Home Scouts: Pilot Program Reflections
I’m almost embarrassed by how long it’s been since my last blog post. Almost. So much has happened in life in the past 6 months and this blog reflects on everything that’s changed and where my work and business are going from here. It’s 2025 business planning season and I feel like cocooning early this year to prepare for a fabulous spring. But before I get too excited about the coming light, I must first lean into the darkness of this season. It is a time for deep reflection, internal listening, and sensing the truth of where I am. So… where am I?
First things first, I turned 32 a few days ago. Perhaps it’s another solar return that has me feeling reflective. For as long as I can remember now, I have taken my birthday a little too seriously. I like to reflect on where I’ve been and orient to where I’m going and sift through how I feel about it and what I want to adjust. I’d call this a luxury because in the chapters I haven’t been given a single day to breathe for months… and months… being allowed the space to breathe and reflect is a luxury I can afford right now. Plus the pilot Home Scouts program this year deserves serious reflection, and I want to give it the acknowledgement it deserves.
This program was years in the making, swirling in my subconscious since perhaps childhood when I dreamt of being a camp counselor. Growing up, I was deeply impacted by outdoor camp, bible camp, girl scout camp, drumline camp, band camp, and any camp where playing at night or with fire was involved. So it made sense that I longed to guide others through a similar process, and I feel like I found it. I credit Wilderness Awareness School for my experience in The Immersion and Nature Instructor Training for my time practicing youth mentorship in an outdoor school setting. Much like my love for herbal medicine, I once again found a perfect balance between survival and thriving in this kind of learning setting. We’re held on the edge of learning and growing when we practice skills together in this way, and being guided as well as guiding others in this process is perhaps my first and truest love. I could wax poetic on the magic of plants, but I’ll continue to Home Scouts.
Of the nine workshops I had scheduled, six were attended and completed with success. Each class held 2-12 guests, between three locations: Misty Valley Farm (Carnation), Cherry Creek Falls Event Center (Duvall), and The Duvall Food Forest.
Even though the Duvall Food Forest is one of my favorite places on earth, the Cherry Creek Falls Event Center would have been the home of Home Scouts, a community center nestled in the woods - directly across the street from the magnificent Cherry Creek Falls Trailhead! This is where we planted our four sisters’ garden in May, and we watched it sprout up this summer. But, since I’ve spent the autumn in eastern Washington, I have often wondered how the would-be home scouts garden is doing. If someone were willing to continue shepherding that garden, I can connect you and you can continue the legacy and significance of the four sisters garden at the crossroads!
Big thanks to Katie Vincent for teaching us about polycultures, guiding our garden build, and bringing our minds together before we headed into the kitchen! Thanks to my neighbors who donated stinging nettle and mint from their yards to nourish our commercial kitchen, where we made 5 different nettle recipes! And extra big thanks to the owners of the Cherry Creek Falls Event Center for stewarding this land, turning this historic building into a beautiful community center, and allowing us to plant the garden - they even trimmed a tree limb so the seedlings would have more sunlight!
Our program consisted of a diverse array of generations, gender, race, physical ability, and energy in our groups. Some days were cold, some were warm. There were always consistent parts of our workshops, which were usually three hours:
Expressing gratitude
Books / field guides / resources
Nature museum / show & tell box
Games with nature themes
Fire, if possible
Sharing stories
Art / project / theatre
Theme, in order:
Fire + ancestry
Stewardship + wellness
Health + community
We started with fire and bird language because… well, what else would you start with? For our first workshop, we shared lineage stories and made a map of what ancestry means to us. We chose our own bird names and performed bird skits to explain the 5 Languages of the Birds without using English or spoken words.