Place-based, experiential education; AKA, good fun!
Alan Gussow, artist and environmental activist defined place as “a part of the whole environment that we claim with feelings.”
The Children’s Forest on Cortes Island is a place claimed with the heartfelt feelings of many who head out the first Sunday of every month of the year to experience this wild place. These Nature Study Days are sponsored by the Forest Trust for the Children of Cortes Island Society (FTCCIS). FTCCIS has a constitutional mandate to deliver place-based, experiential education; Nature Study Days deliver this, in spades!!!
In developing a relationship with a place, the first thing you need to do is spend time in that place; get to know it in all its seasons, weathers and moods. On today’s January 7 Nature Study Day, our first of the new year 2018, we discovered wolf tracks in the snow, spotted a scurrying white-footed mouse and flushed a red-tailed hawk! We sloshed through melting snow, rushing streams and fabulous mud puddles! The filtered light brought out the tapestry of greens in the forest, more vibrantly that at any other time of the year. This is January in the Children’s Forest; the place… the experiences.
February will be completely different; so why don’t you join us and delight in the experiences this place shares with us each and every time we venture out into her wild space! February 4 is the first Sunday in February; we’ll look for you at the Carrington Bay Trailhead at 10:00.
