We have registered as a family to undertake "A" John Muir Award.....
Here is the account of 2010 - 2011 activity in this regard!
Getting started.
Summary of Award Proposal: Discovery level
Summary of Award Proposal: Discovery level
As an extended family activity; to explore a plot of 14.5 acres of mixed woodland and rough pasture in Quebec Canada
To map and describe the 14.5 acres, to identify features and habitats in that plot; to see it in the context of the locale. To build a picture of the needs and opportunities for maintenance of the woodland, including an assessment of fallen trees for their usefulness as fuel, and the possibility of clearing “rides” to encourage wildlife. To build a web-report of the activity.
To map and describe the 14.5 acres, to identify features and habitats in that plot; to see it in the context of the locale. To build a picture of the needs and opportunities for maintenance of the woodland, including an assessment of fallen trees for their usefulness as fuel, and the possibility of clearing “rides” to encourage wildlife. To build a web-report of the activity.
Group background:
An extended family group P & A are in their “middle years”; they visit the site for holiday twice a year - three weeks in the summer and a week in the winter. G & J are son and daughter in law and Canadian residents; they visit for a week in the summer at least. J & R are nephew and niece by marriage and US residents; with their children B & L, they will visit this summer (2010) for 2 to 4 days.
Outline how your Proposal meets the 4 Award Challenges:
Discover a Wild Place
Identify a wild place (or places) on which to focus Award activity - find out or become aware of it, whether by research, word of mouth, or by chance, and experience it directly. This can be a garden, school grounds, a park or beach, or any other wild place that’s local, national or international. Experience it; enjoy it, maybe in different seasons, times of day, weather conditions, and company…
What are you going to do and how?
Identify
Difficult to see how to answer this; the plot of land exists and is already well know to us - although not yet explored.
Experience
We plan a shared family activity holiday with opportunity for many activities - walking, riding, fishing, canoeing in the surrounding area….
Enjoy
It’s difficult NOT to enjoy this place! We intend to be out and about most of the time. From the bustle of a horse-ride to the silence of the wood whilst you wait for the deer to come. From campfires with suppers cooked over the embers to shared picnics with resident neighbours. What’s not to enjoy?
Discovering
Timing and personnel:
It was our intention to carry this out as a family, with each of the residents and visitors to 107 contributing towards and sharing in the four days each needed to satisfy the award requirements at the first level. This hasn’t proved to be possible in the way that we intended. But that’s not to say that we haven’t been deeply involved with the place, it’s difficult to the point of impossibility not to be!
P & A arrived at the site on Saturday evening, 26th July, and left on the 13th of August.
G &J – very tired after a long and breakdown ridden journey from Toronto - on Saturday lunchtime, 31st July; they left on Monday, 2nd August. Their visit shouldn’t really count; they can take part in an award another time!
J & R with their children B &L (for whom this award was really undertaken), arrived late Friday evening, the 6th August and left late, Monday the 9th of August.
Discovering:
The site is 14.4 acres of mixed woodland in the Laurentian countryside in Quebec province, Canada.
The land underlying is glacial, the soil, its called “terre brune”, is generally very poor, sandy with many small and larger rocks. In places, there are large “accidentals” on the surface, pieces of rock the size of a car and upwards, that once formed the grinding teeth of the glacier then covering the ground to a depth of more than a kilometre. In still other places, whole pieces of the underlying shield rock are exposed as whale-backs, shouldering their way through the earth. Where the glacial action has interacted with particularly exposed strata, the down-stream parts of these vertebral up-thrusts have fractured off, to form “roches moutoneés”. It is a land of lakes and trees. There’s no open water on site but if you peer carefully through the woodland that shields us from the road, you can see Lac C, an expanse of water about three kilometres wide. We’re 200 yards away from the lake access, a distance that makes canoe portage possible!
The trees are mostly maples, with some in-growth of various conifers. There is an area of perhaps an acre of cleared land, now become the roughest of pastures, at this time of year just blushing into gold as the Golden Rod begins to flower.
It was our intention to carry this out as a family, with each of the residents and visitors to 107 contributing towards and sharing in the four days each needed to satisfy the award requirements at the first level. This hasn’t proved to be possible in the way that we intended. But that’s not to say that we haven’t been deeply involved with the place, it’s difficult to the point of impossibility not to be!
P & A arrived at the site on Saturday evening, 26th July, and left on the 13th of August.
