Written by Recap of the Sly Park camp week. One of the main educational purposes was to familiarize the kids with their backdoor nature. Besides learning about environmental threats like wild fires, drought or invasive species there was also a lot of focus on the experience of being part of this whole ecosystem.
One exercise was sitting still for 15 min away from everybody else and to listen to the trees, to look into the moving clouds, to spot birds and squirrels, to smell the pine needles, to feel the ants crawl over your hand. This particular day was really beautiful, not too warm, not too cold; sunny with a few clouds in the sky – peaceful. I enjoyed it very much just to sit there for this small amount of time in a meditation kind of mode. For me it came as a salvation after being around 53 lively kids for several days almost nonstop – just sitting there looking into the forest in silence.
For most of the kids that was one of their first experiences of being somehow alone with themselves, not being exposed to radio, TV, Xbox, friends, phones etc. You could see on their faces the look of “What are we going to do?” I guess the appreciation for these small breaks in our hectic world comes with age. At the age of 12 everything is still super exciting and new things come to you constantly, your brain is like a sponge and any downtime is considered waste. However, all of them made it through the 15 minutes and later on collected their ideas and thoughts during that time.
I tend to believe they enjoyed that little duration of peace as well.
