Once a week I go to Riekes, which is a nature program where you go out into Huddart Park and experience nature, hike, learn plant identification and climb trees. It’s really fun. There are about 15 people in my Monday Kestrels group. We learn techniques for whittling, stealth, and tree climbing. Usually the first thing we do is sing a nature song and then we play a tag or running game. Then we regroup at this tree that we call the Story Tree where we eat a snack and Haku, one of the counselors, tells a story. His stories are usually about nature and they are fun to listen to. Then we go on hikes to different spots in the woods. A few of the places I’ve been are Nature’s Playground which is a fun tree to climb because it grows sideways, Hidden Beauty which is a bend in a river where we like to swim, and to a large field with high trees that are wonderful for climbing.

This Monday was a particularly fun day. We did the usual morning routine of singing and running around, except when Haku was telling the story, a red-tailed hawk swooped down until it was about ten feet away from us and we could see its back. It glided around the story tree and then shot up toward the taller redwoods. After about five minutes, it zipped down again until it was even closer, skimming the grass, and you could see its individual feathers. Almost everyone shouted, “Whoa! Look at that!” and I almost dropped the knife I was whittling with. 

After that exciting shock, we hiked up to a forest where we have sit spots, little places you can choose in nature where you can sit down just think. In your sit spot, amazing things can happen. People have had animals crawl over them and have had random thoughts occur to them. My sit spot is this one little tree in a grove with three bigger trees. Mine is the middle of the three, and there is a little shiny stone that’s hidden in the bark of the tree.

Nothing really special occurred to me at that sit spot today, but right after, we climbed trees and played a fun game called Bosh Log. Bosh Log is where there are two teams and one giant log. The two teams stand on different sides of the log and where the starter says go, everyone rushes forwards. When the two teams meet, everyone pushes at each other trying to knock the other team off. If you get knocked off, you have to go to the start of your log. the goal of the game is to push the other team off the log and get to their side. No one won – it was a draw since the teams were evenly matched!

One of the most fun things I did that day was go on a long steep  hike to a place called Goober’s Death. Goober’s Death is a giant 30-foot rock next to a dried up creek. To get to the safe flat top of the rock, you have to shimmy along a small ledge that, if you lean back, you will most likely fall down on the rocks below. You have to be flat against the rock that’s above the ledge and while grabbing on and slowly move your feet a teeny bit at a time. I made the mistake of looking down once and you just start to get sick seeing how far down you could drop. The most fun thing to do at Goober’s Death is to pick up stones and carry them up to the tall rock and hurl them down. On impact to the ground, the rocks will shatter in to a million pieces.

Me and a few other people went on a hike down the creek. There was one dry waterfall and there were two ways to get down. One was to go on this rotting fallen tree that led down or you could drop down seven or eight feet to solid rock. I found a hand-hold and I slid down onto the rock, but I wasn’t tall enough to reach the rock below. I knew I had to drop down but just the thought of it scared me since I couldn’t see down and felt like it was a long way after being on Goober’s Death. The scariest part was that my hands were sweaty and I started slowly slipping and right when I slipped I fell a couple feet and just landed perfectly fine.

We took a hike down the creek and someone who was going ahead found a giant pile of whitish-grey feathers. As we hiked down more, we started finding more and more feathers, but different birds because they were getting whiter or grayer. We started thinking of reasons why there were so many feathers in piles. Some of us said that maybe an animal had killed them. I thought that maybe the birds had been sick and shedded their feathers, but the last bird we found gave the final clue that they had been killed and eaten. There was a teeny bit of blood on the feathers and it would be a good reason why there were piles of feathers. As we hiked down a little farther, we found a single brown feather. Our counsellor was able to recognize it as a great-horned owl feather. We then came to the conclusion that we must be in a great-horned owl’s territory. The reason that the birds were gone was because the owl or some other animal had eaten them. We then had to turn back because we were being called by a different counsellor.

Once we had regrouped at Goober’s Death, we all started hiking down the creek in a different direction. We hiked down a teeny bit but none of us knew where we were going. Soon, the creek came to an end and we found a giant pipe that led to the other side of a bridge. We crawled through it and found the rest of the creek. Haku told us to turn right up a steep hill. It took several falls to get up because there were so many logs and rocks to trip over and the hill was at an 80-degree angle. One on big trip, I went rolling back down the mountain, half rolling, half sliding. I was able to grab onto a tree to stop myself from slipping more, and I found a nice straight stick that had no poison oak on it. I used the stick to start hiking back up the mountain. Once at the top, we found a rope swing on a branch of a tree that leaned off the mountain. We all got a turn swinging far out over the valley below. It felt like you were flying because we were so high up.

It was a super fun day, and I hope we do that same hike again!