New Teenage Boy Parents.

by Henry Poole

Last year I ran across some research that discussed the history of “rites of passage” into manhood for boys. Recalling my experience of growing up in the 70s and 80s, I felt an “aha” while reading about the history of male maturing. For thousands of years, growing up for boys had involved rituals to help them gain self confidence by having to confront challenges that allowed them to recognize their need to increase their level of responsibility and feel proud of their growth. Where they obtained true grit. As a twentieth century American male, I had missed this opportunity.

I decided that I wanted something different from my rocky, awkward growth for my two boys, so I began researching survival camps. I was looking for something that would give them a dose of reality. Something that could build a sense of pride in their ability to survive and thrive. Something that could help them realize that they were becoming men and needed to begin acting as men.

Awesome teens beginning their summer adventure ~ 2012

My research led me to Lifesong Wilderness Adventures and Mark Wienert. Last summer, my first teenage boy, Aidan, attended a program with Mark. He left behind all of his screens (computer, xbox, and phone), his friends, and his old habits. During that week he overcame some deep addictions to our modern life and learned that he could be a man. I’ve become friends with Mark Wienert and  have seen what he has done for numerous young people. I would recommend his summer program to anyone with a teenage boy who is struggling to become more responsible.

Henry’s son Aidan, took our week long teen summer adventure for ages 14-15, in 2012. Please visit the teen camp page of our website to learn more about what we have to offer your son or daughter.
Henry Poole is a father, husband, and a strategy consultant for CivicActions.

Whether there’s 7 or more survival courses offered around the country Lifesong Wilderness Adventures is no exception. Offering top quality outdoor survival courses in the U.S. since 1994.

From Lifesong’s standard First Circle survival course, 6 days, to the 28 day Adult Immersion outdoor adventure, we teach wilderness survival at its best. The First Circle course is perfect for the beginning student to the experienced backpacker, hiker, or hunter.

Owned and operated by Lifesong’s head instructor, Mark Wienert, Lifesong offers seasonal survival courses in California, Oregon, and Texas.

Custom camps are also popular courses with Wienert’s clients. THE EDGE, our extreme adventure camp compliments that very special person or group who is looking for a real outdoor adventure with an EDGE to it while learning awesome survival techniques and skills.

Not for the faint of heart, three days of intense training and your off on your overnight with just a knife, and the clothes on your back. THE EDGE course is very popular with parent’s as a rites of passage experience with their college bound son or daughter, best friends, singles, birthday gifts and more.

If you’re looking for a professional survival school that offers up to 7 or more top wilderness survival courses, look no further and contact Lifesong Wilderness adventures today.

Parent’s; there are websites on the internet that suggest our teen camp programs are for troubled teens. However Lifesong Wilderness Adventures is not a troubled teen program.

Lifesong is not a troubled teen therapy camp nor are we licensed to treat troubled teens or youth, so parents if you are looking for this type of program for your teen this summer please contact your state’s mental health services for referrals and information.

Lifesong Adventures does offer teen summer adventure camps every summer during the height of summer; located in the the beautiful Klamath mountains of northern California, providing outdoor adventures in hiking and exploration, while immersing your teen(s) in outdoor survival skills and training of the highest quality.

We would love to hear from you and are happy to answer your questions. Please contact Mark by calling – 530-859-0539

Please do visit the teen page of our website to learn more about our awesome and exciting summer camp adventure for your teen(s)

Teen Summer Wilderness Adventure Survival Training Camps California

Thank you.

What Should I Take for a Wilderness Survival Weekend

This is our recommendation list of gear to take with you for Life Song’s weekend survival school course.

Weekend Survival School Gear List

All camp items on the checklist below are important for an enjoyable and comfortable camp experience.

