Sure, in this day and age we all have access to weather forecasts 24 hours a day. They are on the TV, the radio, on our computers, and even in our pockets. Meteorolgy has become a very advanced science but forecasting the weather doesn’t have to be complicated. There are signs all around us all the time. They can be seen in the clouds, in the behavior of birds and mammals, and even in the behavior of plants. Read on below to learn more about how you can become your own personal weather station.
Clouds are a great place to start forecasting the weather. Clouds come in three basic types, Stratus, Cumulus, and Cirrus. Sometimes you will also see the word “Nimbus” attached to the cloud type name.

Cirrus

Stratus

Cumulus

This Friday, January 20th Whole Earth Nature School will be hosting a Girls Night Out for the Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington. The theme will be focused on nature and all things wild. Girls who attend can expect to be making their own herbal lip balm, working on creating pine needle coiled baskets and playing fun awareness games with our founders. To register for this event please contact the Girl Scouts at www.girlscoutsosw.org or by calling (541) 485-5911.

I just want to wish a belated congratulations to Reál Eugene on a great season. Whole Earth Nature School has sponsored a boy’s soccer team in Eugene called: Reál Eugene! One of the founders, Rees Maxwell, has a son on the team. (Go Aiden!) This Fall they completed their big soccer Jamboree where all of the local area teams compete in short games and are then decided into Gold, Silver and Bronze classes. Reál Eugene made GOLD! The team members are all 4th graders, but have been up against some mixed 4th and 5th grade teams. They’re doing well and really learning how to work together as a team. Congratulations and good luck with the Spring Season as well!

For 10,000 years people have celebrated the time of year when the increasingly longer nights reach their peak and the sun returns to take back the night. December 22nd, 2011 (at 05:30 GMT), is the day in the northern hemisphere when our daylight begins to grow in length, and our nighttime hours wane. The date has been celebrated at different times in human history. In 46 BCE, Julius Caesar established December 25th as the day of the winter solstice of Europe. In our modern era, we now celebrate it on the exact date that our planet’s polar hemisphere is farthest away from the sun. In the northern hemisphere that means we celebrate it on December 21st, 22nd, or 23rd, depending on the year.

It’s a time to celebrate the return of the light. While the winter solstice has also been called “midwinter,” it is the day we signify as the first day of winter. Really, wouldn’t it make the most sense if we began our first day of the new year on the winter solstice?

We wish you the most joyous of days ahead of you! As you rejoice in your renewed connections with your family and friends this holiday season, I’d like to let you in on a secret: We’re all one big happy family, us humans.

This special time of year has been, and is still, celebrated in various ways by people all over Earth, including:
Amaterasu celebration, Requiem of the Dead (7th century Japan)
Beiwe Festival (Sámi of Northern Fennoscandia)
Brumalia (Roman Kingdom)
Chawmos (Kalash of Pakistan)
Christ’s Mass, Christmas, Natalis Domini (4th century Rome, 11th century England, Christian)
Deygān, Maidyarem (Zoroastrian)
Dōngzhì Festival (East Asian Cultural Sphere and Mahayana Buddhist)
Goru (Dogon of Mali)
Hanukkah (Judaism)
Hogmanay (Scotland)
Inti Raymi (Inca: Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador)
Junkanoo, John Canoe, Dzon’ku ‘Nu (West Africa, Bahamas, Jamaica, 19th-century North Carolina, Virginia)
Karachun (Ancient Western Slavic)
Koleda, Коляда, Sviatki, Dazh Boh (Ancient Eastern Slavic and Sarmatian)
Lá an Dreoilín, Wren day (Celtic, Irish, Welsh, Manx)
Lenæa (Ancient and Hellenistic Greece)
Lohri (India)
Lucia, St. Lucia (Swedish, Scandinavian)
Makara Sankranti, मकर संक्रान्ति (India and Nepal, Hindu)
Maruaroa o Takurua (New Zealand, Maori)
Meán Geimhridh, Celtic Midwinter (Celtic, Ancient Welsh, Neodruidic)
Midwinter (Antarctica)
Mōdraniht (Anglo-Saxon paganism)
Mummer’s Day, Montol (Celtic, Cornish)
Rozhanitsa Feast (12th century Eastern Slavic Russian)
Shab-e Chelleh, یلدا , Yaldā (2nd millennium BC Persian, Iranian)
Sanghamitta Day (Buddhist)
Saturnalia, Chronia (Ancient Greek, Roman Republic)
Şewy Yelda (Kurdish)
Sol Invictus Festival (3rd century Roman Empire)
Soyal (Zuni and Hopi of North America)
We Tripantu (Mapuche in southern Chile)
Yule (Germanic peoples)
Zagmuk, Sacaea (Ancient Mesopotamia, Sumerian, Babylonian)
Ziemassvētki (Latvian, Baltic, Romuva)

