Nose Hill Field Trip by Lucy Amberiadis -
The majority of our day was actually spent at Nose Hill!
We met up by the parking lot—grilled Vita on her trip to Cancún, Mexico—and began making our way toward a big grove of trees.
It was a lovely warm day—the rolling hills of Nose Hill were blanketed in icy wet snow, and the sky was a cloudless deep blue.
Inside the mini forest, we built a triangle of small logs, lashing the connecting points with rope, and carried each Coyote at a time as if they were our Queen. Ms. Lea then disappeared to set up one of our new favourite games. Meanwhile, we busied ourselves by attempting to line up in order of height; with our eyes closed and mouths shut. There was lots of grabbing and pushing and suppressed giggles.
When Ms. Lea had finished, we each chose an animal lanyard (you could either be a carnivore, herbivore, or plant), took our according amount of lives (rubber bands), and set off into the immense bush surrounding us. What followed after that is just a wild blur in my memory. I can recall crashing through the underbrush, branches whacking me in the face as I desperately struggled to outrun the predators nipping at my heels. But other than all the running that left my throat burning, it was a peaceful but tiring experience that kept us vigilant and anxious as we searched for the six different hidden symbols that we needed to find to survive.
The rest of our time at Nose Hill was filled with Geocaching, Snow Karate, trekking through deep snow, and tracking. We had a mighty fine time following the tiny impressions of a very small rodent as it travelled a long distance over a plain of snow. And we had a very challenging time trying to figure out what animal a different set of tracks might belong to.
After that, we found a nice place to eat lunch and had a grand time arguing about the book series Keeper of the Lost Cities, telling stories and laughing. Vita also had to beat Mika on the back when she was laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. (Later Mika said the beating hadn’t helped.) And that was also where a big surprise was revealed. A local art gallery was going to have an art show, and the Upstream Forest School classes were invited to showcase some of their art. The theme was “wild”, so we spent some time brainstorming what kind of mural art piece we could create together as a class. From there we began the long walk back to the parking lot, where we split into two cars and drove back to the cabin.
When we arrived at the cabin yet ANOTHER big surprise was revealed. In a couple of weeks, we were going to have a class at Cor.Fit, a Ninja Warrior gym!!! And hopefully, get ice cream after.
The last bit of the day was spent chatting and snowboarding/sledding.
Then it was time to bid adieu…
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