We walked further into the park and Brice led us through an activity where we had to draw a mermaid with our eyes closed, and then show it to someone else. He explained this was to help us not take ourselves or our artmaking too seriously - it should be fun.

We celebrated a birthday and did our January Four Elements writing, then hurried back to the trailhead. Warm, snowy, early spring days just sparkle.

We tried to incorporate our personal observations of prairie dogs in the field, our new understanding of prairie dog biology, and our thoughts on what makes a good story to write this scene. After sharing these, we hiked a little further to where a large cottonwood tree had fallen down.

Then we took a scene from this favorite book of ours, and reimagined it with the main character transformed into a prairie dog.

We hiked some more, played a game that basically became a snowball fight, and then settled in again. I asked the writers to think about a favorite book of theirs, and we brainstormed what made our favorite books enjoyable.

I explained that Brian and Rich worked for the Denver Zoo for a long time, and reminded the writers that we had met Rich at the Butterfly Pavilion last year. Each group wrote a summary of their section, and then we shared those distilled paragraphs.

We recorded our observations, then gathered again. In pairs we read a section about prairie dog biology from Prairie Night: Black-Footed Ferrets and the Recovery of Endangered Species by Brian Miller, Richard P. Reading, and Steve Forrest..