Morning Hike in the Preserve, Maps and Untwisting the Human Knots

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 By: Payton Coleman and Alia Dahlan

We started the day off yesterday morning with a beautiful morning hike exploring bio-mimicry in the preserve. Showered in bug spray and sunscreen we explored the 189-acre ecological preserve looking for resourceful clues placed to teach about how we can look to nature for design and engineering solutions.

Geocaching in the Fred Stanback, Jr. Ecological Preserve
Having Fun in the Preserve
Later that day we were visited by the Rocky Mountain Institute, and they taught us about the 5 types of activism which are political, educational,organizational,economic and lifestyle activism.

Splitting into groups we talked about  the different types of activism and how we use them in our everyday lives. Followed by a 30 second group discussion with one person from each group sharing their experience with the rest of the group.

We then read a story about the side effects of DDT when used to cure malaria in Borneo for the Dayak people. Then we drew an ecological diagram of events that occurred in the story. As a group we found this to be an interesting project to be worked on, because we had to consider all the affects that could be caused by the spraying of DDT in the Borneo area.


Systems Thinking and Innovative Design activities

After these group activities, we had a chance to unwind with a team-building human knot exercise. We broke into groups, linked hands, and the rest is history. Our chaotic, fun experience began when 8-10 people in each group were linked together to form a turbulent body of people. Though none of the groups successfully untangled our knots, the experience was one for the memory books.



Groups during the Human Knot Exercise

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