Busy

The more noteworthy events that happen, the less time I have to write about them. It is well and truly Spring now, meaning that precipitation is percolating away into the soil and leaving only the memory of moisture behind.

Willow had three small roles in her school's production of Beauty & the Beast, and last weekend her hours of rehearsal paid off. The production was quite impressive for a middle school play, with elaborate sets, choreography, and props. A lot of the actors could really sing too. Here's a photo of Willow after her final performance.

The last two weeks of camp have been good ones. Last week, our all-day hike on Thursday was under clouds and drizzle. At the reservoir, carp were shimmering in the shallows, and the kids all thought they were fighting. We watched them while the kids chanted, "fish fight! Fish fight!"

We ate lunch up the initial stretch of the new section of the John Nicholas trail. Everything was wet and glistening, while underfoot, newts placidly made their way through the duff on newt business.

Near camp, we found this pretty character:

This week, there were reptiles everywhere, which made a lot of the kids absolutely ecstatic. There was a group of boys in the garden every day at recess so they could look for lizards. One boy in my group got to catch his first snake this week, and it proved to be a highlight of the week for him. Here's the snake, being handled by enthusiastic sixth graders:

I caught another large Kingsnake on the same hike.

I also found a pair of large Northern Pacific rattlesnakes wedged in between a couple of boulders, but didn't manage to get a good photo because it's hazardous to pick up rattlesnakes and pose them, and there were too many plants and shadows making their location unphotogenic. They were a beautiful pair though.

On the night hike, a girl in my group took a little break from reality, wandered out of our circle, and collapsed against a nearby tree. She complained of being dizzy, and after we got her on her feet, she collapsed again. I called our hub host to come get her back to camp. While waiting, and after getting her into the rescue position and keeping her talking, I got her to reveal that she had gotten enough sleep, eaten well, and had only taken a cough drop. No red flags stood out. By the time back-up arrived, she said that she could walk well enough to make it back to camp without the use of our ATV (formerly known as "jogging stroller"). I later learned that she'd taken a high dose of benadryl for allergies, and when her temperature was taken, it was revealed that she had a 102 degree fever. Her collapse had scared some of the other campers (they wrote about it the next day), but we had a successful conclusion to our hike.

This little fellow was on a nearby tree stump:

We ended the week by making a mandala. I really enjoy doing these with kids. Every one of them is different, and after taking photos, we disarrange them so that no trace of our passing remains.