Weekend in the Woods: Weekend in the City

This past weekend I was privileged to get to take part in a Coyote Mentoring Experience at the Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, WA.  The experience was inspiring on many fronts. Mainly,  it was exciting to be with so many people inspired to create a world that values nature and holistic human development.   The teachers were fabulous, experienced and passionate educators.

We learned about their Natural Learning Cycle and practiced many of the core routines that they have found lead to "nature connection" outlined in their book.    While many of the activities and practices were not new to me- it was encouraging to see it so succinctly outlined.   It makes it a wonderful way to be deliberate in planning nature experiences for children.

I come away from the weekend thinking about my intentions.  I have many: to build community, to teach my children ( and hopefully other children and families) to have a deep knowledge of the place they live in and I am now considering how learning survival and wilderness skills can lead to a richer personhood and in time community.

I am not sure where I will go with the new practices that I began while attending the weekend, however I realize they are already informing how I talk to my children.   The last words of one of the instructors when we left the experience was to go home and remember that others have been living lives too, while you were gone: Ask them questions.

So when I came home to my family I really listened, with a refreshed perspective, to what my family had experienced while I was gone.  I was truly happy to hear about their urban adventure with a make-shift carseat carrier  (they needed to haul two!) that they made all so that they could walk a half mile and take a train to the car rental shop so that they could visit friends in another town.   I enjoyed how they explained that they hadn't thought about the challenge of rain as they went, but how it didn't stop them.  I heard that that they had noticed an eagle soaring over our neighborhood as they walked and it reminded them of the time that they had seen an eagle being chased by crows.  They also informed me that there is another rooster somewhere near the train station & that they could hear its crow.  I asked if they had seen neighbors: they told me yes and named them but said that conversation was quite limited as they all were watching the library truck driver unload books from his truck and deliver them to our branch.

My whole family is learning the practice of paying attention: our natural world and our community is not removed from us. It surrounds us.