Vermont Art of Mentoring

Well it was another powerful week at the Vermont AOM last week. Below are some pictures of the event. I'm always struck by the teens that return every year- some of them since they were little kids. They are such uninhibited, powerful people. They speak in front of the entire community with total confidence. And they are always well mannered and offering their services to the elders or little kids or anyone else that needs something. Nobody tells them to act that way, they just do it on their own. I think this is a natural result of being brought up in a loving community.

A take home line from the AOM that better shows how I believe our culture should reflect nature: Highly resilient systems have short feedback loops from highly specialized parts that keep the whole in mind.

A short feedback loop in nature happens when song bird fails to hear the other birds alarming a Cooper's hawk. But a person might say something that really hurts another person and not hear about it for years, if ever. Short feedback loops are one of the things that they really encourage at the AOM.

Blue Jay tracks


Here is my friend Jay Gardoqui playing a song he wrote on Ukulele. The lyrics are as follows Listen listen listen to the bird song
Listen listen listen to the birds
They will tell you where your enemies are
They will tell you where your predators are
They will tell you where you are
.. and back to the chorus





Oidorne point at sunrise. I love living by the ocean.

Coyote Trailin'

I've been having some wonderful full days of tracking lately. Spending so much time in nature makes me think about how many ties each organism has to everything else. The fact that one individual grass species is growing at the edge of a swamp means so many things. It speaks to the process of evolution, many years of competition forced that grass to adapt all of the necessary traits to live right there. It is tied to the soil, the climate of the area, the winds or animals necessary for seed dispersal. The lack of grazers or voles coming by to eat that blade of grass. The beavers that created the swamp which opened up sunlight and enriched the soil for that grass to grow. So many things are connected to that single clump of grass. Everything in nature is interacting and participating with everything else.

Tracking forces a person to acknowledge all of these connections and interactions. I find the way mammals shape a forest to be really cool. Squirrels dispersing acorns, moose browse altering which tree species grow where, moles aerating the soil, and so on. And then there's the way predators shape the territories of herbivores with their daily routes through the forest. And how birds and chipmunks report on all of this as its happening. Unfortunately most people don't get the joy of interacting with this incredibly complex and beautiful system. For me, tracking brings me into this system on a daily basis. I get to see many of these processes going on as well as my own impact on them. Survival treks bring a whole different level to the experience. Where tracking is fun, insightful and often profound, being in a survival situation closes the circle and makes me a total player in the system.

Yesterday we had some afternoon rain so when I went tracking in the evening, it was easy to tell the tracks that were REALLY fresh from the ones that weren't. I came across some really fresh coyote tracks and decided that I had to try and follow the trail. Trailing is very difficult but also exhilarating. After trailing an animal for even a short time I feel a real connection to that animal. Like it is a close friend and I can feel its hunger, the spring in its step, its fear of humans, etc. I was having a really fun time trailing this coyote for a couple hundred yards when the trail turned back on itself and headed into a thick brushy area. It was getting late so I decided to abandon the trail and go watch the sunset on a hill that looked over the entire area. Ten minutes later the coyote came trotting out of the brush and back along the trail that I had followed. It stopped every 20 feet or so and looked back over its shoulder like it thought it was being followed. I had a perfect view of where it was going and got to watch it trotting and loping along for several minutes. Another magical experience as a result of paying attention to the little things in nature.

The human world is so different compared to the natural world. Everything in nature has its place and makes sense. Everyone plays by the same rules and gets a fair chance at survival. When something dies, every cell gets used and is returned into the system. At some point we stepped out of that cycle and stopped following those natural laws that have worked so well for the past several billion years.

The Art of Mentoring, Ontario

I was lucky enough to be a part of the first Art of Mentoring in Toronto a couple weeks ago. It was a very educational experience for me so I want to share some of what I learned. It is hard to describe what exactly goes on at an Art of Mentoring. It is a week long workshop that has been going on for 15 years or so that was started by Jon Young.