Still reading? Then I’ll let you in on another secret. It’s even secreter than the previous one above, and that is this: we’re not the only living organisms who notice the lengthening of daylight and have our behavior affected by it! Other animals notice, and birds notice, and insects notice, and plants notice, … truly, we are all nature. Rejoice!!

At Whole Earth Nature School we often say that we are “different” than other programs available in our area. We note that there are many great programs that already existed before us but that we founded Whole Earth with something else in mind. Well, if it is true that there are already many great programs in the Eugene area (see the left sidebar) what the heck makes us so “different”?
What it really comes down to is our philosophy of how humans relate to nature. We believe that we are nature. We humans depend on nature for all our needs from food to shelter to materials to build our cell phones and ipads. And yet there is an underlying assumption in most of our lives that nature is somehow separate from us. Our mission at Whole Earth Nature School is to help humans rediscover our essential identity as part of nature. We help people get out of their shell and immerse themselves in nature in a close and interactive way.
Most modern people I know see themselves as something completely separate from the natural world. It is subtle but shows up an all aspects of our lives.
We are disconnected in our language. While most people realize that humans are animals (and, more specificaly, mammals), our common use of the word animal is to refer to a non-human animal. We might go to a zoo, for example, to see the “animals” as if we aren’t surrounded by other animals all the time.
The disconnect is in our shelter. Don’t get me wrong, I love my thermostat, but it is often shocking to be to step outside and discover how warm or cold it is on a given day. I actually have no idea what is going on out in the world until I step outside my house.
The disconnect is on our food. While many students of mine have gardens at home or at school, many more don’t. Regardless of whether you are an omnivore, a vegetarian, or a vegan many people just don’t have a connection to their food source. Meanwhile, we are surrounded by wild plant food that most people are afraid to eat because they haven’t had the chance to learn to identify and harvest it safely.
The disconnect is in our transportation. It often amazes me to take a walk along streets that I often drive on. The slower pace forces me to notice so much more and it reminds me how much I am unaware of while driving.
The disconnect is in our water source. With clean, unlimited water avaiable to us on demand almost anywhere we go it is easy to forget where it comes from. Think about whether you can trace you water supply from precipitation to your tap? Can you trace it from your drain back to the ocean? Hiking in the desert a few years back really taught me the value of clean water and I try to be mindful of that every day.
I could go on but I think you get the point. We have successfully removed ourselves from nature so completely that we mostly value it only for its aesthetic properties. The prime example of this is the concept of Wilderness. We designate certain areas as “Wilderness” and define those areas as a “natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity”. While nature certainly has a great aesthetic value, only caring about protecting our views is selling it short in a tremendous way. We definitely need these Wilderness areas. But, at the same time, they strongly reinforce the idea that “humans” are separate from “nature”.
In light of all this, we are working hard to help young people rediscover that they are nature. We are working to create a new cultural current that sees humans as part of nature. If we are nature then it will always be in our self-interest to protect nature.
To inspire that connection, our programs are focused on real, experiential, and interactive learning. You will almost never see one of our instructors simply pointing things out and naming them. Instead, we try to tap into our students natural curiosity to get them to experience new things or experience old things in new ways. We also encourage students to frequently explore the “edges” of their confort zone and find out where those need to be pushed. This is not the same thing as pushing kids to try things. Every student has a different edge. For many students, pushing their edges might mean just getting comfortable sitting directly on the ground instead of in a chair. For others pushing their edges might mean getting camouflaged with mud and leaves. For more advanced students it might mean spending the night in a primitive shelter that was built with their own hands.
One of the things that is special about Whole Earth Nature School is our completely place-based model. Many camps depend on field trips and guest instructors to keep kids occupied and entertained during a camp. There is nothing wrong with that. However, I have had people who run those kind of camps remark how unusual it is that we run most of our camps completely at one location and with almost no props, toys, or guest instructors. In fact, 99% of the tools we use to run camps come directly from the land where we are operating and return back there when we leave. All we usually carry at camp is a few bandannas and a first aid kit. Nature provides all the inspiration that we need.
We also strive to teach kids real skills that are age appropriate. Examples might be edible and medicinal plants, tracking, fire making, archery, or carving and knife safety, depending on the age group. On days that we have practiced carving with kids I have had parents (approvingly) remark that there aren’t any other camps around that would encourage kids to bring “weapons” to camp. I had to respectfully remind that parent that we don’t encourage kids to bring “weapons” either. We are very clear that knives are not weapons, they are tools. Anyone who acts therwise isn’t going to be a part of our camp. However, the parent’s point remans the same. There are sadly few programs out there that still teach knife safety. And I am grateful for the few that still do.
Our students thrive on this interactive learning model. Last year I was helping some teenage students butcher their first rabbits for food. After receiving the instructions, I could see that they were hesitant to begin. This was a completely new experience for them. However, once we helped them get started they were completely excited about the experience they were having. They were talking all about how you read about things like lungs and kidneys but that they had never had the chance to actually see one. It was really inspiring to me to see those kids get connected to their own food in that way. Those same kids were really grateful for that food later in the week when they took it with them as jerky to keep themselves fed while practicing their survival skills on an overnight campout.
Those kids are well on the way to overcoming their cultural disconnetion from nature. One of my favorite things is seeing the growth of students that have been coming to our camps for several years. They go through a complete transformation in their relationship to nature. That’s what we are trying to achieve. We are trying to help kids travel from that place where nature is outside of us to a place where nature IS us. If you come to our programs our goal will be to help you discover you’re nature.

