adventure where it isn’t so wild

So we have been thinking a bit about kinesthetic adventure–how to invite the boys to engage their whole bodies in play at home, where things aren’t as wild.  We live in a borrowed space, so our options for altering our landscape are limited.  Whatever we do, we need to be able to take it with us.  We have started collecting pieces of the forest to find a new  life, with us.

We are being very lazy about the whole thing, just creating piles around the yard to be discovered.   In the end, I think the laziness pays off.  The boys are left with a little more room to invent uses for their forest tools.

Tree limbs become buildings,  balance beams and pieces of ever-changing obstacle courses.

Rocks become lizard homes, foundations and cairns marking a trail.

We have forgone the sandbox, entirely, in exchange for a free-for-all opportunity to dig wherever, jut like the badgers do.

I am pretty sure our forest-scrap strewn yard is a whole lot more fun.  It provides  mystery.  Mystery that a green lawn and a  landscaped yard just can’t compete with.  There is an open invitation to create and sculpt.  Instead of spending time in a mono-textured sand, the boys encounter rocks,  worms, old bottle caps and bones.  Instead of moving across a sanded wood surface, they get scraped and poked as they build with rough-barked tree limbs.  Instead of having a play-structure with a fixed purpose, their play structure can be created anew every day.  Pretty, well it isn’t pretty.  But it is adventurous!  Though I sometimes yearn to be able to stay put for a while so that we can grow and love our own space,  for now I am grateful for the limitations of our borrowed yard and mobile playscape.

In a different direction of finding adventure in not-so-wild places, I have fallen in love with the playgrounds encountered in Germany by the little travelers.  Really, you should take a few minutes to check out these parks.  I have park envy.

play motif 1: adventure

Engage the body with the natural world.

I am not thinking very deep as I reflect on this motif.  We do this well and enjoy it, and we keep getting better at it.  Engaging the body with the natural world is undoubtedly the most enticing element of a wilderness experience for this crew–it’s the hook.  For the boys, the world is most meaningful as it is encountered with their senses, so we go about  finding the magic of adventure in the forest in relation to their bodies. A few things I am learning about this adventuring as we go about our business in the wild:

Whenever possible, we point our bodies off trail and move!   A trail can be a great hindrance to true adventuring. Off trail is where we discover caves, great climbing trees, bone stashes, and rocks to conquer.  Another idea that goes along with this: never have a destination.  For us, a destination is a adventure killer.

I am trying to keep quiet.  It is hard not to get excited and point out the first flower or butterfly of the season, but it is far better to say nothing and instead just move the crowd towards it — let the little people own the discovery.  Language is not the medium for our young crowd to experience nature.  They need to discover, see, feel, and follow.  The journey must be theirs and my words often take the journey from them.  In this photo, the boys were captivated by the vibrant green kinnikinnick.  They traveled from boulder to boulder, exclaiming each time they rounded a big rock outcropping, “Look!  More green!”  The green was all around us on the trail, but no one ever took any note of it until we moved into it.  Then, it became all they saw.

Traveling up for as long as we can, in fairness to all participants.  This can take us a long way in these rocky parts.  You don’t have to look far to see a chunk of granite that is calling all legs and arms  to climb.  There have been many a day in the wild that has been spent at the beginning of the trail moving vertical for an entire outing.  The satisfication of moving the body in new ways and the connection that forms between the mind and the body as the best path up a rocky face is determined is all we need, sometimes.  And on top of that, there is inevitably a whole lot of teamwork involved as we navigate how to get people of all sizes, ability levels and fear levels headed in the same direction.  I think that traveling up could be one of the richest experiences we have in the wild.

Cross rivers and cross as many ways as you can!  I mean really, what beats rivers?  And getting to the other side!  Surely that is the feeling that propels all the world’s great explorers!

Touch.  Everything.

