Isabel Yueh, Call to Adventure 2015

This camp is one of the camps where you instantly make friends in the car ride over, and your friendships strengthen over all the hardships and troubles and experiences that every person in the group experience. One of my favorite moments was when we found a dead crow and decided to bury it in the sand. We all worked together and made an amazing grave. We didn't even know this crow or how it died, but we felt like it was the right thing to do. At the same time we said good bye to the beach and all the animals on the beach.

This camp experience has changed my future, and I am definitely going back next year. I will never forget my friends that I made on this trip. 

Sit Spot Poem, Becoming a Young Woman 2015 "Delaney"

Listen closely and you will feel,

no longer hearing through your ears, but by your heart.

You must understand their circumstances

before understanding their story.

Listen closely and you will feel them inside of you.

Adventuring into Middle Childhood by Rachel Rothman, Apprentice Journey

“The heart of childhood, from seven to eleven, is the critical period for bonding with the earth.” – David Sobel

The southeast corner of the Olympic National Park is an amazing and sacred place. It is full of majesty and wonder. Captured best by the statement of a wise camper as we gazed up at the mountains: “This is the purple that I see from home,” referring to the Olympic Mountain Range when we looked to the west.

The Apprentice Journey began here. Leaving base camp, seven kids ages 8-10, two other grateful guides and I, shouldered our backpacks and set off on our mile and a half hike to what would be our home for the next two days. As with any Rite of Passage journey, the trials and tests we encountered and surmounted were abundant. 

Less than 100 yards from our base camp, we had to shift backpacks and redistribute gear, and then watch as a water bottle took a lonely leap over the bridge. After rescuing the busted bottle, we continued on our way. Our trials continued too. The next half-mile met with weariness from carrying backpacks (to be expected!), a few wasp stings (ow! quickly remedied), and a stumble, resulted in a stunning, but luckily not wounding, experience.  We reached our destination three hours later tired, uncomfortable and hungry. 

However, we had made it to camp! As we dropped our packs and began to explore our new environment, something amazing happened. A shift took place from the feeling of the “grind” of hiking to the absolute wonderment of our surroundings. Once again I marveled in the present-ness of childhood — it took no time to immerse in the wonders surrounding us. 

Over the next two days, we saw all kinds of wildlife, played in the water, and connected with each other and the earth. We supported each other when the distance of family or the “attack of mosquitos” proved to be too much.

The rite of passage into middle childhood is grounded in the world of wonder, nature and family. What a gift it was to watch these beautiful 8, 9 and 10 year olds adventure into middle childhood with strength and grace — a blessing I’m glad I was able to witness and share. Hope fills me as I venture into the future with these souls, our next generation of leaders.

“If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it.” - David Sobel

Becoming a Young Woman 2014 "Thalia"

Becoming a Young Woman is our 1-week, retreat-based coming-of-age experience for girls

Here is what Thalia (13) had to say about Becoming a Young Woman 2014:

At Journeys I met amazing people.

People I never would have met otherwise.

My group leaders were amazing.

They told us stories and taught us songs.

On my solo I got to do a lot of writing.

And I got to just think about who I was after my week at Journeys.

I loved every moment of it.

I hope that if you're about to embark on your own Journeys quest, you will too.

Up for the Sunrise: The Journey Continues 2014

(The Journey Continues is our 1-week high school aged trip)

After some days in the wilderness, priorities and pleasures will have shifted from normal day-to-day life. That must be part of the explanation for why a group of teenagers and their two leaders would agree to get up at five in the morning and hike through the chill to watch the sunrise from a mountaintop.

It was our last morning together. I was pleasantly surprised that everyone was up for such an adventure after all the uphill hiking we’d just done. But off we went through the slowly brightening dawn up to the summit of Blue Mountain, in the NE Olympics, and found an eastward-looking viewpoint that was sheltered from the bitterly cold wind. It was a clear morning but for some haze hanging in the Puget Basin in front of us. Our timing was perfect. After sitting quietly together for about ten minutes, all of a sudden a brightness emerged through the haze, a startling pink. As it rose and grew, it outlined the ridgeline of the Cascades, previously invisible in the hazy sky. It was one of the most interesting sunrises I’ve seen, and we all sat ooh-ing and ahh-ing for a while before getting up to take some pictures.

As I reflect on this experience, I wonder: what were we saying, with our bodies and souls, when we chose to hike up there to watch the sunrise? The sunrise is yet another thing usually taken for granted, rarely given much consideration. But to all of us it seemed the fitting thing to do. Watching the sunrise gives me a sense of looking into the future, into possibilities. I often have an instinct to see it when some transition or transformation has been afoot, when things feel new and fresh. And even moreso, to see it from the peak of a mountain gives a sense of incredible expansiveness. On our last day together, as we looked ahead to life back home, the sunrise lent us a sense of fullness, completion, and a window into what was coming next.

In a way, it’s reassuring to know that there’s such a rich experience to be had in simply taking in this basic (though from another perspective, miraculous) everyday occurrence. So I suppose that one thing we were saying was that we wanted to show up for the simple but dramatic events woven into our days and really take them in. That we wanted to seize the moment and come away with a unique memory and story to tell. What else is there? 

