Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Mr Serious Re-learns to Smile- Day Camp Jan 31, 2104


Mr. Serious Camp -documented by Sarah Bear

Mr. Serious was scheduled to arrive on the 31st of January. We knew that if he ever had a chance at smiling again, this is would be it! The problem was, he would only come if we transformed the Moonpaper Tent into a very serious place. He had no time to fiddle with magic or dreams or wonder.  If only we could make it just serious enough to get him here...



We put up signs to let everyone know about the changes.



We practiced being very serious.







We built traps to round up the magic in the Moonpaper Tent. And made a few things we thought might help lure Mr. Serious in.




It was a complicated and risky venture, but all our hard work paid off. 
In the end, we helped Mr. Serious find his silly side. 
He remembered how to smile and laugh! 

We celebrated with a grand releasing off all the magic, a tearing down of signs, and much dancing, leaping about, and making music! 
We made sure the magic was happy, too.




Dream Team -one day camp Jan 20, 2014

Dream Team Camp- documented by Sarah Bear

Dreams come in many forms. 
They carry our hopes. 
They show us our fears. 
And in collective dreams, we learn to face them together.

On a sunny January day at the Moonpaper Tent, 
creatures big and small, mythical and factual--all of them powerful--gathered.  
We were leopards and cheetahs, bald eagles and kittens, ewoks and superheroes, 
mermaids and fairies.  We were the Dream Team.

There's a point when you're in-between waking and sleep. 
In that space, images easily come to the surface.  
We don't know what they mean, or how they will play out, 
but we draw them out as maps on shimmery dream paper.  
We make marks and dashes and X's.

Soon after we drew our maps, we felt an eerie presence. 
A fox had entered the room. This was indeed a good sign; the fox would lead us into a dream.

He brought us to a castle.  

Our maps showed us a password to open the door, so we dialed it in and pushed through.  
On the other side, we came across a sleeping dragon with something in his mouth.  
A brave fairy grabbed it out and tossed it over to the rest of the us. 
It was a portal to another dream. Who knows where it would lead? 

As we were pondering the portal, the dragon's eyes opened.  
He reared his fiery head and lunged for us.  
Without knowing what would happen next, we threw the portal on the ground 
and jumped through.
Suddenly, we were butterflies. 

Oftentimes, when you go through an unknown door, a million doors open on the other side.  
That's what happened in our papery wing dream.
  
Our wings brought us to a pile of banners and glittery gemstones. 
With a little compassion, connection, and creativity, we crafted the gems on the banners 
in a way that activated portal magic.  
They became portable portals--doorways to travel from one dream to the other. 
We placed them about as a beacon for anyone whois stuck in a bad dream
that they can't see any way out of.

That's when we discovered another secret: when you find yourself in a bad dream, 
you can get out of it by singing a song or a chant.  
Together, we created a chant, "go go go ga ga ga twinkle twinkle."  

We now had the power to shape our dreams.  

We went out into the sun and played with our newfound dream hopping abilities.  

Pepper transformed into a squirrel and a cat tried to catch her.  
Snowflake turned into an ice mermaid.  
Snowy and a group of others went on a space ship voyage, taking photos of the planets 
they visited.  
We made nests.  
We discovered crystal rocks and a dream hole where a dream rabbit lived.

When we regrouped into a collective dream, 
our adventure continued in that way where you can slip from one place to another 
and time looses it's boundaries.
  
Notes began appearing telling us of a looming threat of a giant X, 
which we tracked down and turned into a dream itself.  

When we crawled through the X-turned-dream-tunnel, 
we found that we were in the mouth of a worm.  
Inside the worm was a vast lake.  
At the bottom of the lake, we knew we must meet a giant fish, 
who would tell us how to reach the dream keys, 
the only way to bring the memory of our dream back to waking life. 

The fish got us stuck in a dream loop.  

No matter where we traveled to find the keys, 
we kept coming back to Superman's house, all glittering with green. 

But eventually, we broke free and met a golden owl. 
The owl lead us to the keys and along with it, dream journals.  

Carrying the dream journals with us, we slowly woke up, 
through the thick mists where dreams and waking intertwine…