G &J – very tired after a long and breakdown ridden journey from Toronto - on Saturday lunchtime, 31st July; they left on Monday, 2nd August. Their visit shouldn’t really count; they can take part in an award another time!
J & R with their children B &L (for whom this award was really undertaken), arrived late Friday evening, the 6th August and left late, Monday the 9th of August.
Discovering:
The site is 14.4 acres of mixed woodland in the Laurentian countryside in Quebec province, Canada.
The land underlying is glacial, the soil, its called “terre brune”, is generally very poor, sandy with many small and larger rocks. In places, there are large “accidentals” on the surface, pieces of rock the size of a car and upwards, that once formed the grinding teeth of the glacier then covering the ground to a depth of more than a kilometre. In still other places, whole pieces of the underlying shield rock are exposed as whale-backs, shouldering their way through the earth. Where the glacial action has interacted with particularly exposed strata, the down-stream parts of these vertebral up-thrusts have fractured off, to form “roches moutoneés”. It is a land of lakes and trees. There’s no open water on site but if you peer carefully through the woodland that shields us from the road, you can see Lac C, an expanse of water about three kilometres wide. We’re 200 yards away from the lake access, a distance that makes canoe portage possible!
The trees are mostly maples, with some in-growth of various conifers. There is an area of perhaps an acre of cleared land, now become the roughest of pastures, at this time of year just blushing into gold as the Golden Rod begins to flower.
Lakes and trees, then, determine much of our lives here; so entering this environment is often a matter of preparing for those elements. For a year now (three weeks last summer and one more so far this year) we have been building a canoe to take us in to the water; but this season the exploration has been as much of people, relationships and community, as of the wildness that surrounds us. We are privileged to be not visitors but a part of the place itself; the birds that come to the feeders, the fox-cubs that play tag outside the front-door, the woodpeckers that make loud the silent woods, the lights that flow out from the house at night as the cool air flows in through fly-screened windows all combine in one gentle place.
Sinking deeper in to the community needs planning. Although the conveniences of our industrialised society mean that we have running water and electricity and warmth (but no air-conditioning ) and could be self-sufficient by making a weekly supermarket shop, three quarters of an hour away, we choose to live as close to community as we can and so shop and chat locally.
Explore its Wildness
Explore and travel extensively, by walking, camping, canoeing… or just sitting, looking and listening, in order to understand and appreciate more about it. What makes it wild? Is it a special place - why? How do wild things (plants, animals, insects, birds, people) depend on each other? Use environmental activities that engage all the senses. Make a map, do a wildlife survey, identify plants, animals, birds. Take photographs, videos or sound diaries. Paint or draw plants, animals and landscapes. Keep a nature diary.
Explore
We have walked the northern boundary of the plot; I managed to get lost on the Southern boundary last year L. We are aware of some of the features of the site but need to gain a clearer view of them.
Appreciate
It is a great place to sit and listen. The rough meadow has a mixture of species of plant; it will be good to try to make a census of flowering plants using a flora.
Map
See above! Just mapping the plot will be very useful at this stage and may well take all of us all of the 4 days!
Record
Some of us draw and paint, others like to use photographs; we have the skills to make casts of animal tracks. We can collaborate to form a log of the endeavour.
Discovering
The village, 5 kilometres away by twisting, dirt road, has a boulangerie – a traditional baker’s. The people there came to the village three years ago and live here all year. In the winter, they bake only three days a week; in the summer, they work for six!
When they first came, they had a third adult in the shop – the previous owner - who was teaching them the skills. I remember the look of apprehension on our present baker’s face as he explained that he was new to the job and with relatively little time to learn it.
Now they greet us like yet another returning migrant species, perhaps as much marking their year by our arrival as we do by our remaking their acquaintance. Their “pain a douze grains” is as close to familiar as we can get; it’s lighter than British bread – but splendidly denser than British supermarket bread. This year they made me a loaf of douze grains in a square tin – just because I might like it!
There is a pace and generosity of life and spirit here that seems to recognise the long experience of hard-won existence from this land. Nothing seems too difficult for anyone; no kindness seems too strained. Folk wave, they stop in greeting and they share – food, conversation, lives, seemingly everything. We have already seen this land in winter, when the cold can fall to minus 30 degrees and the land is covered under a blanket of silent diamonds.
If preparation had not been made, how then would anyone have survived?
