TSO-C Day 1: Welcome to Mars

As campers arrive, they grab cookies and claim top bunks. We say goodbye to parents and circle up to learn about our fellow campers and collaborators. Knowing the names and pronouns of the people we live with is key to a respectful camp culture.

Then, we get our gears spinning by discussing the three rules of Tinkering School: 1) Don’t hurt yourself or anyone else, 2) If you see a piece of fruit and you want it, you must eat it, and 3) Settle all conflicts with Ro-Sham-Bo.

Cookie (Amalie) wondered if Rule #2 meant that we only eat fruit. We eat plenty more than fruit, she was assured.

After settling into our yurt village, the group ventures up the hill to practice using the chop saw, clamps, and drills.

Riley does a ready call to check that everyone in the shop is wearing ear and eye protection before powering up the chop saw.

Max makes an angled cut on the chop saw.

Clamps, we learn, are useful to free up our hands - we only have so many hands!

Annabeth (Eden) practices using a twisty clamp.

Clamps can be fun to use - especially with a friend.

Drills are the tool that will land in our hands most this week. Understanding how to use them and feeling their torque and speed with our own hands is crucial to our future projects.

How do I get the battery out of the drill!?

Emily applies her drill skills to the construction of a box.

Behind the build site is an enchanted forest of swings and climbing trees. The forest stays enchanted, as long as we know what poison oak and hemlock look like :)

Kirin pushes a laughing Brody on the swing.

Kate reaches for her friend on the next swing over.

To put new tool skills to the test, campers are challenged to recreate a wooden gremlin in small groups. Here’s the catch: the single group-member who has seen the gremlin is blind-folded.

It has arms where? Does it have legs? And eyes?

After a clan of gremlins is birthed, we head down the hill for a burger dinner. Anticipation for the project reveal builds as we all sit quiet to hear what on earth we’ll be doing this week. It turns out that we won’t be on earth! Elkus ranch has transformed into Mars. An intense storm is brewing and weather reports say that it will hit our yurt village on Friday.

This constitutes a need for transportation to and shelter at the build site. How will we get our necessities up the hill and how will we stay safe up there, considering the conditions on Mars? There’s so much to think about and so many ideas to share.

We close out the evening with blackberry picking (and eating!), card games, and quiet reading. Until tomorrow!