Story telling: Sigurd and Fafnir
To book a session go here.
We had an amazing day. We were small but perfectly constituted. The theme was going to be dragons, but we did not expect to get so many frogs in the bargin. The idea began when we went to visit the inhabitants from Parallal Dimensions by Siubhan Regan as part of a photocall. We could not move for the frogs which were jumping out of our way. So I thought, why not, for our first session, do a citizen science survey of the frogs in the area. We could do a transect and the submit the results to CeDAR. So that is what we did!
We began with the frog survey… We did a transect of 9m by 3m and took 5 minutes per section… and we came up with 31 frogs. It was completely mad. Far more frogs that we could have ever dreamed of. The skills learned? How to do a transect, measure with tape, record data and look for frogs (although the last one was a bit too easy).
We were going to gather more oak gall, but we needed to get across to the oak area… To do this we had to shimmy across the shuck. This was quite fun.
Having blackberries is one of the joys of September! As we waited for each other to cross, Jonathan told us a story about blackberries and how they figured in part of Irish history.
We gathered the oak galls and part of the process included pruning the lower branches – the dead ones of the oak trees in the new forest.
We will be making black ink using this at the next session. So science and practical art. This is the mission of Elements – to always make experiences meaningful and relatable. For memories to be forged and made.
We ended the session with an ancient story – the story of Sigurd and Fafnir. From the Norse/Germanic myths which went on to influence Tolkein and Wagner to create The Lord of the Rings and The Ring Cycle, respectively.
I would like to thank everyone who made this day possible. A tiny part of this dream has come true.
To book a session go here.