It’s already that time. We have been working hard these last few weeks to fine tune our 2012 Summer Nature Camp schedule and it is finally ready. Be sure to register now to take advantage of the 10% early bird discount.
Next year’s schedule comes with some exciting new changes. In response to feedback we have been receiving from parents here are some improvements we are implementing this year:

• Updated Registration Process: We received our lowest score from you (the parents) last year on ease of registration. We have completely overhauled our system for the new camp season and we think you will be pleased with the new features. You can now more easily register multiple children in one transaction. Plus, the system automatically processes discounts for you so you don’t have to remember any coupon codes. Also, you naow have the ability to create an online account to securely store your information so you don’t have to reenter it each time you register.
• New, Age-Specific Camp Themes: In the past we have often adapted one theme to the needs of many different ages of students. This year we are bringing a new approach which offers summer camp themes that are specifically designed with age groups in mind. That means that we have a bunch of new themes just for the littlest kids (4-5) as well as a few new offerings that are only for the more capable older kids (9-12)
• Extended Camp Hours: Many parents have asked for help with their busy working schedules, especially in the afternoons. We are happy to announce that all our day camps for ages six and up are now extended until 4:00pm. This is great news for us, too, because we get an extra hour each day to help your kids learn skills and connect with nature. And the best part is that we were able to offer the extended hours at a lower hourly cost than we have in the past so you win all around.
• Big Bear Village is Extended, Too: Our teen and tween overnight camp has always been one of the most fun weeks of our summer. We had so much fun that we often felt that it ended too early. So, we are extending Big Bear Village an extra day to pack in even more exciting skills and exploration. Camp will run from Sunday to Saturday which also means that parents will have the convenience of dropping off and picking up their kids on a weekend.
• Easier Scholarship Application: Our new camp registration process makes applying for a scholarship easier, too. The scholarship application is integrated right into the registration process so you can register, apply for a scholarship, and make your deposit all in one easy step.

