The Hub, which is sort of our center of operations at science camp, has been busy this week with a million and one different minor (in both senses of the word, I guess) crises. There have been lots of the usual fevers, stomach aches, and homesickness, as well as other assorted sprained ankles, lost monkeys (a crying kid thought he'd lost his stuffed monkey in the field after dark, so a coworker and I spent a lot of useless time out with a flashlight looking for it - the damn thing turned up under his bed), a boy who couldn't get his jacket unzipped after the night hike (I couldn't either, so I turned him over to a teacher), and others too numerous to mention.

On Tuesday, near the end of the afternoon hike, one of the kids spotted a large bird perched on a broken branch at the top of a dead, fungus-riddled tree. I borrowed binoculars from a girl and managed to figure out that it was either a Cooper's Hawk or a Sharp-Shinned Hawk before it flew away. We walked up the trail to get a closer look at the fungus and, unfortunately for us, off the trail for an even closer look. That's when the Yellowjackets attacked. This always results in panicked screaming and running, but, being a veteran of this sort of thing (the last one happened almost exactly a year ago), managed to keep things relatively in control. I had to remove the shirts of two boys because the wasps were crawling around inside them. After some diligent work, I managed to remove all of the wasps. Another group was nearby, and they helped keep the unstung kids occupied while we dealt with the ones who needed help. My little bottle of vinegar (a mild acid to neutralize the mild alkalinity of the wasp poison) finally came in handy. During all of the commotion, I barely noticed that I'd been stung four times. Now it kind of itches. Two of the boys (probably the ones who'd stepped on the nest) got the worst of it. One of them was really upset at first because he'd never been stung before and he was worried that he might be allergic. I told him that if he was allergic he'd already know at that point, and this calmed him down.

Afterwards, I was a bit worried that they'd be reluctant to do more hiking, but that has proven not to be the case. A few of them are still a little nervous, but it could have been much worse.

The kids this week, despite the hubbub around the Hub, have been really good. Some of them really stand out. Here a few excerpts from journal entries they did after the night hike:

Our eyes were proven wrong because we saw beauty can be found even in dirt... Our feet were our eyes as we walked along the path.
By Wildflower

As the shadow creeps over the forest, the diurnal animals go to sleep, and the nocturnal animals awake. There is music in the night. The crickets sing. The coyote howls. An owl flaps silently overhead, outlined by the stars...

By Tiger

It's good to know that some of the kids get it. I wish that they all did. It was a beautiful hike this week. We went out into the chaparral where we could see the stars. In the distance the city lights were visible, and the smell of the Coyote brush combined with a thousand other wilderness smells made me nostalgic for childhood.

The top photo is of mist rising over the trees on Wednesday. The bottom one, taken today, is of the picnic area where we had our wedding reception three years and one day ago, taken from the platform in the Peterson Memorial Grove where we were wed.