Posted by Tony Deis on May 07, 2009 in Raising Kids
I realized I could do something very important with today's blog. I want to better inform parents about how we choose the instructors responsible for the well being of their children. Here are some important things to know about the people we hire. The ones we all trust to protect and care for our kids.
Getting in is hard, nigh on impossible
Everyone, even people we already know well must interview with each person working with TrackersKIDS. This means everyone. The seal of approval can't just come from the boss or camp director. It has to come from much more. Every member of our team has to fervently believe and be convinced that the educator we are talking to is the right person to bring into the Trackers family. They even talk to my mom and father. Then we deliberate for a good long while. We err on the side of caution and we only take the absolute best of the best.
We pay well, very well
This point is critical. In the camp profession there is a high turnover rate of staff. Its challenging to make a career from it. The paltry salaries of the industry is not a real way to support a family. Thus many camp programs hire instructors right out of the proverbial college box. Trackers gives much of any potential "profit" to improve the pay scale because more mature, experienced and seasoned (see older) individuals are attracted by more financial stability. What may be assumed to be high end prices for our programs are really a true reflection of cultivating high quality and sustainable relationships. Our educators have already made a stellar reputation for themselves in the field before they work with Trackers and are often very well known in professional circles.
The big 3 of awareness
Intelligence, creativity and compassion are the values critical to the culture of Trackers. Common sense is no longer common in this world. We look for the rare individuals that still possess it. People who know what it means to put up a barn, birth a calf, fall a tree, fix a car, sail a boat and hold a deft awareness for the care of others both physically and emotionally. They are heroes on a mission to return brilliance to the world and they protect your children as their own family.
Hopefully this gives parents a better idea of our working standards and practices and how Trackers shapes relationships among our staff.
A couple of other key points...
-we do full fingerprinting and backgrounds checks for our instructors
-they fill out detailed site safety reports for the locations they visit as part of camp development and planning
-we have weekly driver safety trainings for all teachers of our summer mobile programs (every Wednesday)
Call or email Melissa Deis, Camp Director, with any more questions about our staff and camps: 503-680-1508 or melissa@trackersnw.com
Only a little bit of room left in summer camps
Visit Middle Earth. Become a 70's kung fu action film ninja. Live in a little house in the big valley. And hunt for ghosts in the nooks of Portland.
Register for camps here...
Posted by Tony Deis on May 06, 2009 in Storytelling
In the beginning pages of Lord of the Rings you find a map. One etched in mythic lines, divided into iconic lands with a timeless past. The world of Cascadia is another fantastical landscape that extends from Northern California into Alaska. Throughout it lies great mountains, vast deserts, rugged coastlines and a lush green valley.
In reading Tolkien's books we meet people of heroic character. In Cascadia there are also champions questing in a relentless battle to save the world. Portland plays host to many fellowships: City Repair rebuilding neighborhoods into villages, Permaculturists reshaping the sidewalks and roads back to a Shire and Trackers training invisible elves and Rangers. We share wild and local foods in celebration and stand ground for our green Earth.
Nerdy metaphor? Of course but I don't care. Actually, we could more fully embrace the epic quality of our efforts. Values such as fidelity, passion, lineage and endurance are not outdated. They're exactly what we need to assail the mediocrity that our culture thrusts upon us, the squabbling in bureaucracies that prevents us all from becoming great. Honor is how we recreate warriors, sages and the eloquence that comes from their wisdom. And like Middle Earth, our land of Cascadia is center stage in this saga. With good people, it will be the story of returning to a life of legend, inspiring all of us to rise up.
Upcoming class roll...
Butcher a buffalo and traditionally preserve the meat, May 30 and 31, 2009
This class addresses our disconnect with our food through the full, unabridged killing, gutting, skinning, butchering and eating of a domestic American Buffalo. It is an intense and communal experience. Please weigh carefully if it is a good match for you. We strive to use all parts of the animal.
Feed your family
Rebuild the Shire, 1 year permaculture design course, Sept 2009-June 2010
4 seasons with the best teachers in the region: Leonard Barrett, Marisha Auerbach and Toby Hemenway, plus many other guest teachers. Urban and neighborhood based with over 200 hours of hands-on learning.
Help us rewild our land
Build your own skin-on-frame sea kayak, Eugene, July 18-26, 2009
Apprentice with a Master. Become versed in the essentials of boat design, wood bending, knot work and joinery. Our simple method of construction relies on hand tools, and is accessible to all people. We keep our classes small and select. Masters personally instruct apprentices.
Find your water body
Free Taster Days May 16 or 17, plus Wild and local foods potluck May 17 in the evening
Learn more about the TrackersTEAMS immersion program: build fires, throw swords (safely) and train live action stealth adventure (May 16). Attendees of previous taster days join us for the Alumni Day (May 17). And everyone come to the evening potluck. Bring a wild or local food while dressing formally with barefeet or boots.
RSVP or learn more here
Posted by Tony Deis on Apr 28, 2009 in Wilderness Survival
What is the purpose of a blade made from black volcanic glass? When you flake pieces from obsidian, removing bits to find an arrowhead or knife, you fashion edges up to one molecule thick. It would shatter if you tried to carve wood with it. No, this edge is meant to cut something else. A much more visceral part of survival. As we butcher the buffalo, we absolutely need obsidian knives to remove the monstrously thick hide. In modern surgery doctors use obsidian blades up to 500 times sharper then any steel scalpel; leaving cuts that heal quicker and scar less. This rock tells a story of how volcanoes once shaped the land like titans and how we make beauty from ancient bones. Black stone on the end of an arrow is not there to be an artifact or prized skill. It is there for very real relationships of life and survival.