So, in modern, needless homage to that tradition we winterise the barn, “chinking” the gaps between the logs in plus 32 degrees, against the wind that will seek every glimmer and crack when the temperature is inverted, only six months from now.
And we shall take our harvest of timber, dead and fallen in the woods behind, to log up, split and stack for the wood-burner’s use in those same, distant days. The roar of chain-saw (enough wood for a week in winter takes too much cutting by hand-saw for this elderly body!) might briefly shatter the tranquillity of the wood, startling the wildlife to shelter, but it, too is a part of this place, a part of the rhythm of the turning year. Wood cut and stacked dries well and comes seasoned to hand when the frost turns the trip to the wood-pile into a chilly expedition.
So much for the wholeness of this place in the interaction of humanity with the wild world; what then of that wild world’s untouched corners?
Thirty steps from the front door, twenty from the back, the silence begins. This is no managed terrain; here the underbrush previously cleared by a crop of goats is re-asserting itself with four-inch maple seedlings and a fakir’s mat of pine-sproutings. It’s high summer; but this year the drone of flies is thankfully muted.
(Thursday, 5th) The weather has swung to hot and humid. As we sat at supper, at least a dozen dragon-flies hawked for food beneath the adjacent trees and out over the meadow. We have thunderstorms; not majestic, hill-breaking storms, but grouchy, rumbling storms that sweep in black clouds and tip hot gobbets of rain, drenching you between work and the house and rattling on the screen-room roof. But the sandy soil will soak it up in moments.
I spoke too soon; stealing in under one thundercloud came a blast of wind so strong, and so prolonged, that it lifted the screen-room roof, and part of the screen room itself off its (rotten) footings, brought down one of the trunks of the dead birch in the meadow and cut the power for three hours. After a day of sweltering heat, and half an hour of frantic activity in driving, chill rain, we were reduced to a cold supper and a single oil lamp. The power came back on just before bed–time; sad really!
Exploring
(Friday, 6th) P&A have explored this place at many levels already. But it’s great having kids around to show you something new! B (13) and L (10) hadn’t really latched on to what they were coming to! They live in Burlington, Vermont; one of the States of the USA that border directly on to Canada to their north. It’s a long but quite easy drive from them to the site. They are Grand-nephew and Grand-niece (!) to PA. Once introductions to the horses and the accommodation had been made, and supper consumed (such appetites!) they crashed out, but were ready to begin another glorious Laurentian morning on the Saturday!
Part of exploring for them is to have to cope in French (here is very French-speaking) ordering bread and making their introductions at the Boulangerie. Then back for breakfast and a briefing about John Muir and about what we intended to achieve this three days, beginning with a canoe trip to a lake we haven’t previously seen; Lac N, connected to C by a culvert under Ch M.
R has canoed since childhood; the kids are water-babies, well able to steer a canoe or kayak both. But we did a proper gear check – life-jackets, painters, spare paddle and bailer, spare warm dry clothes in the barrel, a whistle, waterproofs, water (and lunch!) – just the same. Off then in three canoes in to a cool head-wind from the North. Sunny but no more than 16 degrees, a huge change from previous days!
There’s a lot of steering strokes from the adults going on here, a moderation of power from the kids! The “Greats” paddled their own … well, you get the idea!
Here’s lunch by the (almost) completely deserted Lake! Warm water for wading, silence except for one visiting jet-ski for perhaps ten minutes ….
After lunch, of course the wind had swung round, and was still providing us with opposition. We nosed into the next bay along and a great grey heron lazily decided it would rather not share our company and flapped resignedly off to find another corner of swamp to fish in.
Just back through the tunnel under the road, we came across a bull-frog. You could see the tympanum behind the eye. I think that’s what they make all the noise with.
We stopped and messed about on the little beach a bit, and then, fairly weary to home!
Sunday started quite leisurely with the intention of exploring the extent of the 14 odd acres. We meandered along the track through the back lot until we came to the chemin that cuts (well, sort of pushes really) through the rest of the wood.
From there it’s a simple “mistake”, what with the day being young and the kids’ energy boundless, to follow the way-marks up and down through the maple forest to Raven’s Crag.We were a pretty noisy bunch on the way out, kids rushing ahead and adults either ploughing on in some sort of nervous anticipation, or doggedly bringing up the rear!
