Our exploration began in the belly of Explorers Club’s new
bus Moose, which saw us safely to Eagle Rock Park in Deming. There we circled
up in the grass beside an eddy of the North Fork which, swelled by rain had submerged
our crossing on the alluvial flood plain which stretched before us to the banks
of the Nooksack’s North Fork, the sight of which was occluded by young alders
scattered amidst tall bracken and shrubbery.
After catching up with each other’s different winter season’s
goings on, the boys set to dividing jobs, discussing logistics and this season’s
skill focus – Tracking and bird language – with alacrity. We were all excited
at the prospect of tracking on the alluvium of the flood plain, and seeing what
animals had been about since the rain from the night before had washed a fresh
layer of sediment over the ground – perfect for tracking!
The winds were calm, and we waded across onto the flood plain, where we set off through the slightly stirring scrub in search of tracks and a path to the river. We found the substrate remarkably undisturbed by the passing of other animals, yet how much do we miss the tracks of robins and mice?
Once we broke through the underbrush to the sand and stones
of the riverbed, we broke for snacks and water. Heading south along the
riverbank, the boys broke up into bands, always within eyesight and crow-call,
to explore for tracks, dig into the sand, build forts, and establish a base
camp for fire and shelter along the breach. Tracks of deer and dog from before
the rains could still be made out, though mostly obscured from weathering, and
a few deer and what may have been a fox or young coyote could be seen by their
trail signs left behind that morning. 
The weather was generous to us, with the clouds staying
light gray and refusing to drop more than the occasional sprinkle of precipitation,
and the winds stayed bedded down, offering us only soft breezes as gusts. The
boys wanted to start a fire, and along with the mentors used their camping and
art of fire-making skills to start a fire with a spark starter and a nest of
damp grass, dried with friction, while others built a windbreak to shield the
ember while it caught. We were working with the driest of damp materials
available, and all felt pretty proud of the group’s accomplishment once we were
fanning the flame of our fire!
After lunch eaten around the fire on in a wooden fort, the
winds and rain began to pick up just enough that we were worried for our fire. The
boys then conceived a tarp shelter over the fire, and cut four dead limbs for
posts, digging holes deep in the ground to anchor them; securing these finally
with rocks and sand before securing the tarp to the posts. The Salamander Efts
had a vision for this outing, and executed it with passion and confidence! It
was a shelter entirely isolated from natural windbreaks of driftwood stacks,
yet it was a warm place to weather the brunt of wind and rain that came our way
towards the end of the outing, and a source of gratitude during our closing
circle around the embers left to die from our fire. 
The weather once again blessed us with calm and dry as we
broke camp and scattered all sign it was ever there, packed our bags and headed
back to the park – the richer for the experience and for a few plaster castings
of tracks. Crossing back to the bus, the water that has been so painfully cold
at our journey’s beginning now was a joy that our explorers splashed back into
with abandon. An auspicious end to our first out of spring. 