Trackers Portland adult programs Craft 9th century German shoes. Find a weekend only for women. Butcher a buffalo. Shape the obsidian knife. See it all...
Posted by Tony Deis on Apr 28, 2009 in Raising Kids
As a teen I once walked barefoot in my garden. Dirty feet and hands. The smell of garlic in the sun. My non-high school tenure was a three-quarter acre Eden blossoming from my parent's backyard. Every day, for all day no one told me what to do. For hours I would sit, step slowly and listen for what was coming next. Each action and movement became a conversation and correspondence with that gently sloping hill. It was not a lesson nor an assignment.
Where did I end up? One college degree later, teaching master level courses at major Universities, a social entrepreneur accomplishing things people tell me are impossible and I am also, first and foremost, a tracker. And the conversation with that hill continues. My choices are still rooted in the ecology of care for community and the wild; not money or professional success. My bottom line is family and feeding older people and babies for many generations to come. This is what waits for your teens when you let them live a real life tending to family and land.
Our teen and tween summer programs Bring a boat to life. One to fish with and feed the village. Craft a kayak as a rite of passage. Shape a tribe as an ancient story told to the modern world. Learn more
Posted by Tony Deis on Apr 23, 2009 in Village Life
As an outdoor educator I've had the slogan "sense of place" drilled
into me years ago. But I've learned that sense of place is not enough.
I know plenty of people that can identify tracks, spot a bird, measure
water quality and even make a bow drill fire. What this leads to is a
willingness to help enact policy or an appreciation that your
greenspaces exist, it rarely results in the fervent passion that comes
with knowing life and death.
We need a better definition: sewn into place, tied to place or
inextricably integrated into place. We need a mantra that means "our
food, shelter and drink come from the dirt we walk barefoot in". Living
in place is what shifts our relationships, making them more sincere.
Let's take it even further then backyard farms and valley CSAs
(which is great). If all we do is grow vegetables, that's all we'll
show regard for. If we harvest nettle, hunt deer and fish for salmon,
we'll care intensely about these fellow inhabitants of our land. And it
must happen with our own hands. Not with boats made of fiberglass or
steel, rigged with motors that have more to do with proving our manhood
then our relationship to the water. Am I suggesting everyone in
Portland become a hunter-gather? I can hear the sustainability, carbon
traders and leave no trace guardians crying fowl. Absolutely not...
Well, not yet. The irony is when we gate off wild nature with asphalt
and fences we see it as a theme park, a luxury to be cut as times get
tougher.
Let's start simple. Be like your great-grandpa and grandma
collecting dandelions for wine. Take after your friends with backyard
chickens (and an occasional raccoon stew when they're killing your
chickens). And for goodness sake, go fishing with the neighborhood
kids! When you harvest these things this year you'll expect them to
return the next. That expectation leads to the true nature of
sustainability. Its not simply a "sense of place", instead you live and
breathe by your home and where you live.
Buffalo Butchering and Preserving, May 30-31
Go out to the farm, as a team: kill, butcher and harvest the meat
of a 1000 plus pound buffalo. The next day turn it into sausage, corned
buffalo and other traditional meat preservation techniques. Is it
difficult? Absolutely yes.
Read about the buffalo butchering preserving class
Nature of Village, September 6-12, 2009
How do 50 people come together on the land and become a village for
the fall harvest for one week? Find out this September as we recreate a
living village. An entire week of lost arts and craft with family celebration.
Learn more about or join the village.
Posted by Tony Deis on Apr 16, 2009 in Village Life
When we first started TrackersNW many people told all of us to get a real job. Now those same people look at Trackers as a leader in the field. To them we were simply scrappy kids trying something silly and different then what they do. To us we were desperate to find a way of doing things that actually took care of our family and the families we work with. To us it was a matter of survival.
When I was a teen with my three-quarter acre market garden all the experts said you had to get rid of grass this specific way, or that winter mulch will keep your ground cold and make your crops late. I tried what they suggested and got bored with mediocre results. I eventually always did what my heart told me. Listening to the land instead of the experts. No till, different plants living as neighbors with a gentle and more subtle way of gardening.
Especially be careful around tracking and wilderness survival experts/critics. They tell you to measure this animals footprints this way, build a shelter in this manner or mentor kids with these routines. At Trackers we have a saying, "All models are wrong and some are useful." Remember, your way is the best way for you because every experience carries its own lesson. We are not here to tell you to get a job, only to support you as you fly in the face of the experts (or critics).
1 year permaculture course
One of the only permaculture certification courses focused on the urban and neighborhood backyard farmer. Though with 1 day a week for 1 year we still have plenty of time to address an rural context. Taught by a dream team of permaculture design instructors such as Leonard Barrett, Toby Hemenway and Marisha Auerbach, the year also includes incredible Trackers programs such as overnight intensives and the Nature of the Village
Learn more at the TrackersTEAMS site
A new buffalo butchering
To create more respect in the participants with the buffalo, this class now takes place over two days (though the second day is optional). This time we do more then end up with something to freeze, on day 2 we learn to make sausage while also smoking, dry curing, corning and more.
Learn more at TrackersNW.com
Also, check out our new webpage design, just don't be a critic or expert:)
|