• Tent & Sleeping pad for your convenience, rentals are available online.
  • Sleeping bag
  • Pillow
  • Eating utensils – cup for hot drinks, bowl, plate
    • flatware – NO GLASS
    • Water bottle – minimum one quart size
    •  *Knife* – non-folding, 4-6” fixed blade.
      We do not recommend serrated edged knives for camp.
    •  Flashlight or headlamp – with extra batteries
    •  Towels – we do not provide hand or bath towels
    •  Toilet kit – personal hygiene biodegradable products only, toilet paper Personal medication if appropriate.
    •  Bug spray
    •  Sun screen
    •  Clothing – for warm and cool conditions
    •  Swimwear
    •  Footwear – sturdy all terrain shoes/boots necessary for comfort and safety
    • Extra footwear – sturdy water shoes, tennis
      shoes are great! NO thongs or flip-flops this is not an option.
    •  Hat – sun/rain/warmth
    •  Rain gear – example poncho
    •  Bandana
    •  Gloves/mittens – for cool/cold conditions
    •  Day pack
    •  Sturdy notebook – not a note pad
    •  Pens/pencils
    •  Camera/optional

    We encourage participants to utilize their local thrift store for many of the items listed above. Many items maybe acquired inexpensively. Please pack your personal clothing and equipment in a duffel bag, backpack, or luggage.

    Weekend Survival School

    Foods to Take

    You will want food included in year weekend kit.  Simple prepackaged meals are popular to bring, you just add hot water for a quick and easy hot meal.  A wide variety of prepackaged foods are available online or your local outfitter.

    Get Creative

    You can also get creative and cook your favorite meals at home, freeze them in recycled containers and bring them in a cooler with you to camp. Much better eating than most commercial prepackaged foods and you’ll enjoy great savings.

    More recommendations for foods you should take

    Dried Meat – jerky, salami
    Canned fish – sardines
    Instant soups
    MRI’s (meals ready to eat)
    Crackers – cheese
    Bread/tortillas
    Peanut butter/jelly
    Fruit – dried, fresh
    Nuts/GORP (good old raisins and nuts)

    You are welcome to bring your camp stove with you to prepare your meals while at camp. We will have hot water available for cooking, hot drinks, and kitchen clean up at camp.

    Pack it in – Pack it out, Thanks!
    Survival School – California

Feeling achy, a scratchy throat coming on, darn! You just realized a bug has just got a hold of you and you are feeling terrible.

Your far from town and the truck is out of bio diesel.
Try this: make a soup with six onions, an entire bulb of garlic, about an inch of grated fresh ginger and cayenne pepper to chase away colds and flu, advises health journalist Hazel Courteney.

J. Albert Hermle, author of the book “Finally!!! Stop Having Colds & Flu.” Allicin has the ability to slow and kill a variety of viruses and bacteria. Hermle recommends eating fresh raw white onion within 4 hours of the first signs of a cold or flu. Yum…sounds tasty don’t you think?

To ease labored breathing and coughs, you can pour boiling water into a mug containing a slice of raw onion. Strain and drink the infused liquid after it cools.

Onions, and their cousins leeks, shallots and scallions, contain the flavonoid quercetin that helps prevent harmful LDL cholesterol from oxidizing and sticking to artery walls and helps prevent platelets in the blood from sticking together to form clots. Red and yellow onions have more flavonoid content than white ones. Higher concentrations of quercetin are present in the outer layers of the onion.

I recently came down with the bug and this is what I did to slay the nasties:

• One to two cloves of raw peeled, slightly crushed garlic AKA Russian Penicillin. If your stomach rebels from the garlic, cut back on the amount.
• 8-10 ounces of Orange juice.
• The juice of one lemon, yes Organic for all ingredients is better if you can afford it.
• 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, go easy on this if you are not used to taking it.
• Add all ingredients to the blender and hit the liquify button.
• Drink at least three times a day to beat the bug crud.

I also drank a lot of fresh hot Ginger root tea recommended by a friend. A tablespoon chopped or sliced thin of the root, then I added a pinch of Cinnamon, 1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper, (Honey if you like.) in my tea mug, cover and steep for 15 minutes and enjoy.

Helps with the upper respiratory and settles the stomach nicely. I also added a tablespoon of fresh Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) leaf to the mix. Its effervescent plant oils anti bacterial properties help kill the bad bacteria that form in the lungs during a cold or bronchial condition. You can also use Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) leaf too.

Drink as much clear liquids as you can, water is the best along with Ginger Root tea.
Stay away from sugar as it lowers the immune system, so easy on the honey honey.

And the old standard of course; chicken soup, if you have any, it works wonders.  Add loads of garlic and onion.

And get lots and lots of sleep.

If you can take an over-the-counter flu stopper to help encourage healing sleep, do!  Sleeping the night through will make all the difference in the world for you and shorten the illness.

