Umiak on Paper
Willamette Week - Best Lifeboat
Some kids have farewell dances or pizza parties, but the eighth-grade class at Portland Waldorf School built an Inuit whaling boat to celebrate their graduation. With the help of local wilderness organization TrackersNW and the Ancestral Lifeways Community , the 30-student class spent four days on a permaculture farm outside of […]
The Class(y) Umiak
On Saturday, June 2nd my teacher Francine Adams, myself and 29 other eighth graders from the Portland Waldorf School (PWS) as well as seven staff from Trackers NW arrived at Cedar Grove Farm, a permaculture farm outside of Port Orford, Oregon. One of our tasks was to build an umiak, a traditional Inuit whaling […]
Pirates of San Juan
Six of us arrived on Shaw Island last Thursday evening after just barely making it on the 6:30 ferry from Anacortes, Washington. We still needed to pick up tide charts and so drove around for about a half hour in search of a store but soon realized that the only store was the one next […]
Horns, Ropes, and Whips (Fun with Kelp)
Our kelp pickling adventure was slightly slimy and filled with friends. Sound like fun?
It began with a lovely spring day that broke the grey Northwestern fog ceiling. We strode out onto the beach with legs jelloey from the drive, and felt the unfamiliar earth and sand under our toes. And in a quick moment, I […]
Kelp + Elderberries = Pickles
A whole bunch of folks showed up at my place to pickle the kelp we gathered (a Dancing Hawk workshop, technically). So with this small army of people dying to produce a peck of pickles, we quickly washed, peeled and chopped up our kelp.
Then we mixed up a couple of good pickling mixes, one sweet, […]