This morning Wolf, Bear and I drove about an hour up the coast to meet up with with our Independent Study group for a field trip day. The usual crew was there, two 11 year old boys, their families, the teacher and us. There are more kids in the program but we're the core group that always shows up for the hikes and geo-caching. I don't mind though because the boys get along great and are a really good match even considering the age difference.
Today's trip was a visit to a couple of different beaches, finding four geo-caches and ending up at a pumpkin patch. The first beach had some pretty steep rocks so I put Bear's leash on. It might look silly, but he has a tendency to run off and intentionally ignore people trying to stop him. We walked down, looked at some of the rocks, learn a bit about them and then took a walk down the beach. Now, I seem to have developed an uncanny ability to spot dead animals and today was no exception. Part way down the beach I found a very dead seal. I'm certain that has an extreme EWWWW factor to many people, but as usual my first reaction was to yell to the kids, “Hey! Check out what I found! It's a dead seal!” All of the boys came trampling over ready for an inspection. It was missing all of one eye and most of another and some of its entrails were spilling out, but dried and there was no smell. We decided a bird probably took the missing eye and wandered off to the next adventure.
The boys stampeded off, except Bear who was literally attached to me at the hip. They ended up climbing on on some sandstone near the water and Bear wanted to join them so we walked over. We were deciding if we should let him join them when I noticed that the tide had decided to come in vigorously right then. I yoinked Bear off the ground and was promptly standing in shin deep ocean water. Hooray for wet sneakers... Bear was dry though and that was a good thing since he would have A. hated being wet, B. hated being cold, and C. hated being changed to fix the prior two problems. Luckily Wolf's teacher had some shoes she could lend me and they almost fit.
Oh and on the way back to the car we found a seagull head, mostly skull really. Told you I was good at spotting these things! Last week it had been a tiny dead mouse.
We found all the geo-caches we were looking for and we eventually ended up at the pumpkin patch. It had a corn maze. I have never been in one so I was all for trying it. It ended up being me, Bear, Wolf, the teacher, one of the boys from earlier and another one that had met up with us there. We got wonderfully and hopelessly lost very quickly and they boys spent most of their time running ahead and then waiting for the adults to catch up. Wolf had been told to stay with the boy from earlier and that boyhad been told to keep an eye on him. Bear spent most of his time with the teacher and I since the ground was very uneven and he kept falling over.
Finally we turned a corner and found the boys, well the two older ones at least. I asked them where Wolf was and they looked around, at each other, and pretty much shrugged. The teacher and the boys started shouting for him and we soon heard him yelling and sent the boys to retrieve him. He was a bit shaken, but not much worse for wear. His teacher was impressed at how un-paniced I seemed. The thing is that, honestly, it was a corn maze. It's not like he could have gotten far in the amount of time since we had seen him last and even if he found his way out we had parents waiting outside. Besides Wolf and I have been over what to do if (when) he got misplaced in situations like that.
After that we still had lunch, schoolwork, martial arts, more schoolwork and a good amount of brotherly bickering and wrestling before dinner.
So I'm sitting here typing this sometime after midnight with a sprained wrist that I got from grabbing Bear away from the water just so that I don't forget anything. Thanks to unventilated classrooms in painting classes in college my memory is unreliable at best and today I really do not want to forget.
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