You should always check with your Doctor or Medical Practitioner before following any of the recommendations or recipes I have here. It can be dangerous to mix herbs and over the counter drugs together with certain medical conditions.

I’m at the age where I should be getting flu shots so starting next year I plan on it. There is an acute rise in the Whopping cough outbreaks in Washington State, I don’t have to worry about this big nasty thank goodness. But it has moved into Oregon with a vengeance.  Please be responsible and make sure your children have all their current vaccinations.

People with low immune systems and the elderly need to be vaccinated to put the breaks on this killer virus and the terrible influenza that is now creating serious health problems on the east coast.

Have a favorite flu or cold remedy concoction?
We would love to hear about it.

Mark Wienert outdoor survivalist Oregon, yes that’s me.

Though in the title of this post my last name is spelled incorrectly, ‘Weinert’. I have one of those last names that people have a difficult time spelling and pronouncing.

The correct spelling of my last name is of course; Wienert. I am a Jr. as I have the same name of my father. So you will find my name sometimes spelled as Mark Weinert Jr, which of course is incorrect because, as we all remember from english “I before E, except after C” is the rule. So its pronounced we-nurt and spelled Wienert.

Often my name is spelled as Weiner a common misspelling of wiener which translates into German for Viennese, but may also refer to: a German sausage named after Vienna, the beautiful capitol of Austria. I have never considered myself a German sausage as my family originated from Zeeland, which is the westernmost province of the Netherlands before migrating to the US. Large parts of Zeeland are below sea level now which makes sense why my family would migrate to the beautiful state of Oregon.

Well however you want to spell it; Mark Weinert, wiener, or Wienert I have earned this name and have the scars from high school to prove it. We-nurt, is the correct pronunciation whereas Y-nurt is incorrect. To help people with this at my survival school I say, “I may be a Wiener, but I’m no Weiner.”

And yes I’m a survival expert, not a survivalst as I understand the definition of the term. This is the Merriam – Webster Dictionary definition of the term survivalist: : a person who advocates or practices survival-ism; especially one who has prepared to survive in the anarchy of an anticipated breakdown of society. No, this is not what I teach nor the philosophy of my survival school.

I teach practical survival and nature awareness skills as I am an expert educator in the skills and techniques of wilderness and outdoor survival.
There you have it.
You can read more about Mark Wienert – Here

Lifesong Adventures 28 Day Adult Immersion Course

Lifesong Wilderness Adventures 28-day “Adult Immersion Course,” is an immersion survival adventure for men and women 18 years and older. This month long course is uniquely tailored for those who have a strong desire to challenge themselves personally, while living and participating in intense field training to learn wilderness survival, nature awareness, and animal tracking skills.

 Course Location

The course is conducted at our primitive field camp near Mt. Shasta in California. Simply called “Low Camp,” this semi-remote and beautiful camp is also home to our California fall, winter, and spring survival courses.

Spectacular view of Mt. Shasta and the surrounding area are earned by hiking the higher ridges and hills of camp. The unique and mixed setting includes both coniferous forest and more open and lush areas with a Montane-type habitat. Conifers include pine, fir, cedar, and juniper. Varied species of native shrub and deciduous trees (including oak, chokecherry, and native birch) provide endless opportunities to study and discover the natural history of a diversity of flora and fauna.

Camp

Camp proper provides a primitive and tranquil atmosphere with two canvas wall tents that combine a cook tent, lecture hall and library. Both tents are equipped with cozy wood stoves for meals and warming during cooler or inclement weather. Additionally, a sixteen-foot tipi creates a spacious work area for general student use. Participants will sleep in nearby tents until survival shelters are constructed.  Shelter designs are crafted by participant’s own hands and ingenuity.

Wildlife

Ancient limestone cliffs surround camp and provide a varied habitat for many animal species that are dependent on caves for nesting.  Owls, falcons, eagles, hawks, and ravens make this field camp home.  California black bears, mountain lions, and coyotes are the dominant animals we track on this 1,200-acre property. We also explore the lives and habits of other wildlife species including: blacktail deer, grey fox, porcupine, opossum, striped skunk, California grey squirrel, mountain quail, cottontail, and jack rabbits to name a few.

