Directions

Our Family Camp Canoe Weekend will be Saturday and Sunday, July 14th and 15th. We’ll arrive at Cedar Pond Saturday at Noon, and leave Sunday around the same time. Registration for this event is limited. Give us a call if you’re interested.

wild lawn

Here’s two more activities, just for good measure:

Drop small pieces of food in various spots out-of-doors. Go back after 10 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours and see who else has discovered them.

This one might be difficult. Get yourself and your child up at 4:50am (yes, not a misprint!) and go wandering a bit in your nearby nature place. The chorus of birds will already be cranking up by 5am, so let yourselves take a walk guided by following the many bird calls. The different calls can act as ‘trail markers’ for your walk, but every once in a while sit down, maybe back against back, close eyes, and listen.

You saw the first lightning bug of the year?

Other kids liked the same weird things that you did?

You realized that you were making a new friend?

You spent your first night in a tent?

An adult smiled at you and meant it?

You discovered the weirdest bug and just couldn’t wait to tell someone about it?

And that someone cared?

It was the last day of school in June and you thought now the world is perfect, and mine, and will last forever?

You were watching a bunch of ants carrying crumbs and nothing else in the world mattered at that moment?

You hiked to the top of a mountain and knew in your bones that you were alive and part of a great big world that is pretty darn good?

We remember.

 

hiking!

The Nature Place is beginning a series of events for the whole family with a day hike to the top of Stockbridge Mountain in Harriman State Park. We’ll find a cemetery, the foundation of an old cabin, a magnificent pine forest – where we’ll do still-hunting – Hippo Rock, a hiker’s shelter, a Native American rock shelter and more.

This hike would be appropriate for families with children ages 6 and up. Once you tell us you will be coming, we will email you directions on where to meet and a list of reminders, i.e. appropriate clothing and the like. This will be a hike, not a walk or stroll. Come prepared to sweat a little, to huff-and-puff a little, to have fun with your children, to experience, with your family, another world that we hope you will want to come back to and explore further.

This program is limited to 30 people. $10 per adult, $5 per child.

We’ve come up with 5 of our weekly themes (those funny, poignant, scene-setting gems that generate the focus of our activities, skits, songs and more), but we want YOU to tell us the theme of our 6th and last week of camp this summer!

In a week or two we’ll choose one of your suggestions and announce it as our final week of camp. Anyone who’s loved a past week’s theme or feels inspired should chime in!

For some context….announcing the first 5 weekly themes for summer 2012:

Week 1: Taking Care
Week 2: Rock, Rhythm and Roll
Week 3: What Color is the Wind?
Week 4: Ask Ed…
Week 5: Green Olympics
Week 6: _________________

Help create camp, and tell us your ideas!

one of last year's fowl themes...

dandelion and its teeth

Did you know…
…that the first dandelions were brought to this country by the early European settlers?
…that the dandelion has been used for thousands of years as a spring tonic, liver support, a great source of vitamins, wine, and a coffee substitute?
…that the official name for the dandelion is Taraxacum Officinale, which means “the official remedy for disorders”?
…some gardens in Europe are used only to grow dandelions, and any grass that grows is considered a weed and pulled out?
…the success of this plant in being found almost everywhere is due to its quick growth, long lifespan (maybe 4-6 years!), long taproot (up to 15 feet!), a preference for disturbed areas, prolific seed production (those white and blow-able make-a-wish seeds), and an ability to regenerate from only a small bit of root stock?

There’s a book about dandelions that we like a lot: The Teeth of The Lion – The Story of the Beloved and Despised Dandelion, written by Anita Sanchez and published by McDonald and Woodward Publishing Company.

garden blend

Welcome to the April Dirt. It seems to me that putting these two words together, ‘April’ and ‘Dirt’, feels very right for this time of year. This is the month when people start to literally get their hands into the dirt, preparing their piece of the planet for flowers, vegetables, trees and shrubs. In some parts of the country it is also known as mud time, and for some with sensitive noses, the smell of soil warmed by the sun is an April delight.

Does your mind conjure up different pictures when you hear the words ‘dirt’ and ‘soil’? During a recent presentation at Green Meadow Waldorf School, Joel Salatin, a wonderful speaker know widely as America’s most influential farmer, said that to him, the word ‘dirt’ is hardly alive while ‘soil’ “is bursting with drama.” While ‘dirt’ sounds sort of empty, the word ‘soil’ allows us to better imagine the very real, invisible living things (billions of microorganisms!) that exist in a handful of soil; an unseen world in each palm-full of earth.

two forks are better than one

Take this month of April to consider the unseen. If one handful of soil holds billions of microorganisms, just think how much work, life and movement is going on ‘behind the scenes’ in the rest of the natural world.