There is a specific community that I'm a part of that has a philosophy based on nature connection and awareness and I think the Art of Mentoring was first designed to try to bring more people into that community and clarify what it is that the community stands for.

Specifically there are things that happen during the week. The entire group of 200 or so sings a lullaby to all of the children before they go to bed. The teens are honored and sent off for a 4 day survival trip. The elders are always taken care of and asked for advice. The adults sit in on lectures about nature connection then experience the games and activities that we do with the youth. They also have a day to wander the land, swim, make friction fires, play in the mud etc. Everybody gets a free pass for the week to be silly, get dirty and be themselves. Everyone is supported, complimented on their gifts, challenged on their integrity and held to their commitments.

We take hard looks at ourselves and our conduct and we look to nature for guidance when things aren't working right. One of the big points at the Art of Mentoring is that for most of our history, our culture has reflected nature and that was good. Nature works really well and we are supposed to be a part of it and work in the same way. But they don't force anything at the Art of Mentoring. Its all a big experiment. Nobody tells anyone how they should act or feel or anything. Its an invitation to try something and see if it works and if it doesn't work or feel good everyone is encourage to speak up about it and it will get changed. That way it evolves like a natural system and gets better and better.

There are ceremonies too. They are really simple and lighthearted but we do them because it feels healthy psychologically. We stand in a circle and share something we are thankful for before meals. This makes us constantly think of all of the gifts in our lives and we act more consciously as a result. We are more intentional about the things we use and the cost of where they come from. There is lots of music and celebration. Everyone is encouraged to share their own music because we think one of the special gifts of humans is that we can express beauty through art. So we're encouraged to do that a lot.

The result of doing all of this for a week for me is that I'm much more intentional about the things I say and do. I have a strong image in my head of how healthy and happy a group of people can be and I carry that around with me along with the tools I learned of how to share that in different ways. I also have a renewed passion and spirit. Like I was able to plug my soul into an outlet and fill up the battery.

There is also a lot of grief that I feel when I leave an environment like that and return to a colder world where everybody is a stranger. Its a struggle to not go up to every person I know or even people I don't know and shake them and tell them that they are sacred human beings and I want to celebrate their gifts and support them with whatever they are going through. I don't think that would go over well.

The other weird thing is that its all such common sense. Its not rocket science to realize we would all be happier and healthier if we did the things that made us happy and healthy. But as Ingwe, one of the elders of this community who has since passed aways says (in a thick south African accent) "common sense isn't so bloody common now is it?!".

We have another big Art of Mentoring in Vermont next week. A lot of people come to this one and its been going on for several years now. I'm looking forward to it and I'll let you know how it goes.

September update

High time for an update. Summer camps are complete. Four weeks of camp with White Pine and then I worked for two weeks with Johnny Pazdon and Mary Mazur who run Coyote Club in Dover, NH. It was rewarding work and I feel good about all of the connections I made with the little people this summer. Since camps ended I've been spending time in various places around New Hampshire and a week in Toronto at the first Canadian Art of Mentoring. I'm going to do a separate post about that.
I spent a week with my friend and White Pine co-worker Hillary Behr in her cutsie hometown of Tamworth, NH. She lives in black bear country just south of the White Mountains. We took a 5 day camping/backpacking trip in the Sandwich range. I climbed a mountain in flip flops and camped alone for a couple days. It was my first time to do so in a place with bears and it was a little scary.
Now I'm living in an animal house in Madbury, NH. I slept in at least 14 different places this summer so it feels good to be a little more settled for a couple months. I'm spending most of my time studying for the Specialist tracking evaluation coming up in October. After thats over I'll be driving back down to Texas and moving on to new things. Or more accurately, similar things with new people in a different place.

Here are some kids shooting freshly made bows and arrows.

Here's Hillary standing in front of her entire hometown.

This is Hillary's garden at sunrise where she grows flowers to sell at the Farmer's market.


Here is my new favorite sandpit, just down the street from my house. Following that are caterpillar tracks and Mourning dove tracks.