I'm sitting here today in total awe and gratitude for our Earth and the bountiful gifts that she provides! This week we started lesson 3 of our home school curriculum. I was so thrilled to see that the science lesson was all about observing deer. In our area, the mating season is in full swing. The deer are running and playing all over the hillsides, last year’s fawns are growing big. The bucks are displaying big beautiful sets of antlers. For months I have been praying for an antler. I knew that finding a naturally shed antler is very rare, but also incredibly special. When I came up on the lesson this week, I thought it would be amazing if we could paint on antlers. I have seen some really beautiful painted antlers before and have been waiting for the opportunity to create my own. My husband hunted a buck year before last and we have the antlers from that so I planned to give those to the kids to paint. I didn't have an antler for myself to paint... Until this morning. I got to our nature school early, as usual, to prepare for the arrival of the children and set up our tipi and the day’s activities. I needed to use the bathroom, so I went around the back of some trees to find a spot to squat. The branches of this huge coast live oak tree draped down and touched the ground, and I noticed a little opening in the branches that I could walk through to get underneath the canopy of the tree. I was so happy to find that the entire spot was clear of poison oak, so I assumed the position and did my business. As I looked down, right in front of me, I noticed a few pointy things poking up through the leaf litter. My heart raced as I realized what it was! I picked it up slowly, watching each inch of this amazing gift emerge from beneath the leaves, my pants still down around my ankles. An antler! And a big one! I held it in my hands and stood, feeling its medicine and immense gratitude. Finally, I thought it would be a good idea to dress myself, so I did, and ran back to the tipi to show my co-mentor at the school what I had found. We shared it with the children, and I shared the story of how I had found it. Now I sit here with it in my home and feel the power of its presence and the lesson it's taught me.
Yesterday was a rough day. We had our first official home schooling "off" day and got nothing done. The kids were grumpy, hated Benjamin Bunny, wanted nothing to do with crayons, or the letter “C”, and we ended up playing a board game called Wild Craft where you learn about medicinal and edible herbs. This happening today has reminded me to look to the Earth and our community for our lessons. That it's OK to have an "off" day or even an "off" month. For the rest of the week we might just scrap the curriculum and focus on the beauty of the seasonal changes happening, even though here in CA it's all subtle. We might just make herbal medicines (hey, it is elderberry season, you know!), paint antlers, dig in the dirt and track the deer. And that's going to be enough, because that's what the Earth is handing to us in this moment.