Water

A small spring provides water from camp. It flows from within a stand of old growth pine a half-mile a way. The spring bubbles out of the ground and quickly turns into a small stream that runs through camp. Other springs can be found in the areas where wildlife gather in the early morning hours and during the long shadows of evening. Some springs are made into wallows by bears while others are important watering holes for birds and other creatures large and small.

Meals

Great food makes a great camp! While we learn how ants, scorpions and grubs may give us sustenance (and are heartily welcomed to the dinner menu if needed), there is nothing like delicious camp grub after a long day of survival training. Our menu is carefully planned to provide plenty of nutritionally rich calories to replace the 3,000 to 4,000 calories participants will burn on most days.

Menu

Camp meals consist of whole food including: beans, rice vegetables, fruit, grains, breads, nuts, seeds, eggs, and meat. We use a variety of cooking methods at camp such as: underground oven cooking, open pit, hot rock, Dutch oven baking, and other primitive cooking techniques. We will also gather seasonally available wild plants to supplement our menu and for those who choose, we learn how to humanely butcher, safely prepare, smoke, jerk, and cook domestic livestock.

Wild Plants

Plants are an important focus of the 28-day survival curriculum. Wild plants include trees, shrubs, grasses, herbs, lichens and mosses. Many plants are edible and life sustaining, while others are important for fire and shelter making. Most plants have more than one use and can be used extensively for medicinal and utilitarian applications.

The Hunt

Once participants have taken care of basic needs and have provided themselves with the tools for survival, they begin training in animal tracking, nature awareness and the ancient way of the hunt.

Utilizing what nature provides, the class will create and build a variety of primitive yet highly effective hunting tools including traps and snares. Participants will practice and become proficient in the setting and application of their use. These powerful and self-sufficient skills of survival are empowering and available in times of need.

Stalking is a hunting skill that must be mastered to approach and capture shy and elusive quarry. Using a simple camera as a hunting weapon, participants will learn how to stalk, track, and trail wildlife. No game animals will be taken in this course.

Orienteering and Adventure

Empowering wilderness survival skills are accompanied by days and nights filled with walks and hikes, tracking, and observing the wild world around us. Students learn to bivouac overnight using nature’s bounty to provide basic shelter and fire. Compass use, orientation, navigation, and the use of GPS (Global Positioning Systems) are taught along with the art of navigating without modern technology.

Lifesong survival courses are held during this time and 28 day Immersion students will also participate in these classes.  Immersion students maintain their continuity by their presence at camp for the duration of the month along with camp staff.

In Sum

There is much to see and do each and every day of the “28-day Adult Immersion Course.” In this life-changing adventure you will learn how to meet your most basic survival needs: shelter, water, fire and food. Immersed in the simplicity of primitive living, you will learn to take care of yourself in an environment outside of your normal comfort zone. Through practice, direct experience and skill mastery you will earn the confidence to overcome challenging survival situations.  This confidence will ultimately become your new comfort zone!

Side Effects?

Beware! Course results may cause: confidence, healthy weight loss, muscle tone and endurance, happiness, smiling faces or singing with a twinkle in the eye.

Contact Mark Wienert  for questions and an application form.

Animal and Man Tracking

Sign language
Reading nature’s clues to find animal paths is also a way to slow down and find an appreciation of nature

BY GARRET JAROS
For The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011, page D2

REEDSPORT OR. — The tracks in the sand of a passing black bear and her two cubs disappear into a thatched tangle of forest beside Eel Lake. Oregon’s coastal rain forests are a jungle that swallows light and tracks alike — at least to the untrained eye.

For expert tracker and wilderness survival teacher Mark Wienert, the formidable wall of underbrush is just a jumping-off point to where it really gets interesting. But then Wienert, a former consultant for the popular television show “Man vs. Wild,” could track a rattlesnake across a hot rock.

“Tracking is a doorway to nature,” he says, studying an array of tracks that merge and overlap with the bear tracks. “It’s a doorway to this remarkable world that we live in. And in order to track you have to slow down, you have to quiet yourself and look.

“And so that’s kind of why we call it the art of seeing, because it’s developing the ability to notice the subtleties that are occurring around us.” Wienert is teaching “Intro to Animal Tracking: The Art of Seeing,” along with “Intro to Man Tracking,” and a course on wild coastal plants now through February in the forest and dunes south of Reedsport. After that, he returns to Northern California where he operates Lifesong Wilderness Adventures, which offers wilderness survival and education camps in winter and summer.

