A great day filled with plants, birds, some singing and good people of all ages. The Red Winged Black Birds were calling non-stop, and gave us fits trying to listen for anything else. The dandelions painted faces yellow, and shared their sweet and bitter flavours! So fun!
To begin with, a small circle of people on the grass in the Humber Valley indicated a rather relaxing afternoon. Gone were ideas of individual kids, family, and adult activities. Gone were ideas of an afternoon filled with programming, and (lightly) structured play. A group of seven of us, all similar ages sat and chatted, introduced ourselves to each other, and discussed some of the things we were excited to search out and learn today. Plants and birds were the focus. Flowers littered the lawn, and Red Winged Black Birds created the soundtrack to the afternoon, so this was less than surprising. By the time we’d actually gotten started, we’d been joined by multiple families and a handful of others for an afternoon of learning outside.
One of the volunteers at the Tracking Club describes the story of the day:
We began with a song, sitting in a circle of no more than 8, but enjoying the sun, the wind and the bird song:
Celebrate the sun all around
Celebrate the green plants growing from the ground
Celebrate the new paradise we’ve found
Celebrate the sun all around
And celebrate we did! We searched out wildflowers, listened to the birds, explored the river bank, and appreciated the day that spring brought us.
The afternoon started with wildflower IDing. For an hour we became nature detectives, crawling around in the bushes of the Humber Valley. It was a collaborative effort figuring things out – first what we were looking at, holding, smelling, and then whether it was edible. Anything that turned out to be edible went down the hatch. We were focused on lawn plants to begin with, so we weren’t worried about eating rare or endangered species. Dandelions were everywhere, and we even had some wild carrot. While we were feasting, one of the kids who joined us was playing at the river with her mom. The lucky pair got to watch a doe and two fawns cross the Humber! What a cool experience! Am I jealous? Obvi. But my goal for the day was to learn more about wildflowers, and now I know, among other things, that burdock makes awesome toilet paper (the leaves, not the burrs). So I wouldn’t trade my time in the grass, but I will be keeping my eyes peeled for deer!
Later, a few of us went on a little adventure that began with building an awesome little fort. Our leader, 6 year old Wilkie, was the genius architect behind it. We satisfied our inner contractors with a cross-hatch design and bark to seal the holes. After realizing it was only big enough for one adult and one child, those who couldn’t fit got jealous and we moved on to exploring the riverbank and collecting some garbage to clean up an otherwise beautiful area. The sticky mud was perfect for preserving tracks, providing our deer fix for the day when we found perfect hoof prints. Wilkie also found a pretty gnarly dead fish, which we all decided was a bottom feeder of some sort, due to the shape of it’s mouth. Once we’d hunted around and collected a full bag of garbage, we wandered back to the others and told stories of our adventure.
One of the other participants hit it on the nose – as awesome as it can be to explore a park by yourself, there’s something special about doing it with a group of like-minded people. It’s one heck of a community to belong to!
It was a really nice afternoon that I carried with me into the night as I re-joined the downtown population… along with a few dandelions to chow on.
