Dear Boys Explorers Club Families,
On behalf of the Boys Explorers Club (BEC) mentors, we thank you for a wonderful spring season full of exploration and growth. With 15 groups and 163 boys in our cohort, we are a vibrant, genuine, and powerful force within our community.
Families, your Explorers gave 608 volunteer hours at our Connelly Creek Service Site. Our Four Shields Program participants volunteered 75 hours as Explorers Mentor Apprentices, and our Adult Volunteers gave over 30 hours on outings! The BEC would like to thank Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association (NSEA) and the City of Bellingham Parks Department for all their help facilitating our spring service project.
Our mentoring team is appreciative of all the support and encouragement we receive from families, and we are grateful for all the time we get with your Explorers. Our staff work hard to bring your children thoughtful and intentional programming. Although there is a great deal of planning that goes into the Explorers Club experience, we find that it's more often our participants' interactions within the natural environment, interpersonal dynamics within the group, and long-term experience with a consistent Explorers Club culture that provides the major lessons and takeaways on our outings.
As mentors we work to create the space and to hold the container of safety for these experiences to occur. Stan Crow, a mentor, wilderness guide, and former director of Rite of Passage Journeys, described this mentoring style beautifully when he said, “The work of a mentor is in the present moment, exploring actions, behaviors, and feelings in real-time, and always highlighting the power of choice that the youth has in the moment”.
Our aim, much like Stan Crow's, is to be fully present with our explorers while on outings. We seek to empower our mentees when we see moments of character growth and strengthening leadership in them, and to walk along side and encourage them as they overcome challenges and aim beyond the target.
This spring our mentors witnessed this cohort of emerging males becoming deeply connected with one another in constructive and genuine ways while being firmly rooted in their connection to and stewardship for the land.
Spring 2016 - Season Highlights
Throughout Whatcom County's lowland forest and shoreline our younger groups:
- Played games
- Made group decisions
- Learned to recognize bird calls and navigational clues
- Rambled
- Traversed as they immersed themselves in the diverse landscape from Clayton Beach to north Lake Whatcom
Celebrating the abundance of spring they learned to make nettle tea, feasted on salmon berries and thimble berries, collected cottonwood buds for salves, and harvested cedar and alder for carving wood.
Our elder Explorers Club groups ventured out to further locations like Lizard Lake, North Lake Samish Trail, and the Deming Eagle Preserve. Here their endurance and backcountry skills were put to the test. These locations provided opportunities for the boys to engage in complex crafts like fire by friction, plaster casting, and tarp shelter work. These boys also gathered beta on a few first time outing locations. Driving up Cleator Road, they explored the upper reaches of Chuckanut Mountain on the Rock Trail. Explorers navigated a massive sandstone ridge line down to Lost Lake, and they found quiet spots along the shore to sit and take it all in. These groups also took time to pioneer the Lookout Mountain Forest Preserve. Climbing high up into the logging lands, the boys explored part of Bellingham's watershed, finding beautiful cascading falls and ample space to work on skills.
Bringing our spring season to a strong finish, The Daredevil's Club celebrated their time as an BEC group with a graduation camp out at Racehorse Falls while our Four Shields Program ventured out along the Baker River to sleep under the stars nestled in the deep valley between Anderson Butte and Mt. Shuksan.