Submitted by Cameron Withey, guide, The Journey Continues 2014

Call to Adventure: The Journey Begins!

We had a great adventure walking along the coast. Originally a co-ed trip, we had a roster with 7 boys and no girls. Tara and Matt helped these big kids learn to pack their bags, tie their knots, and push through the pain of adapting to new circumstances with humor and beauty along the way.

Of our many nature encounters, a notable one is a river otter that loped out of the forest and into the ocean right beside us as we arrived on the beach for the first time. We cooked many of our meals over wood fire, which gave the participants plenty experience gathering wood and tending fire. The days were spent hiking and exploring, and gathering and processing the materials from the land we needed to survive. The evenings were spent in telling stories of our experience and hearing some stories of long ago as well. On the way to the boys' three-hour silent vigil in solitude, as we drew a threshold line in the sand, a juvenile bald eagle landed above us on a leaning fir tree, and soon after we saw the circling of the two parent eagles. We walked past the eagle guardians to the our brave explorers' sit sites, where they spent time in ritual reflection on their journeys. 

After the kids were welcomed back, we gathered as much firewood as we could carry and hoofed the miles back to camp with the precious fuel from the trees we relied on, enough for dinner, and even some hot chocolate before bed to celebrate all we'd accomplished this week.

Submitted by Matt McKinney, Guide for Call to Adventure 2014

Coming of Age for Girls: Setting Sun, Rising Moon

The Coming of Age for Girls trip started off with a tearful song (They are going, they are going, they are going away…) as each girl said goodbye to her family and took her first courageous step into the unknown. With three women as their mentors, the girls loaded into the van, and we were off to Sacred Groves for two days to prepare our hearts and minds for the journey ahead. The girls threaded bead necklaces, reflecting on who they are and who they want to be as young women as they worked. Our first night was marked by each girl saying YES to the journey, and receiving the gift of an animal ally to support her goals for her trip. Some of the allies with us on our trip were Dragonfly, Frog, and Hummingbird. 

Lighting the sweatlodge fire.

Our second day the elders of Sacred Groves, Tere and Therese, held a sweatlodge for us—in the lodge we swam our way through the sweat, steam, and darkness to dig deep for what it was each girl really wanted out of the trip. At night we practiced fox-walking—walking quietly on the earth—and heightening our senses. Each night as the girls scrunched down into their sleeping bags, stories and jokes and excitement filled the Moonlodge.

Hanging out at the Moonlodge

Day 3 we headed out to Dungeness Forks Campground where we were finally camping in the forest! The girls learned and practiced some of the essential skills of camp craft and backcountry survival and performed skits to teach each other Leave No Trace principles. The next day we packed our packs, and headed out onto the trail under a light drizzle.  Even in rain, the trail up to Royal Basin is beautiful. Gratitude abounded on our trip for simple things—warm tea, cover from the rain, a warm and dry sleeping bag.

Day hiking to Royal Lake

On our day hike to Royal Lake, we sat down for lunch and heard rustling in the brush nearby. We froze, looking for what was scurrying about –and who should pop out of the brush, but a juvenile long-tailed weasel! Here is a picture of one, although not the one we saw:

The moon welcomed us to 3^rd Beach on our eighth day together, and continued to glow bright even in the afternoons along the beach. We hiked along the beach and up and down rope ladders to avoid high tide zones. 

Working it out on a more gentle rope ladder

We saw a family of otters, 3 little ones and one big one make a sprint for the ocean, leaving behind perfect tracks to examine. 

The sun was setting at our backs and the moon rising ahead of us on the afternoon that we arrived at Toleak Point to setup for the girls 24-hour solos—what poetry the cosmos loaned us at the moment that childhood was setting for each girl, and their adolescence was rising!

We had a full day to prepare for the girls’ solos, and plenty of time to play in the waves and check out the tidepools. 

The evening before solos was marked with a ceremony marking the end of childhood, and early the next morning the girls were off to their solo sites, to sink into the heart of the inner journey of the trip.

The next day each girl was welcomed back to the central camp as a new person – as a youth. We sat in circle and each young woman shared her story of reflection, dealing with the logistics of maintaining a camp all on her own, what it was like to be alone at night, mustering up the courage and determination to continue the solo despite hunger pangs and physical discomfort. We celebrated their return with food, jewelry making, decorating each other with henna, and hours of relaxation on a perfectly sunny day. 

On our last full day on the beach, the group took on more leadership and organized their pack out of camp, meals, and camp setup back at Third Beach. We returned to Journeys basecamp to finish up our trip with an Elders Council where elders in the Journeys community heard the young womens’ story of their trip, a big feast, and a last campfire filled with love and appreciation for each youth. Finally, our trip ended with an excited reincorporation of these new youths back into the folds of their families.

Sunshine may be mostly gone for the next six months, but the stories that were shared in the August sun at Toleak Point—and the jokes told around the fire, the songs sung, the intentions and dreams for ourselves that we spoke aloud—are still glowing like hot coals in my memory, and will continue to kindle us and whisper reminders of who we are, and who we hope to grow into, long past the winter.