Solving riddles - Team Strengths!

Each end of the year is such a great time to take a look back at what we experienced. We learn mostly from reflecting on our activities when they are done and dusted. We learn when we set aside time for this and reflect. We learn little by just running on into the new year. Great questions for us can be; What happened that knocked me off my feet? What can I be proud of? What have I learned this year? Where do I need to complete something?
 
Through reading the tracks of the animals that are around us you will get a deeper understanding and connection to the nature area that you are in. More importantly it is really fun to do tracking and to learn each time new skills. One really gets to know the animals while we track. The same is valid when we look back at the year and the “tracks” that you made. You get to know your self better and you have the opportunity here to learn. Looking into your own tracks can only lead to making better decisions in your life the next year. Tracking shows us the way to a meaningful legacy we love to live. There has not been one day where I did not learn something new about tracking and about myself.
 
This outdoor exercise can be done anywhere in the world. Yes! It gives you the opportunity to get outdoors away from your office. It is an excellent nature activity with the whole team.  With tracking we can immerse ourselves completely into a whole new world and get a fresh look on the world we are normally in.
 
This exercise is centred around the tracks that animals make in the soil or on the vegetation. Tracks can also be scents that animals make or markings on plants and digging evidence. Tracks can also be feeding or drinking evidence and of course there is the world of droppings. The legacy tracking exercise can be done in all nature areas where wild animals come regularly and where the soil is not to hard . This way you can easily find the animal tracks.. You can track in forests, snowy fields and on sandy beaches, basically anywhere.
 
What it brings. With practicing tracking we will start to notice more things in nature and making use of all our senses. Tracking makes you move while you are following the tracks and the journey of a specific animal. Learning to track brings you at the same time to look at the energetic tracks that you made in your life. We become aware of what has happened in our journey, where we made choices and what they brought.
 
This exercise is a lot of fun to do with the whole family and It is a winner at team-outings. Most children just LOVE tracking, this includes the adult ones. You can look at tracking as solving riddles together. In this case we make it specifically into a team-strengthening event. What tracks did the team make so far? How do we recognize and value our legacy we leave behind? What tracks would the team love to make together the next year.
 
This is how you start. Divide a big team if needed into smaller groups of 3 to 4 persons or in pairs. It doesn’t matter if one of the groups is a bit bigger
 
The goal of the exercise is to correctly identify tracks in the nature area and growing our tracking knowledge. However the real goal is to have fun and get a deeper connection and understanding of nature and of each other’s strengths and skills. We improve our observation skills drastically. We will need to use in tracking many senses that we do not use often. That is on its own a great experience.
 
The idea is that every group can find as much as they can discover about 10 different sets of tracks. These can be tracks left behind by mammals, reptiles, birds or insects. Let every group find out what animal made that track and describe a minimum of 3 characteristics of that track that will occur in almost every track that animal would make. You can call these “bank-on” track characteristics. Let every group write those characteristics down on a piece of paper per track-set. Ask every group to think about what they learned about the team or themselves at each set of tracks. Ask them what parallels can be found here with the team’s tracks during the last year. 
 
Wrap up this fun tracking exercise after an hour by evaluating all tracking sets with the complete group. Let each small group tell what they learned while tracking about their own personal tracks and the tracks the team made. Close of the tracking exercise by discussing the tracks the team would love to leave behind in the future and which animal would support them specifically in this.