In Childhood and Nature, Sobel writes mostly about engaging older kids in the adventure motif by wondering about where something leads.  He refers to an example of finding out where a river goes.  The idea gets the kids in an adventurous spirit and consequently filled with awe and wonder.   Before having kids, we loved to hike in canyon country by setting our sites on a distant landmark.  The  terrain we would encounter en route was fantastic.  We would be in out of canyons, scrambling up rock walls and navigating around gorges and rock formations that didn’t even appear in our path as we scanned the landscape to mark out destination.  A good adventure is enticing.

an exploration of play motifs

A dear friend, believer in and lover of wilderness, and inspiring mama  turned me on to the work of David Sobel.  I am reading, well not really reading, more like hopping slowly around, his book Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators.  And since we are all educators (we are!), this book, I think, makes for inspiring ideas for all of us who spend time with small folk.

First, what grabs me is his fresh approach to formulating profound ideas about how to foster a love of nature and a seriousness about caring for the earth.  He starts by simply observing children playing in nature.  Lot’s of observing.  And then lot’s of thinking.  Plus a whole bunch of wisdom and insight.  From all of this hard, but I am sure very fun work, patterns emerge. From the patterns, Sobel has identified seven play motifs — common strands of play observed in children from all walks of life in all different ecosystems.

This is both profound and so ordinary, which makes it awesome.  One of the feelings that overwhelms me when I watch the boys play in the wild is the comfort in knowing that what they are doing is exactly what children have been doing for millennia!  Eventhough we buy our food instead of hunt and gather, drive cars instead of ride horses, and cook in microwaves instead of over the fire, the kids, well they are still playing the same as they were when we were still doing all of those things.  Like Sobel, I think this makes a great case for the evolutionary significance of nature play and a double case for the importance of this play in educating sustainably for sustainability.

So back to those seven play motifs, they are: 1) adventure, 2) fantasy and imagination, 3) animal allies, 4) maps and paths, 5) special places, 6) small worlds, and 7) hunting and gathering.  I am a lot excited about ruminating on each of these themes as we flit about the forest.  Many of them I have already thought about and intently observed.  Others aren’t entirely new, but will make for fresh soil for growing.  Oh this will be fun.  Hope you don’t mind playing along.

Hope you are playing in the forest, too. 

Enki in the wild

Easter was cause to celebrate all the new that is coming our way, including our shared homeschooling journey with the Eamonn family.  We shared a little story and ceremony, along with an Easter egg hunt.

The Eamonn family has been our partner in Forest School.  It is awesome, in the truest sense of the word, to share a love of child-led explorations in wilderness with another family.  It isn’t  easy to find someone who will bundle up and brave snow, 30 mph winds, and outfitting a troupe of  kiddos for a romp in the woods,  but it always makes for golden times.

rivercrossing

When we get into the wild, we  follow the kiddos lead, letting their imaginations carry them wherever they will.  We try not to direct, but we do encourage  exploration which feeds their imagination and their bodies.  Stories are told,  songs are sung,  and the kids reenact favorite plots and craft new tales to fit their environment.

caving

mountain lions on the lookout

sawing just because

It is pure magic.

where the waters run

When we lived on the Western slope of Colorado, we passed or crossed the Eagle River every day.  She cut the valley that was our home and there wasn’t really any way to travel, but beside her.  One didn’t have to travel far in our valley to reach her end, where she married the mighty Colorado, that great river of adventure.  I love both rivers, but oh how I love the Colorado — a from the banks kind of love: running alongside her, camped above her, traveling hundreds of miles while never straying far from her shores, where she carved canyons and ran muddy red.  It is the Colorado that made me so keen on the way a river dances with the land and shapes the earth and us in so many ways.

So that is how it began.  And now I live and love somewhere new, where I don’t know the creeks and rivers so well.  It takes time to walk the land and create that soul map of how  the soil and the rocks and the water fit together.  I’ll get there.  I will.  But just recently, on our trip home from the Midwest, I realized I may not be as far as I thought.

