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Magical Forest Music

If you’re a magical naturalist, then it’s quite likely you sing when you’re adventuring in nature. (Many magical naturalists love to sing). And if you sing in nature, it may even be possible — perhaps even likely! — that you hear music in the wind, the ocean, in bird song. Perhaps the plants sing to you (they sing to me!).

If you like music — drumming, singing, humming — try this the next time you’re wandering in nature.

1) Put on your top secret Animal Forms. Don’t know what top secret Animal Forms are? Just download our free Because Of The Red Fox book preview. Scroll to page 25 to the section entitled, “Attention! Animal Forms”, and try them on for yourself.

2) Okay! Now, Fox Walking and using those Owl Eyes, and especially your Deer Ears, sneak outside.  Pick up a couple of sticks, if you’d like, and tap them together.

3) With those Deer Ears, start listening to things. Wind in the leaves, airplanes in the distance, or cars nearby. Bird song. Crow calls. Choose one sound and imitate it.

4) Get melodic with that sound. Or jazzy. Be playful or melodramatic.

5) Wow! You’re hearing the magic of music in the world around you! Wow, you’re making magical music!

6) Choose another sound, and repeat steps 2-5 for as long as it’s fun.

7) Come back and share your musical adventures in the comment box below!

firHere’s how we co-created musical magic with a group of kids today.

Scene: A Pacific Northwest forest

It’s a “Community & Ecology” day in the Vashon Wilderness Program summer camp for 4-6 year olds, and what better way to nourish group connection than to make music together! Along the trail, we pick up sticks, tapping them together. We sing “The Earth Is Our Mother” and other songs as we wander along.  We explore the sounds of the different trees, gently drumming on their trunks. (I think the slightly hollow sound of the Red Elder is particularly nice — Elder has been traditionally used to make flutes, by the way).

Near one of the raven-frequented areas, we stop to improvise a “Raven song”.  We listen for the language of the ravens, creating two simple phrases for two groups to sing (assisted by our apprentices). With drummers and singers, and instructor Stacey Hinden taking a raven song solo, we perform a whole song to the trees, and take a bow at the end. We think the forest enjoyed it!

Next time you’re in nature, alone or with others, try improvising and creating some simple music inspired by nature. So much fun! Please share your own magical musical tale here!

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Magic By The Pond

This week I have the astounding pleasure to serve as co-instructor to twelve kids, age 4-6, in deep nature connection. This is by way of the Vashon Wilderness Program Summer Camp.

Today we explored mammals and animal tracks and sign. We are adventuring in a beautiful woodland filled with extremely talkative ravens. (Have you ever heard a Raven say, “Gloop!”? This is a vocalization very much in the vocabulary of these forest Ravens!).

We had lunch by a large pond, where we watched swallows dive and skim the water (for water striders?), and we played “Grizzly In The Grassland” in a field. We finished our time at the pond with each child blindfolded and silent, listening to the birds and other sounds surrounding us, and making squiggles and other marks in their journals, depending on what they heard.

Stacey Hinden, who I am instructing with, and I were deeply moved and astonished at the attentiveness of these kids. All of them (even brand-new and very young campers) were silent for 7 minutes, and some of the more experienced kids went the full ten minutes they had challenged themselves with. We had originally set them to a five minute challenge, but they had clamored for ten (breaking the record of the campers of last summer who had pursued a similar sit for six minutes).

And, as the minutes passed, and the silence continued, birds came closer and closer to the kids, singing away and comfortable in the company of these gentle, curious young humans.

Have you shared some special quiet moments with kids in nature?

And how about yourself. Care to challenge yourself to a blindfold nature sit? Just find a place outside where you feel comfortable, blindfold yourself, and sit and listen. For 5 minutes. Or ten. If you’d like, have a journal on your lap and make special marks for everything you hear. When you’re done with your sit, take a look at what you drew, and recall your experience.

Then tell someone about your adventure.

I invite you to share your stories — about special quiet moments in nature with kids, and/or your blindfold sit spot adventure — in the comment box here!

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Why Not Write? Camp NaNoWriMo Begins!

Join a Writers Camp like no other!

Hello, folks!

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, and takes place each year in November. Folks from all over the world spend one month furiously writing novels — whoo hoo!

Camp NaNoWriMo is the summer fun version of this annual undertaking. Each one of us is invited to work on a writing project of our choice for one month, in the spirit of campfires and cook outs.

This month, my daughters and I have embarked on writing projects. And it looks like my sister-in-law and niece will be joining us too.

Here’s a peek of what I started:

Dragon Tale

by Jane Valencia

Santa here, reporting on a typical late winter predawn morning on Yonder Island. The birds are whimpering. The trees are drooping in the drizzle. Who wants to be out here in the damp? The birds don’t, and I bet the trees don’t. And I sure as heck don’t.

My sister Annie is snuggled in bed. My mom has forced me to bundle into layers of thermal underwear, wool socks, my insulated waterproof boots, and, ugh, rain pants. I’m pained as I put all this stuff on, but, see—I’ve been coming out every morning for quite some time. And though I despise all this stuff and nonsense, my scientific mind has to admit that, although I’m miserable out here in the damp, I’m far more miserable when I forego all these absurdities. So, layers and waterproofs it is. I’m bundled as much as I can deal with and still hike up from the house, and up into the Upper Woods. I bypass all my favorite places, our longtime haunts: the Mental Village and DragonAir, the Octopus tree, and all the other fun of the Hundred Acre Woods.

You could say that reason has overcome madness in this regard—or is the other way around?

Santa is not here to play. I’m here for a high purpose. The highest anyone is likely to find.

I’ve an egg hidden in the Upper Woods, an egg of the most incredible kind. And I intend to hatch it. …

[to be continued]

Do you want to be a writer? Then please join me at Camp NaNoWriMo, and let’s all write!

Share what your writing project is in the comment box below!