But the crag itself – a granite cliff of perhaps 150 feet more or less straight down to the water - brought a happy compliance with “OK – let’s have a silent count of 30” which went on for at least a minute. The wind in the trees, the distant lapping of water, the calls of birds in the woods and further afield;
beautiful.
Some of us don’t do heights too well….
We seem to have picked up different markers on the way back, and came down the steep slope to the well-cut path beside the water – well, 20 wooded meters away!
Lunch was a sprawling, generous sort of affair. It’s our firm tradition to offer thanks before Lunch and supper each day. Each of us round the table brought to mind a favourite part of the walk; Muir would have recognised both the fun and the fervour of the thanks offered.
But there’s no stopping these children. As the sky became more overcast, what do you have to do if you come to Canada? Why, cut down a tree of course! More review of good practice (safety training some would say) and off to the meadow where the long-blasted birch had shed part of a trunk with the Thursday blow-through. Here’s L hard at it…..
Of course – the rain really DID come down, and the kids all a-fizz after such activity. But the skills of Surform, sandpaper, Tung-oil and leather thong making are good to learn, and, from personal experience, will divert a 13 and a 10 year old for up to two hours, especially when Mum and Son wander off with an axe in to the wood in the rain to find a suitable larch pole.
Counting the tree rings in the cut end gives a sense of amazement. “This began growing the year I was born”!
A day of heaven! But – a BIG but! – after supper the idea began to grow – could we better it? Could we make a real wilderness trip, in to the National Park, Papineau Labelle? No roads, no houses? No-one?
Monday morning was beautiful! A perfect, Laurentian mooring with blue sky and hardly a cloud to be seen. Everyone came quickly to breakfast; the trip was very much “on”.
Envisaging the portage between the lakes, this time we’d just take two canoes; J and the children occupied one boat, R, A and P the other.
A heron in the swamp guarded our way to the portage, which was easier than maybe, and soon we were in unfamiliar waters. A and P had previously travelled a little way in the western bay, just at the entrance from our lake, last October; this time we pushed South-East and then due south.
As we came through the narrows by Ravens’ crag, the length of the lac stretched out in front of us.
Envisaging the portage between the lakes, this time we’d just take two canoes; J and the children occupied one boat, R, A and P the other.
A heron in the swamp guarded our way to the portage, which was easier than maybe, and soon we were in unfamiliar waters. A and P had previously travelled a little way in the western bay, just at the entrance from our lake, last October; this time we pushed South-East and then due south.
As we came through the narrows by Ravens’ crag, the length of the lac stretched out in front of us.
Calm water, little wind, and a view out of a film set! Half way down to the second bay, three young Loons, called and half-displayed, like teenagers at a picnic. Standing high in the water they “whooped and hollered” with that extraordinary, haunting sound, so evocative of the North-lands, the sound of our other “home”.
It was a long, steady paddle, about three quarters of an hour, to the island in the second western bay. It is an outcrop of glaciated stone, standing perhaps a hundred feet above the water with cliffs to the East and steep slopes to the west, and a ridge of forest running along the spine.
It’s a Swallows and Amazons island if there ever was one, just demanding exploration, so we dropped the children off at the south end, and J paddled up to the north, eventually to meet them.
Both boats made the tour of the island, but we, in the second, headed back to the eastern promontory to beach and to explore.
And such an exploration; crayfish in crystal clear water, right at the landing, and a dark-skinned frog, and a perfect camp-site for another year….
But others had been there, and recently. A beer can in the lake, young cedars cut – presumably for fire-wood; cigarette ends and packets; a sock; broken bottles in the fire-ash. We couldn’t do anything about the bottles, we had no box with us to retrieve them safely, but all of the rest fitted in to the sock and came back with us, leaving things a little better than we found them.
The parties rejoined, people swam, sat, wandered, chatted, watched more loons taking an incredibly long time to take off, then it was time to begin the paddle back towards a late lunch! This extraordinary wilderness is becoming the commonplace! A snake was sunning itself at the portage; the water-lilies in Chapleau have just come in to bloom!
Watering horses, bringing boats up from the lake, eating, chatting, bringing the day to and end….
J & R, B & L took a year out last year and travelled the world, backpacking and hostelling, occasionally meeting up with Grandparents in far-flung corners. So, the kids’ reaction to three days in the Laurentians? “This is the best place in the world”…..