You see if I walk down the road a ways from our home, I’ll hit a drainage that  pours right into the Big Thompson River.  That big river travels east, through majestic canyons flanked by  big-horn sheep and summer tourist territory and,  where the land gets flat, she merges with the  South Platte River.  The South Platte moves north to the far northeast corner of the state, where flat is really flat,  before joining the North Platte River.  Together, as the Platte River, they flow across  the entire length of Nebraska,  snaking their way through cottonwood forests that are flanked for miles and miles by grasslands and cornfields in all directions.  The Platte keeps flowing eastward until she meets that rough state boundary Nebraska shares with state of Missouri.  There the Missouri river, the longest river in the country having journeyed far  from the  foothills of Montana, swallows the Platte’s waters and carriers them right across the state of Missouri  to St. Louis, where,  finally, those waters, those waters that I walked to from my front door, join the Mississippi.

Now this is grand!  The watershed of my home in Colorado and the watershed of my Midwestern roots are one and the same.  I have leaped over the headwaters of the Mississippi, crossed her bridges too many times to count, and listened to tales of her floods.  I love that river deep, deep down.   As I wander our mountain streams, I’ll always be thinking, a little bit, of the green hills and the muddy river that are just down stream.

“I am haunted by waters.”

- Norman Maclean in A River Runs Through It

spring’s other face

With a foot of snow on the ground and more falling it seems the perfect time to remember spring’s other face.  Not too long ago we were splashing in the Big Thompson River.  These earlier-than-they-should-be days of spring, the kind that get us all giddy, thinking that maybe, just maybe, spring’s gentler side will stick around, can’t be missed.  In no time, the creeks and rivers of the valley will be raging.  Rubber-boot wandering will be too dangerous for little folks.  So we wandered and we reveled!

On a trip to the Midwest, we glimpsed some of the earliest signs of spring,  bits of green, flowers, leaf buds.  All things that we’ll be waiting on for quite a bit longer here in the mountains.  The Midwest’s version of spring was wholly hers: gray skies, rain (not snow!), green, magnolia blossoms, singing frogs, thunder, forsythia, puddles, the swiftly moving Mississippi, daffodils, muddy water, busy birds, all taken in along side family.

Two very different springs.   Both equally fickle.

We’re letting those thoughts carry us through the snow storms.  Greatful for a few more chances to play in our snow clothes and so very happy for the flora that will drink up these spring snows and give us fields of rainbows this summer.

And last, a little of nature’s whimsy!

three

This tiny-voiced, big-hearted little man turned three a few days back.  He loves to run fast and bike slow.  He loves to cuddle and shoot things.  He likes clean clothes and dirty hands.  He holds on tight and lets go easy, when he needs to.  He often seems wise beyond his years.  I sure do love watching him become the man he will be.

the characters of our days

G-man has brought a love of costume to our life.  He dons a costume every day.  Presently, we are fixed in a sometimes-medieval, sometimes-mythological world with a particular fondness for dragons and those who love them or hunt them.  (It all depends on one’s mood: sword-bearing or cuddly.)  But for the last couple of days, everywhere we go,  we are  accompanied by two peculiar forest creatures.  They are good company.  Let me introduce them:

The gnome:  a mischievous little fellow with a voice so sweet he can sing life back into fallen trees.  On any given day, he can be found wandering in the forest in search of berries.  There has never lived a creature that loves berries as much as the little gnome

The ogre: a giant beast, green from head to toe.  You might think he is a grumpy sort of fellow, as many ogres are known to be curmudgeons.  But this ogre, he is a gentle giant.  Strong, sturdy and slow about everything he does, except for climbing trees.  He can climb to the top of a Ponderosa pine faster than you can say PON-DER-O-SA.  Really, he can.

These creatures were a collaborative effort, created by E-man and me for a dear friend’s birthday a while back.  I knitted the hats and E-man developed the characters along with an associated story to bring the creatures and our natural environment to life.  The ogre and the gnome have lived on in our minds.  It seemed absolutely necessary to invite them to settle right here, in the Ponderosa pines of our backyard.  So glad we did.

