Cottontails, May 21st

Sometimes true adventure is born from persevering through something hard. The rain took the Cottontails by surprise today. Everyone had a moment that they had to push through. Wether it be cold hands, cold feet, cold everything or just wanting to get out of the rain, Cottontails did an amazing job of keeping their spirits up and still having fun in the wet woods.

We hiked to the Siksikaitsitapi Medicine Wheel and for some saw a medicine wheel for the first time. We learned about the directions and the different elements to the circle. The mental to the north; the emotional to the east; the spiritual to the south and the physical to the west. The cottontails took a sit spot on the wheel and gave an offering of tobacco leaf. The tobacco was given to me as a gift for offering by my sister in law who grew it with permission from a Blackfoot elder. Ask your Cottontail what they remember about the tobacco plant.

After making an S.O.S out of rocks we went back to the woods where we had made a little shelter from an existing teepee. We ate lunch and drank dandelion syrup tea - which to everyone's surprise was too sweet!

To stay warm we went on an alphabet hike and tried to see how many things we could see from the letters of the alphabet. Q and E were really hard. We also played a number of games including camouflage and rabbit in the tree.

At the end of the day we did a debrief based on the medicine wheel. There were some really great reflections - all of which touched on perseverance and gratitude that we weren't actually having to survive in the woods after a train wreck.....ask your Cottontail about that.