By Elias de Birton; forester, Preceptor, and interim Chronicler
Since the Barony of Stierbach has a local forest, it seemed appropriate for the guild to do something for the Baronial Birthday!
The theme of the event was “Inspiration of the 9 Muses”, which was a little tricky to fit a forestry-related activity into, but what I eventually came up with was a “tracking” game inspired by Greek myths involving hunting. Participants read a myth that contained bolded words carefully hidden clues referencing a location at the event.
At each location was an object to grab the tracker’s attention near a set of “tracks” made from modeling compound. These tracks would point in the direction of the next set of tracks, which would point to the next, and the tracker would need to zig-zag around until finding the hidden “beast” (stuffed animal). Hunters who captured (a photo of) all three beasts got a small token.
The three myths were the hunt for the Calydonian boar (which sent participants to the archery range), Herakles and the Stymphalian birds (heavy combat), and Artemis turning Actaeon into a stag (for which I desperately wanted a water feature, but had to settle for the restrooms – so it goes). If participants wanted an extra clue, they could look under the paper the myth was written on for additional guidance.
Overall, the activity seemed to work well enough, but there were a few things that could be improved. I was allowed to set up in the A&S tent (of which I’m very appreciative!), but in the future it might be better to have a guild pop-up or the like. Some participants also didn’t understand that they needed to head off in the direction of the first set of tracks; they found them and assumed they were done (and I ended up giving them a token anyways, because this is all for fun!). Set-up also took longer than I anticipated, which is not unsual, and would have been easier if I were more familiar with the site ahead of time.
One thing that I would NOT change was having a ton of support from Křišťan Věstonice! Křišťan was able to direct folks while I was setting up, and was just generally helpful and pleasant company, to boot. While he had earned the rank of Underforester a while back, he had not received his oak branch badge, so I was able to recognize his skills and present him with that at the event.