If you’re interested in bringing an ogre and gnome to life in your own backyard, you can find the patterns here: Ogre :::: Gnome.

And if you want help crafting a story, here’s ours.  Use your own flora to make the forest critters comfortable in your own corner of the earth.

Happy forest wandering to all!

snippets of mind travels

Here are a few snippets from the places my mind has traveled in a day.

ONE: a bit from Ron Miller

A holistic education is usually characterized by several core qualities. First, it encourages experiential learning. There is more discussion, questioning, experimentation, and active engagement in a holistic learning environment, and a noticeable absence of grading, testing, labeling, and comparing. Learning is more meaningful and relevant to students—it matters to their lives. Second, personal relationships are considered to be as important as academic subject matter. These learning environments strive to cultivate a sense of community and belonging, and qualities of safety, respect, caring, and even love. Third, there is concern for the interior life, for the feelings, aspirations, ideas and questions that each student brings to the learning process. Education is no longer viewed as the transmission of information; instead it is a journey inward as well as outward into the world. Fourth, holistic education expresses an ecological consciousness; it recognizes that everything in the world exists in context, in relationship to inclusive communities. This involves a deep respect for the integrity of the biosphere, if not a sense of reverence for nature. It is a worldview that embraces diversity, both natural and cultural. Holistic education shuns ideology, categorization, and fixed answers, and instead appreciates the flowing interrelatedness of all life. (Visit here for more like this.)

TWO: a bit from an aspiring mathematics educator

Instructional Setting: The classroom will consist of 20 desks. This means there will be five rows consisting of four desks per row. The desk will all face the front of the classroom facing a dry erase board. At the front of the classroom along with the dry erase board there will be a small desk and an overhead projector. On one of the classroom walls there are two bulletin boards and one bulletin board on the other side that displays concepts that will be covered during the class. For example, this lesson deals with Isosceles Triangles, therefore the bulletin boards will consists of concepts relating to Isosceles Triangles, how to measure them, and theorems that apply to them. There are also 6 computers that line one side of the classroom. The teacher’s desk is located in the back of the classroom. Beside the teacher’s desk is a table that consists of homework folders and class work folders for students. There is also a basket to turn in assignments. There are also supplies on this table such as: pencils, erasers, paper, extra textbooks, handouts, etc., for students to use.

Two very different places, aren’t they?  The former is a bit of where we travel as we envision a different foundation for educating our own family.  I say family, not children, because we are relearning right along with our boys.  The latter is a snippet from my  part-time work  evaluating lesson plans for a teacher’s college.

My passion for a new view of education is fueled by the stale approach that is at the heart of my “work”.  I feel extraordinarily grateful for the opportunity to pursue a different path and to travel that path with my family and amazing friends.

My “work” also leaves me feeling incredibly heavy.  I want all children to have more than sterile classrooms and sterile curricula and an education where meaning is meaningless.

It gets a little confusing in my head, while at the same time being crystal clear.

May we all be free to examine how we are educating for our future with critical and flexbile minds and with an enduring love for our children, humanity and the earth.

trust and worry

Yup.  I trusted him and  worried, just a little. And then, today, he and a friend rode their bikes so far into the distance that as I chased them down, every  passersby warned me of their “at least a mile” head start.  I freaked out.  We all learned a little.  Well, Eman learned a lot–how to get started on his own without someone holding on and the joy of riding while standing up.  Tonight he told us,” I had fun riding when you couldn’t see us.  Me and Cedar, we talked.  We talked about how we can ride hard to get up hills and how to slow down so we don’t go too fast down a big hill.”

Don’t you remember that feeling of freedom?  Taking care of yourself.  The wind in your hair as you go so fast.  There is no one but you and your friends.   That is a good feeling!

And me, I am  back to work at celebrating, trusting, and worrying.  Just a little.