The most powerful memory I had was the saguaro fruit harvesting. It taught me that you can survive in nature without any help from modern day stuff. The Saguaro fruits were the best fruit I ever tasted. Because of my experience, I will start relying on nature more instead of modern Day things. I will go camping for fun instead of staying home in a air conditioned house which I will turn off when I leave, start compost my food again and use it for the palm trees, and save rain water in buckets when it rains and use that to water plants instead of my hose. By doing things like this I will be in more harmony with nature.

During Earth Camp we went camping two times. Both times were really awesome. The first time we went camping in  the desert. We did some amazing stuff like, owl tracking, Saguaro fruits harvesting, and we slept out under the stars,. I was a little scared that a scorpion or a rattlesnake would crawl into my sleeping bag but they didn’t. The camping trip on Mount Lemmon was my favorite so far. We rode on a ski lift, wrote about water sheds, had fun pinecone wars, played a lot of games, drilled into trees to get core samples, and we got to go out  and write in our journals for 30 min. That was one of the best camping  trips I have ever gone on. I‘m looking forward to our last camping trip at Kitt Peak, because we get to look at the stars and planets through a really powerful telescope. If it’s anything like the last two camping trips, it will be really great.

When we were at the desert museum I saw some really great animals. These kind of animals I thought I would never see in real life. We saw animals like the kangaroo rat. ,tortoise, parrot, owl, tarantula, scorpion, and a really cute ring tail .Some of these animals I got to learn how to sketch. Jesus taught us some sketching tips. They really turned out so well. Also we went to the venom lab and the guy who worked there took out a live rattlesnake with these tong-like things .I could tell it wasn’t very happy to be picked up like that. After the guy put the rattlesnake away he took out a gila monster who I think was more unhappy than the rattlesnake to be picked up like that. Seeing all those animals was one of my favorite things about Earth Camp.

On Friday we went to Brad’s house. Brad is a man who has no electricity ,plumbing or even a car. He uses rain water to drink, shower with, and cook. Brad even wrote a 400 page book on how to conserve rain water. He uses solar power that is set up on his roof instead of electricity. He has the most awesome bikes. One of his bikes even has a built in skateboard. He has a garden and uses compost for his garden. Seeing how Brad lives made me realize u don’t need stuff like air conditioning. I will live a little like Brad by doing stuff like saving rain water and composting. I am really glad I got to see Brad’s house.

When I first got to Earth Camp I knew no one and had no friends but after spending all this time at Earth Camp I got to know really awesome people and made a couple of friends. We played so many games like a game where one person was blindfolded and the other person couldn’t talk and they had to lead the blind person though an obstacle course. I accidentally made the person I was leading run into a tree. I am still very sorry about that. We did so many fun stuff like that together because of these people Earth Camp was more enjoyable.