The haunting song of an Indian flute at dusk...handmade clay beads campfire-baked to be given as gifts...braids of sweetgrass
fashioned for a healing ritual...a laughing tangle of teens following the fiddle in a do-si-do...poignant reflections on homesickness
entered into an audio journal—these and so many other creative activities are the heart and spirit of the Discovery Trails Program each summer. We forged simple tools and decorative pieces, even a wind chime for our traveling commode!

Discovery Trails is an outdoor adventure in History and the Arts for teens who are blind or visually impaired. For two weeks each summer, a dozen or more teens from several Midwestern states follow a pioneer trail across the plains and into the Rocky Mountains. The ten-year-old program is designed fresh each year by Accessible Arts and conducted in partnership with the Kansas State School for the Blind. Artist-educators and trail historians mix imagination and creativity with authentic remnants of trail times to draw the teens into the lives of emigrants wagon-bound for the West in the mid-1800s. A rollicking field dance at Independence Rock, Wyoming, in the spirit of the Donner Party, who camped in the same place.

The teens fashion iron “S” hooks at a blacksmith’s anvil; carve an image into leather for a block print; learn the steps to a contra dance—creative activities that introduce the youngsters to pioneer life style. Weaving, sewing moccasins, shaping clay figures, journal writing, improvisations on flute, guitar, harmonica—these and similar individual activities create space and invitation for reflection and mulling over the experiences of the day. We carry a block of limestone with us, giving everyone a turn to chisel on it. Then we leave the stone along the trail in a place where pioneers have carved their names.

Around the campfire and while traveling together in the minivans, expressive activities like song writing, storytelling and dramatic play help the teens hone skills to share their trail experiences with family, friends, community and school. In all these instances, arts activities are integral to the Discovery Trail experience, drawing each teen into the historical setting, to reflect on it, to express one’s own experience and to share one’s discoveries with the group and with others. Around the campfire, Jonathan combined the harmonica with his singing of Scottish ballads.

In the fall the trail teens come together again for a full weekend
of creativity, culminating in an arts & history lesson for grade school classrooms, through which the teens share historical information, their own trail adventures, and the joy of creating that is inherent in the arts.