the green spot blog

The winter season is coming to a close here at camp. In just a few short days, we will be welcoming a number of amazing individuals to join our team. There is a mixture of emotions amongst the staff. We are excited to begin this new season and ready for change, but change is scary and transition can be hard. So I want to take some time to reflect on this past winter season.   The Winter Staff One thing Taylor Jenkins has said to me from day one was "Slow Down and Smell the Roses." In spring, summer, and fall, we have guest group after guest group. We are running from the kitchen to activities, from activities to the kitchen, from the kitchen to cleaning. It is busy, busy, busy! Often times, you feel like there is no time to slow down and really take it all in. But Winter is a very different story. Weekends are still busy, but for the most part guest groups are smaller in number. We are ever so thankful for all the volunteers who helped us out on the busier weeken...

Hey folks - just Courtney here... I thought I would let you know about all the babies that have been springing up around here. It all started with a cute little nest of squirrel atop our Challenge Course that needed to get relocated because Moma Squirrel definitely was no "Scaredy Squirrel" and we were concerned that she was going to start taking offense to us being in her Nut Tree. So...the nest got carefully relocated to avoid any further altercations (we don't fancy angry squirrels). The other set of babies are actually nesting right outside my outside my office in one of the beams of the Welcome Centre. Robins! This is what they looked like last week: Ugly Babies!! They have bulgy eyes and no feathers... This week? Not so ugly! They've got feathers and are always looking for Momma to drop a worm in their mouths. I just think it's absolutely amazing to watch these birds grow. I can just imagine that next week they will likely begin flight trainin...

Weird spring, right? First the wildfires (our hearts ache for the people of Slave Lake) and now ridiculous amounts of rain? Back in 2005*, Camp Evergreen (and region) experienced a crazy huge flood: we haven't used the lower playing field for anything but rocketry since, and we very nearly lost our canoe pond. Chunks of the old minigolf course turned up in distant woods for ages and ages. (Next time you canoe here, see if you can find hole 4, embedded in the woods by the lagoon.) It's highly unlikely we'll see a flood like that again anytime soon. Nonetheless, some kind of flooding is happening as we speak. Emily and I drove the gator down to check out the action (we kept a very safe distance from the actual water: we would not want to risk being swept away). You can't get to the teepees right now (the road to the teepees has been replaces with a rushing river) and we're about one foot away from the creek overflowing into the canoe lagoon. It's Rain 'n Jog w...

Rolf (pictured above, holding the hawk) found an injured hawk on his property (which borders Camp Evergreen). Part of one of the hawk's wings was missing, so it couldn't fly (well, it "flew" like a chicken does). Rolf called the good people at the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation , who told us to catch it and then they'd come pick it up. So we did. And it was very exciting. The hawk was beautiful and terrifying all at once. Some of the grade six outdoor education kids who were here when we found the hawk were able to see it (from afar, of course), which is a neat addition to the nature study curriculum. Hawky McHawkerson is now hanging out the Conservation people. They're going to fix his wing, which is broken, and once his bones are healed and his feathers have regrown, they'll bring him back to where we caught him, to release him back in the wild. A happy story, right?