and we raised over $4,000 in the weeks that followed, to help repair the bridge and road.

We applied to FEMA and the NYSEMO, to see if we can get aid in the form of grants or loans, and are still waiting to hear back about how much we are eligible for. If there is a funding gap, we are hoping to see if there is a way we can seek additional aid. We are currently waiting for estimates from our area contractors, just to have them give us a ball park idea of what kinds of repairs and their costs might be, and with so much damage to other areas in the region, they are taking a long time to get back to us. So we are hopeful it will work out. I will try to keep you posted.

So, anyway, after the flooding, we kept rolling with our camps. We went to a one-week camp format this year, rather than two weeks, which is how we used to do our programs for the last 15 years. I am happy to report that initial responses to this new format were very positive. We were able to actually focus our teaching on specific areas that let to real skills being taught, learned and practiced. Hawk's Hearth, our camp that focused on wilderness cooking, and Yellowknife, which focused on camp skills, were really big hits. The students raved about what they learned, and more importantly, you could see the changes in the students, in how they stood, carried themselves, etc. You can't hide confidence, and it was great to see.

We had so much rain this summer that the wildflowers were especially spectacular. Our gardens flourished, and the kitchen staff made meals the kids seemed to enjoy each day. All in all, it seems, the ingredients for a good summer came together perfectly! We also completed many projects, with Earth Skills Program graduate Ryan Smith creating a new stone causeway for our trail up to camp, to alleviate the perpetual muddy path and bridge. We had many staff and caretaker helpers complete the Chesapeake Deck project, which was promptly enjoyed by all by the time it was operational. Volunteers Schuyler Senft-Grupp, Justin Katsuki, and Ryan Smith helped get the frame done, and Walt Gigandet did much of the construction for the frame and deck. Rebecca Schinazi, Josh Roberts, Eli Martz, Abigail Houghton, Tim Brown and Barry Keegan helped with the decking and then the white ash railing, which is beautiful and sturdy, and keeping with our wilderness theme! Many caretakers helped with other aspects of the deck and construction, including the stone ramp and courtyard in front of the deck, and Tim Manney helped with lots of stone work around our barns and camp. We really appreciate the work you all did, and for all of the supporters who donated to the Deck Fund in so many ways, to help it to happen. Thank you.

I have photos that I want to post, but I don't have my camera ready to download them, so I will put them up next time, but soon I will be posting many things all through the website, and I will let you know when I send out our e-Newsletter. If you want to get it, just e-mail me and I will sign you up, or you can click on the menu to the left and sign yourself up. It is easy to do, costs nothing, and you can get off the list at any time. Best of all, it is full of camp and program news, articles, stories and community learning, as well as updates and even a little poetry if we get the space and time. So don't miss it!

Have a great last week of summer, and we will hope to see you soon.....

Ricardo