John Muir – The Man, The Myth, The Legend that is going to make me fail my graded unit this year…

I’ve realised that I never did explain much about the John Muir Award in my last post on the topic so I thoughht I’d share this new clip they have put on youtube that explains it far better than I could.

For those that don’t know the man he was born in Dunbar, Scotland in 1838 before moving to the US. He co-founded the Sierra Club and helped set up the National Parks after petitioning Congress for the National Park bill that was passed in 1890. He liked to walk and would think nothing of heading off on a 1,000 mile trip. He has a 211 mile trail in Sierra Nevada named after him and a 130 mile way here in Scotland. He got about a bit basically.

The John Muir Trust was set up in Scotland in 1983 with the aim to conserve wild land and wild places for the benefit of all. I personally have a few issues with a few things they do around wind farms but I can see where they are coming from and all power to them for sticking to their beliefs.

Anyway at the start of this academic year a few of us decided to do a charity walk to raise funds for our fledgling society and we picked the John Muir Trust to split the money with. In the end it went to their pathways appeal which pays for the upkeep and creation of paths on all the trusts lands.

The idea was originally to walk from Stranraer to Ayr but we didn’t fancy walking the coastal path in the dark. Then we realised that If we went along the John Muir Way from Helensburgh to Falkirk it would be just a tad over 50 miles and so the challenge was set.

We started at 9am on a sunny morning and made good time to Balloch although we waded through the bog of eternal stench at one point and found someone setting up a clay pigeon thrower in an area of clearfell before getting there. Then we sat down for our first break of the day and thanks to it being a lovely day and there being a european food market on the place became a huge time sink.

Once out of there we made a few wrong turns but eventually made our way on the the section where we piggybacked the west highland way until nightfall. Everything was going great and we were making great time and then we stopped for a coffee just before Kirkintiloch. The legs started to seize up as the air got colder and then we started walking along the tow path from hell for the next 25 miles. My feet have only now fully recovered a full 6 months on.

Anyway if your ever out and about in Scotland take a look and see if your on Trust land. It’s amazing what the guy got up to and the legacy he left behind.

John Muir Award Training – Alnwick

One of the things we’re trying to do to help future proof the environmental/conservation society at college is to offer the chance to gain a John Muir Award for society members or SRUC students. We hope to open that up to UWS students in the future as well but baby steps and all that.

Emily organised for three of us to attend the Leader training in Alnwick in the North of England last week which was over two days which was always going to be a struggle especially with Vonnie running for the presidancy of NUS Scotland later in the week. With this all in mind I headed down on the morning of the training whilst Alex and Emily went down the night before which judging on their mishaps with trains I think I took the better option. In saying that although I was leaving at 7am the travel advice on google maps said I might be cutting it fine to get there on time. I took into account the roadworks on the M8 and the journey time had me basically arriving bang on time but I didn’t take into account the traffic on the Kingston Bridge then knocking me off enough to hit Edinburgh at rush hour.

I ran in to the training just as the icebreakers were starting so it wasn’t all bad and I quickly realised that almost everyone there either worked with kids with care experience or kids with special educational needs rather than conservationists although a few of them did that as their main job. Had we really made the mistake of thinking it was more than just that when it came to target audiences? As it turns out it’s aimed at anyone and everyone it just so happens there are a lot of that demographic because it works so well with them.

Anyway the first day had us going through the proposal paperwork and a wander around Alnwick to try out a few activities that they might use to get us started with the idea being we come up with an hours worth of activities for the next day that we had to facilitate. The paperwork itself was something that had me worried but they soon sorted that and any amendments that are needed don’t involve constantly going back and forth between the office and yourself. It’s all set out to make it as easy for you as possible really.

Because of the split between ourselves and most of the rest of the group we grouped together with a lecturer from UHI and tried to come up with our own ideas for activities. Without knowing what resources we’d have we tried to remember what there was on site, we were using a bit of woodland and some of the fields around the castle, and I joking said we had plenty of molehills. I think someone else said something similar and decided to run with something to do with moles despite knowing nothing about them. We then moved onto the pub were it seemed like an even better idea…

As for the pub it was a strange place. I think it was called the Tanners Arms but it looked like a normal house from the outside, except for the sign on the wall, and was not much bigger than my livingroom. It was dead when we went in and then all of a sudden about 30 folk from the USA turned up and the place got hell of a busy. The jukebox had The Living End and QOTSA on it which was always a good sign then a mad old guy turned up wearing a guiness hat and with his old border collie called Odo. It went downhill after that but good chat was had with Heather and Paul and we all forgot about the moles.

The day started slowly with the hangovers before we headed down to the woods where the first group had us doing a treasure hunt followed by a little bit of geocaching. You could tell the target audience wasn’t us though and worked very well for the age groups they were aiming at. The geochaching was fun but it felt a little tacked on to fill up time rather than a planned activity but thats possibly more to do with the fact we had planned on doing something similar on campus but putting a bit more work into it and putting our own caches down for it rather than relying on one being close to the area we were working in. Again though possibly down to target audience.

Then it was our turn and we had to somehow work out what the hell we were doing with the molehills. It turns out the size and shape of the hills as well as location can be used to work out where the nests are and where the young moles are practising their digging. Random facts kept appearing in our heads from the night before about them having store of worms to see them through the winter but they keep them alive and paralysed and such like. It’s amazing what you can quickly come up with using a phone and google though. We followed that up with a introspective session along the river and gave them some tasks to do whilst listening to what’s going on around them before feeding it back to the group. Basic stuff really but it helped us ease into the process.

The last group had us collecting things from the woods  and creating some artwork away from the path before setting up some ‘stations’ around the area for some activities such as fairy home building and wild mustard pesto making. I loved the pesto recipe by the way so I’ll be trying it out in the near future.

Overall it was worth it to go on the training purely for the paperwork and procedure side of things but I think we’ll still need an award or two to get the confidence up and our ideas worked out properly. Especially if we plan to let anyone else other than SRUC students in on the awards. We did wonder beforehand if going on the course in England was wise and should we be using it to network in Scotland but I think those links would be getting made anyway and we’ve broadened the reach of our own network by going down there. Really interested to see how the woman working on Hadrians Wall gets on as well as the two Irish folk who are part of a rivers trust and have been running awards already for local kids.