The Art of Seeing

The bear tracks are a week old, but the deer tracks that lead Wienert and tracking student Alex Medeiros of Napa, Calif., to them are fresh. Tracks are affected by weather and soil. A track might look fresh after a week in firm clay, while a track in the sand can be as faint as a whisper after a minute in the wind.

But before Wienert teaches students how to determine the age and species of a particular track, he shows them how to see their surroundings in a new way.

“What I want to do is develop your eye so you can start to see things, trails, runs, tracks made from wind or things other than animals, so that you get familiar with that,” he says.

The landscape tells a story, he adds, about when the last forest fire came through, the last flood or avalanche, the high water mark or where water might be found.

“One of the things we teach having to do with finding water is to listen to the birds early in the morning, where they congregate can be a sign, a track to let you know there could be water there,” Wienert says. “The birds will go to where there is water in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening before they head off to bed.

“It’s the same with other wildlife.”

Anyone lost in dry country would do well to know how to read the landscape — listen for the birds, note the well-trod animal paths and search out useful plants and trees. Cottonwoods grow in a high water table, cattails and willows “grow with their feet in water,” and where there is a grove of aspen, there is usually water just a few feet below the surface.

“So tracking is much more than following tracks, it’s reading the landscape — even the scents in the air are tracks,” he says. “You have to take short sniffs like a dog, and it can be very subtle, but you can smell cat that way and elk, bear and people.

“Bear often smell like old French fries. Park in a McDonald’s parking lot and sniff the air and you’ll know what bear smells like.”

Compression and sign tracking

Before heading into the woods and onto the dunes, Wienert covers some basics about track shapes, how to measure size and stride and, most importantly, how to read sign, because that’s what trackers do when there is seemingly nothing to see.

Wienert recalls taking a class from famed New Jersey tracker Tom Brown, who pointed out a two-week old red fox trail on moss and then challenged Wienert and his fellow students to find its next step.

“We burned our eyes on that for two days and saw nothing,” Wienert says.

“And then Tom came back and casually pointed it out, and sure enough, there it was. He always made you think way beyond what was possible.”

It’s rare in tracking to get a well-defined print. More often than not it’s about “sign tracking,” which means identifying those things that stand out to create a “trail,” while also recognizing basic patterns in prints after weather and time have washed away their finer features.

“A compression shape is not the perfect outline of an animal, it’s a general shape of the paw of that species,” Wienert explains. “So a cat (like a bobcat or mountain lion) registers with a circle shape, a deer with a heart shape. A cat has a heel pad and four toes and 90 percent of the time they don’t register their claw marks because they are retractable in the front. Bears aren’t like that.

“Another animal that we see often are dogs,” he adds. “They have four toes also, but they don’t have retractable claws, so 99 percent of the time you are going to see claw marks, so the compression shape for the dog is different than the cat, and some people call it a maple leaf shape.”

Look for the coyote’s claws to be much closer together and the overall print to be less splayed than a dog’s.

Following sign means looking for disturbances, for things that stand out compared to the overall pattern around the disturbance. It’s a bit like playing at Sherlock Holmes, always observing and asking “what’s out of place here?”

In sign tracking students look for broken stems and twigs, stepped-on plants, upturned pine needles, soil or sand deposited where it wouldn’t naturally occur, laid down grass, scat (wildlife droppings, which tell volumes about the type of animal being tracked), scratch and bite marks, hair, morning dew wiped clean from foliage, and even creases in leaves.

“What we are doing is looking for indicators so that they become familiar,” says Wienert, who once studied the litter of leaves in a Virginia deciduous forest for hours with a man who taught man-tracking to the FBI’s hostage team. “When someone walks on them it can create little creases. It’s fascinating.”

Dirt time

The only way to learn tracking is to put in what trackers call “dirt time,” studying tracks, reading the land and paying attention.

“Our eyes want to reject the trail we are seeing at first because there is no defined pattern that we are used to seeing,” Wienert says as he and tracking student Medeiros work out big and small tracks and trails beside Eel Lake. “But the brain builds the ability to see.”