A disappointment for their parents perhaps? Not a bit of it. Here was safe – within the bounds of good outdoorsman-ship; here Mum in particular was supremely competent, familiar with the context. Things came second nature to R, and when they didn’t, others in the party had the skills or knowledge needed. Their involvement with and enjoyment of the environment was visceral. It was there, they became a part of it. In time, they will undoubtedly come to cherish and protect it, and to voyage deeper in to this place.
P's personal exploration has been the terrain; A’s personal exploration has been wildlife; foxes, deer, but in particular the bird population that calls in the woodland, shows on the lake or populates our bird-table and feeders. Breakfast is routinely interrupted by a grab for the binoculars and bird-book as visitors come to the feeders. We never fail to wonder at the ruby-throated humming bird - all the way from Mexico!
Conserve a Wild Place
Take some personal responsibility for the conservation and protection of a wild place. This should take the form of some practical action that will leave it in better shape. This might involve research, campaigning or fundraising, pollution or litter surveys and cleanups; planting trees, shrubs or wildflowers, or clearing invasive plants.
Action
We need to record the number and identity of projects that need to be carried out for the site. This will be a long-term activity over many years. Just carrying out the audit will be important this year.
Take responsibility
There are fallen fences and old outbuildings on the site. There are fallen trees jeopardising the health of others. Some of these should be cleared this year. Although the place of decaying wood in the cycle of woodland is recognised, dead wood is also used by us as a renewable fuel source.
Conserving
We have a list of things to do that will stretch on for years! One of the pressing matters this year was to build a gate to the "meadow" that can be left open to allow wildlife to pass easily during the times of year when there are no horses resident.
The majority of local fences are of the post and rail type using split timber. We decided to use fallen timber from the 14 acres to make the fence-posts:
These need sharpening before they can be driven in to the really stony ground!
And then we spanned them together with recycled battens to allow fence poles (likewise hauled out of the wood) to slide in to make the gate.
All in all, about a morning's work!
Share your Experiences
We have a list of things to do that will stretch on for years! One of the pressing matters this year was to build a gate to the "meadow" that can be left open to allow wildlife to pass easily during the times of year when there are no horses resident.
The majority of local fences are of the post and rail type using split timber. We decided to use fallen timber from the 14 acres to make the fence-posts:
These need sharpening before they can be driven in to the really stony ground!
And then we spanned them together with recycled battens to allow fence poles (likewise hauled out of the wood) to slide in to make the gate.
All in all, about a morning's work!
Share your Experiences
Tell people about your own experiences; share your knowledge, thoughts and feelings. Make an exhibition of photos, paintings, drawings, or words. Organise a presentation with slides, video or photos. Lead a guided walk around the place where you’ve been completing your Award. Share your experience of nature with others.
Sharing
We already have a blog related to the site http://brocks-place.blogspot.com/. Subject to restrictions on revealing the whereabouts of the site, it should be available to link to the John Muir Award site if suitable, up to standard and required.
We already have a blog related to the site http://brocks-place.blogspot.com/. Subject to restrictions on revealing the whereabouts of the site, it should be available to link to the John Muir Award site if suitable, up to standard and required.
P had already pulled together previous experiences of the site in a short series of poems, visible elsewhere in this blog. The return to England in the Autumn of 2010 was followed by the development of a sequence of paintings that reflected one of these poems.
Visitors.
One Fall afternoon,
with every hillside dressed in Venetian silks,
the sun came to visit our maples.
The little grove on a broken hillock just inside the boundary
stirred
and then fell still.
And the sun spread, all at once, through every leaf and twig and burnished branch until the air itself was filled with honeyed,
liquid,
Sauterne light;
palpable.
And sated Summer declared “There, that is the very best I have to offer you”.
I stood inside a cathedral; speaking to Summer gone and Fall present and gave both thanks.
An hour later, less perhaps, great Winter came to call,
resplendent in imperial purple cloud and tattered biting wind;
heralded by trumpet skein of swans and wild, eerie loons.
“Behold, The North!”
The snare drum of sudden rain and rattled windows made no easy announcement; skysails and topgallants of great trees were torn down in moments,
the air was thick with white and gold,
whirling together.
“I am come!”
And,
with respite and return
over the next days,
King Winter came to rule amongst the leaves.
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Copyright PJMC 2011.
This theme of work has continued and this watercolour was inspired by bracket fungus photographed on the walk to Raven's Peak
