Weekend account

Hello there. It's wednesday already, I know. I have been beaten off the tracks by blogger, who wouldn't let me upload any pics, little bugger. So I fell into the abyss of procrastination. But now it seems to have worked out wonderfully. Lots of you will already have seen the mysterious scouty pictures on facebook. Now I haven't exactly been scouting this weekend. The explanation ist this: Somewhere in the beginning of this year I decided to take a course of further education that I've always wanted to do ever since I knew about "Feuervogel". Feuervogel is a swiss association for nature paedagogics. They run a list of outdoor preschools, and a thick booklet of all sorts of outdoor activities happening around the year: Workshops, courses, camps, trips... Their background is the mission to educate people to grow back into appreciating nature and its benefits, and to enjoy them without hurting our environment.

And they also offer a year-long course for a certificate called "Meisterschaft authentischer Naturpädagogik" (Mastery in authentic nature paedagogics). So that's what I am doing now. It's six weekends throughout a year, some homeworks, a stage and diplome paper until you get that beautifully sounding title to be yours, and now we are one weekend down. I'd rather it would still be six. Five seems like it's gonna be over so quick. Much too quick for something so awesome.

The group of 25 girls of all ages met with our instructors at the trainstation and then walked off into the woods. All the weekends are spent outdoors. No houses, no electricity, no running water. Its nature paedagogics, fair enough.

So we started with setting up our own little shelters.


The rest of our weekend evolved around the big common room tent, where we built a nice sofa all around the big fireplace, with fir tree branches.


The main topics of these two days were making fire - and oh boy did we make fire! Without matches of course. But with lots of cursing, sweating, struggling, singing and helping each other. And I tell you, it's a divine feeling to hold a little fire of your own in your hands after so much hard work.


And then we learned a lot of different knots. Much easier, in my opinion. Just have to practice again so I won't forget them.



It doesn't sound like much, but the time went by like nothing. I must also mention the great food that we always had and that would have kept us cheery even if the weather would have been as bad as expected (which it wasn't).



Tis weekend once again showed me how much impact nature-oriented living can have on us. I haven't felt so genuinely happy and calm in a very long while. The only thing we cared for these days were being warm, sheltered and fed. With every single thing we did we knew exactly why we did it. Covering all your genuine needs with your own two hands gives such a feeling of satisfaction, it's great.
I think it really points out that the path I am staggering on at the moment is good for me. It really convinced me of trying to live more simple and self-sustaining. I know you can't really use that word living in a city apartment, but we're not only talking about now and tomorrow here.

For all of you who haven't seen the facebook album with all the pictures yet, go and have a peek:
here!