During the daylong tracking class the men follow the signs of bear, deer, beaver, fox, raccoon, chipmunks and a rat or mouse and possibly a bobcat (based on its scat).

Wienert teaches Medeiros how to decipher the age of tracks by comparing them with the crisp, sharp edges of a fresh track, how to read the age of a broken twig by its color or “shine,” how to slow down and look at a track from myriad angles — working contrast and light, and how not to jump to any conclusions about the species of the animal being tracked until all the evidence is in.

And Wienert teaches Medeiros how to backtrack himself, which Wienert says is an aspect of tracking called the “art of staying found.”

Wienert brings his survival instructor instincts into his teaching of tracking. The woods and dunes grow in depth and dimension with his keen insights and knowledge.

“Almost all of these plants and trees here have some use for us,” he says. “Some are food, some tools, some medicine, some for shelter, some for fire making.”

He points out a slow-moving roughskin newt, the burnt-orange and brown colored type found across Western Oregon.

“They are highly poisonous and Oregon has a high rate of poisoning by newt. They secrete a toxin. And if you cut one up there is enough toxin to kill seven people. If you handle them, wash your hands after.”

By the end of the day Wienert has identified wood sorrel, a large three-leaf clover-looking plant that Medeiros says tastes like plum; a tiny carnivores sundew that contains an antibiotic-type chemical; a calendula marigold, great for skin abrasions and light burns, including sun burns; a fluted elfin saddle mushroom, not well-known in the commercial world, but delicious in angel hair pasta or venison gravy; wild mint for the stomach, and tasty purple evergreen huckleberries for pleasure.

“Tracking is really important to survival because we are able to pick up all kinds of information about (our environment) and you can tie it in to all aspects of the outdoors, whether it’s survival, hunting or photography or just enjoying nature,” Wienert says.

“It’s such a wonderful world when you start looking for tracks, you start discovering this whole micro world, especially in the Northwest where there’s all these mosses and lichens and wonderful plants and fungi. And you get to be a kid again.

“There’s sort of a saying in the tracking community that when you touch a track, you are tracking the spirit of that animal. As soon as you connect on that line you have a connection with that animal. So it can be very exciting.”

Go here for information on Wienert’s Oregon survival school and survival weekend courses.

Darlingtonia californica – Cobra Lily

One species, Darlingtonia californica, occupying boggy habitats in the northwest United States of America (southern Oregon, northern California).

Although the distribution of Darlingtonia is somewhat similar to the distribution of serpentine rocks in these areas, they aren’t identical at all. Darlingtonia doesn’t appear restricted to the serpentine sites, but it does appear to grow well in areas rich in heavy metals.

The cobra lily is not only restricted to nutrient-poor acidic bogs and seepage slopes, but many colonies actually thrive in Ultramafic soils, which are in fact basic soils, within its range. In common with most carnivorous plants, the cobra lily is adapted to supplementing its nitrogen requirements through carnivory, which helps to compensate for the lack of available nitrogen in such habitats.

Because many carnivorous species live in hostile environments, their root systems are commonly as highly modified as their leaves. Darlingtonia californica is no exception. The cobra lily is able to survive fire by regenerating from its roots, but despite this important role the roots are very delicate organs. While the temperatures in much of the species’s range can exceed 25 °C, their roots die back after exposure to temperatures not much higher than 10 °C. Temperature plays a large part in the functioning of all plants, but it is very rare for individual organs to have such different temperature tolerances. The physiological mechanisms and evolutionary benefits of this discrepancy are not fully understood.

The cobra lily is unique among the three genera of American pitcher plants. It does not trap rainwater in its pitcher. Instead, it regulates the level of water inside physiologically by releasing or absorbing water into the trap that has been pumped up from the roots. It was once believed that this variety of pitcher plant did not produce any digestive enzymes and relied on symbiotic bacteria and protozoa to break down the captured insects into easily absorbed nutrients. Recent studies have indicated that Darlingtonia secretes at least one proteolytic enzyme that digests captured prey. The cells that absorb nutrients from the inside of the pitcher are the same as those on the roots that absorb soil nutrients. The efficiency of the plant’s trapping ability is attested to by its leaves and pitchers, which are, more often than not, full of insects and their remains.

Cobra Lily flowers.

