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My confidence has improved so much that I have been invited to train as a peer mentor for Branching Out and I am looking forward very much to starting the first stage of training on Sunday 25 March, 2018.
In my role as a volunteer youth worker with the Moray Council Engagement Team for the past two and a half years, I have shared my experience with the Youth Work Team who are encouraging me to develop activities with the young people which will be exciting.
I have joined Tracking Club run by Dan Puplett, Nature Awareness, which is held locally and am thoroughly enjoying the monthly outdoor events, learning and extending my knowledge of wildlife and nature, and meeting new people, which I would not have done previous to taking part in the course.
One wonderful result of participating in the course and regaining a sense of awareness of the natural and beautiful local forest surroundings in my local area, was that I have taken up my interest in art work, particularly pastel and chalk drawing again, and was delighted to complete a piece of work for my daughter and son-in-law's Christmas which gave me such pleasure, and pride to see their delight - they are now eagerly awaiting my next effort !!!
All the above continue to maintain my mental health and wellbeing.

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Working in partnership with Earth for Life, Lead Scotland provided the opportunity for participants to work towards a nationally accredited qualification. The Award is flexible and based on recording their experiences in a Reflective Journal on the learning, skills and knowledge gained in the Branching Out course. These Awards are currently available at SCQF level 3,4 and 6 enabling more adult learners to reflect on informal and formal learning to gain accreditation.

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Our forest

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It was a great chance to meet people who were like-minded and also understood some of what I was going though, and it was amazing to see some wildlife too! The toads we found were an absolute delight and I never knew you could find them on Cluny Hill.

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Since starting Branching Out I've felt much more inspired to create things. This is a scarf I made using one of the crochet hooks I whittled, and I made another scarf as a gift and have even tried my hand at knitting.

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Branching Out by Earth for Life was a 12 week course. Once a week we would meet and go into the local woods for 3 hours with a group of similar people to explore and learn about the environment. The course was led by Helen and Alisdair, with help from Donna, Dan, Marion, Edward and Barbra.

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Inspired by the crochet hooks I'd seen someone make for another EfL course, I made some of my own. I used spruce from the conservation work we'd done in Sanquhar wood, and it meant that I didn't need to buy a large size crochet hook - I could make my own!

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I didn't take a photo of the finished product, but this is a picture I took at home of the butter knife I made. I went out and bought a knife so I could finish whittling, and since then I've also made something else.

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To help the native Scots Pine, we were asked by the trust that maintains Sanquhar Community Woodland to remove spruce from the woods. Armed with some gloves and other tools, we pulled up, snipped, and cut down every spruce we saw - and there were a lot of them!

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The results of our effort to clear a small area of the woods of spruce!

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Having learnt about what the local woodland has to offer, I have something to look forward to seeing next Autumn. It might not sound like much, but having something like that means a lot to me, and makes such a difference.

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Certainly for me, there was a sense of joy at how simple and yet how wonderful things were. The dull concrete and asphalt world I'm used to is so uninspiring, but out in the woodland it was possible to feel unburdened. There was so much to learn about, and to enjoy.
Often in life things are so overcomplicated, so processed, they become twisted and distorted from what they once were, or what they should be. Take jam, for instance. I hate jam! I tastes awful. And yet, the jam we made on Branching Out tasted divine. I think, if I had to pick one moment to sum the whole experience up, this would be it. We picked the raspberries, we cooked them over the fire we'd made. Yes, we added sugar, but there was a natural flavour you could still taste - just a little sharpness - that made this jam far superior to any I've had that came out of a jar or a single-use plastic serving.

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Branching out took place from August through to September, allowing us to see the change in seasons, and see and learn about some of the wonderful things the woodland had to offer, from raspberries to chantarelle mushrooms, from wildflower seeds we could gather to scatter in our garden or other places to copiced trees we could use for acquiring greenwood for whittling.

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Cluny Hill isn't a maintained woodland, so while there we did everything we could to look after it. This included, under Alistair's guidance, felling a dead tree that could pose a risk to people using the path.
Working in the woods felt wonderful, and we were doing our best to take care of both the environment and the people who used it - hugely rewarding.

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We set out to find some wood to create 'wood cookies', and instead came across this rowan tree close to the path. It had, for some reason, died very suddenly, as was evident from the withered leaves on its branches and the mushrooms growing from its trunk.
Due to its closeness to the path and the risk it could pose to people passing by, we cut it down to make it safe. We took some wood for our 'cookies' but the rest of the tree was neatly left to decompose - and also provide shelter for animals and insects!

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We all worked hard together to build a big version of the mini shelter we'd been shown - and it worked!
It was wonderful to build something, and for me getting my hands dirty was great fun. It felt really good, and we all worked really hard to get it done within the limited time we had.

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What do you think you have gained from the Award so far?

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What do you think you have gained from the Award so far?

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It has been a really good opportunity to look back and reflect on what I’d done and see that I have actually managed to do something over the course.

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Why did you get involved with the Adult Achievement Award programme?

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Why did you get involved with the Adult Achievement Award programme?

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Because it was easy to do alongside the course I was taking part in, and was a great opportunity to gain a qualification that would help with my CV and also for a sense of achievement. It was flexible and possible to do locally, with lots of support that meant I wasn’t disadvantaged because of my health.

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Why I got involved with the Adult Achievement Award.....I felt I was ready to take on the challenge of attempting this as I had gained confidence from completing the Branching Out course, and wanted to take my experience further to enhance my CV. The support I got was also a major factor and the flexibility of being able to meet up locally to access peer support

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Why I got involved with the Adult Achievement Award.....I felt I was ready to take on the challenge of attempting this as I had gained confidence from completing the Branching Out course, and wanted to take my experience further to enhance my CV. The support I got was also a major factor and the flexibility of being able to meet up locally to access peer support

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Demonstration in miniature of how to construct a weatherproof survival shelter using only the natural materials available........

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Demonstration in miniature of how to construct a weatherproof survival shelter using only the natural materials available........

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later on as a challenge against the clock we worked as a team and successfully completed the task to build a one-person shelter ....and a "volunteer" crawled inside, while we tested its waterproofing by pouring water over the structure - SUCCESS!!!!

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What I have gained from the award so far.....

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What I have gained from the award so far.....

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I found it extremely helpful in making me reflect on so many aspects of the Branching out course, by focussing my thoughts and experiences on just how much I have achieved, and how my mental wellbeing has improved through the connection with the natural forest environment.
I will also now be able to use my completion of the Award in my existing role of youth work volunteer in assisting in the delivery of the Youth Achievement Award, later this year in the Local Secondary School.

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What I learned in general from this whole experience.....

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What I learned in general from this whole experience.....

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I feel the most important learning experiences for me from the very first session, before the more practical activities, were those sometimes less easy to measure:
Engagement with my surroundings eg exchanging the anxiety and chaos in my mind for the peaceful whispers of the wind high up in the trees, focusing on colours, smells, textures, warmth of the sun and cool dampness of wet leaves and the feeling of stepping into another world where all my senses came alive for the first time in decades.

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It was worth collecting some materials for building fires. My tin contained:

A flint and steel to create a spark (more reliable than a lighter or matches!)

Thistledown (rather than cotton wool, I found most of this by Findhorn beach)

Birch bark

It's also good to have some small, dry twigs and sticks!

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There's a technique to building a fire so that it can grow without being smothered.

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There's a technique to using flints, so we practiced using cotton wool before having a go at lighting the fire itself.

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we made natural frames  to focus our eyes and senses through the trees ........reminded me of Rudyard Kipling's poem....  http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-way-through-the-woods/

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Success! This is what happens when it all comes together.......!!

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Success! This is what happens when it all comes together.......!!

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Thankfully we only needed it once, but it was really nice to learn how to put a simple but effective shelter up, and it was nice to sit beneath it and whittle while it rained.

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Lichen- evidence of the purity of air quality in our forests!!!!

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Dan’s collection of skulls- guess what animal/bird they’re from?!!!!

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This is called an epiphyte.

If you looked closely you could see some amazing things, both on the ground and up in the canopy. In this instance, a seedling is growing high up in the boughs of another tree.

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Before wood can catch, we needed something that burnt easily. Cotton wool is cheating! Things like thistledown are idea, and so is the papery bark from birch trees.
The bark curls up naturally, and taking a small amount from the tree doesn't damage it. There is an amount of flammable oil in it, which makes it idea for building fires.

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Even more fun fungus

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There was everything we needed for a fire in the woods - all we had to bring was our flint to create the sparks.
Dead, dry branches could be found high up and dry in trees - very useful on wet days.

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There was nothing better than building a fire from materials we'd gathered and then making raspberry jam right there at Helga's Hole with raspberries picked there and then.

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More fun fungus - but unfortunately a sign that this tree has died ...