In addition to the use of lubricating secretions and downward-pointing hairs common to all North American pitcher plants to force their prey into the trap, this species carefully hides the tiny exit hole from trapped insects by curling it underneath and offering multiple translucent false exits. Upon trying many times to leave via the false exits, the insect will tire and fall down into the trap. The slippery walls and hairs prevent the trapped prey from escaping. The only other species that utilizes this technique is the Parrot Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia psittacina.

A remaining mystery surrounding the cobra lily is its means of pollination. Its flower is unusually shaped and complex, typically a sign of a close pollinator-plant specialization, but none have been identified. The flower is yellowish purple in color and grows on a stalk with a similar length to the stalk. It has fivesepals, green in color, which are longer than the red-veined petals. While pollination has not yet been observed in action, it is generally expected that the pollinator is either a fly attracted to the flower’s unpleasant smell or some nocturnal insect, as no extensive study has been performed to observe potential nighttime pollinators.

In a few flat boggy areas, one can see thousands of Darlingtonia plants. They prefer sunshine and don’t grow well in shade. If you want to visit a large colony of Darlingtonia plants, there is one open to the public near Florence, Oregon, on the coast highway.

Learn about the process of Fen and wetland restoration techniques that our teens learn and apply

July is teen month at Lifesong Wilderness Adventures, and teens participate in an ongoing wetland restoration project involving a meadow damaged by off-road vehicle use. Teens earn community service credits through habitat restoration as part of Lifesong’s outdoor conservation projects.

With hands-on involvement teens are empowered by learning that, they can make a difference through positive action.

Why Conservation

In recent years, senseless and negligent off-road driving by people in their 4×4’s and all-terrain vehicles (ATV’S) have negatively affected the wetland meadow at our summer camp location.  The damage caused by ATVs driving through this delicate wetland created deeply rutted trenches.  The surface water on the meadow drains into these trenches, lowering the local water table and causing the wetland to dry out.  The difference in elevation from the meadow surface to the bottom of the trench also leads to meadow erosion and potential gully formation.

The importance of Bogs, Fens, and Wetlands to the Environment

Destruction of wetlands through illegal vehicular activity.

For millenniums, wetlands have been an integral part of a healthy and robust ecosystem, which supports thousands of diverse animal and plant species.  Bogs and fens are formed by the upwelling of underground springs forming thick carpets of roots with peat type soils that act as natural filtering systems slowing flow from snow runoff each spring and holding and distributing moisture and sediment through a network of plant and roots helpful to overall water quality.  Wet meadows also help to maintain water temperature important to fish and other aquatic animals while providing healthy habitat for a diverse variety of plant and animal species that depend on these systems for their survival.  A few of these animal and plant species are the California Black Bear, Pacific Fisher, and the carnivores Darlingtonia californicum, also known as cobra plant, that grow in boggy serpentine soils of the Klamath mountains of northern California.

Restoration Tools

Selecting proper wetland restoration plant species.

Restoration is accomplished over time by mimicking nature’s healing processes.  An example of this technique that is applied in restoring a rutted-track made by an off-road vehicle is to partially fill a rut with living blocks of wetland plant roots, intact in their soil, which is made up of native forbs, grasses, soil, sediment, and roots.  Staggering the blocks along the rutted-track, and maintaining a very low profile of vegetation in the trench, allows the flow of water to gently spill over the top of the blocks, through the leaves and forbs, and catch fine, suspended sediment and other particulates on top of, and in the eddy created behind, the block.  Over time, plant roots make their way into the newly deposited sediment and support the wetland by slowing the flow of run-off in the ruts.  As these roots multiply, grass density and height increases creating more roughness that can trap more fines, leaves, and particulates.  As organic and inorganic matter accumulates, the grasses grow up through this layer, eventually raising the level of the rut thus restoring the wet meadow and protecting the wetland from premature drying.

Lifesong Adventures conservation project offers teens an opportunity to experience, first-hand, applied skills that can reverse the loss of a wetland habitat while earning community service credits.  The best education comes through doing.  We are proud of our teens and the great work they do at camp. Register your son or daughter in one of Lifesong Wilderness Adventures Teen Adventure courses this summer to continue the work.  Education means making a difference, and making a difference is fun and worthwhile!

Contact Lifesong Wilderness Adventures today!

Wetland and stream-side restoration.