Be sure to check out our new schedule by clicking the “View Schedule” button below. Register now to receive an early-bird discount.

If you are looking for something for you kid to do after school on October 18th we highly recommend checking out our friends at the Alvord Farm and Museum!

Gray Whales Playshop with Carrie Newell, PhD.
Tuesday October 18th, 3:30 pm to 6:00 pm

Join us for a very special event at the Alvord Farm and Museum! Learn all about the resident gray whales off the coast of Oregon with the world�s expert on them, marine biologist Carrie Newell, PhD. She will share interesting stories and facts about them, show pictures, take your questions, and we will play a whale game. Then make an ocean theme art project to take home. Carrie leads whale watching expeditions out of Depoe Bay when she is not teaching or writing. Visit her site at: http://www.whaleresearchexcursions.com.

Cost is $3-5 sliding scale per child.

This event is for kids aged 6 and up, but younger siblings can be accomodated (call us for details).
An adult is required to stay with participating children. Please bring a water bottle and a liability release from our web site www.alvordmuseum.org. Pre-registration is required; call Karen at 541-968-1986.

Every so often I get into a Visioning space. That Bombastic, Pie-in-the-Sky Visioning space. Do your mental wanderings ever bring you there? Over the coming months and years I’ll periodically share some of my musings with you. Enjoy.

It might be too impersonal to ask someone to feel love for and cherish the entire earth, so let’s just connect people in with the part of earth where they are right now. Right where they live. Their backyards, front yards, nearby parks, school grounds, etc. Let’s develop our sense of love and excitement for what is right around us everywhere we go�or at least for one single place. Sitting at our sit spot in the same place, visited each week, of every month, for several years � we naturally develop a relationship with that place. And from that relationship comes a deeper understanding, a respect, a love for that space. And this love for one space can easily be transferred to a love for more spaces. And that can bridge into a love for our entire earth�for all of it’s creatures and plants, etc. Ultimately a love for all things is the natural course of development.

Through this love for even one space, one corner of our yard, we see ourselves as an integral part of nature. An integral part of nature. We understand how we are one of the caretakers of nature, and how caretaking of nature supports our own selves and our own needs as well.

And through loving nature, and exploring nature, and caretaking nature, we come to know ourselves as deeply connected with this earth.

And from this place it is natural that we come to a knowing deep inside our core that we are nature. That last wall of differentiation will fall away at times and we’ll find ourselves as nature. We and the earth are truly one. We and all things that are a part of this earth are not only connected, we are one and the same.*

Using a macro lens on a videocamera to scan my fingertips it is quite interesting and exotic to discover the mountains and valleys that are my fingerprints. Every peak looks to be part of new mountain ranges, and every valley looks like it could contain its own river. Yet as we pull the camera out we see that it is all just a small part of my finger, and pulling the camera out further we see that there are several fingers, and each separate finger is really a part of one hand, and in fact there are two hands which while looking quite distant from each other at this camera angle–are really both a part of the same organism. We are human.

So with focus on what’s right in front of us and around us every day we can reconnect ourselves with a part of this earth, and we can be guided to explore it in ways that open up that sense of wonder and excitement and love of it. And as we pull back our “camera viewpoint” to show what else is connected to this local earth that we love–we see more earth! More to explore and wonder about, and get excited about, and love. And we can shift the camera viewpoint to include ourselves in the “image frame” and discover that we too are part of this earth. We are a part of nature. And beyond looking at parts�we can just say, “We are nature.” And we can share this sense of wonder and excitement and love for ourselves as well.

This deeply rooted sense of ourselves as nature is what we have left behind in recent history, and is where we have to return to. Since it is true that we are not only a part of nature but we are nature, then the only place we have to get to is rediscovering this truth. You can only walk so far on this globe away from something before you end up walking around back toward it again. There is no where else to go.

And there is an urgent need for us people in the developed or developing nations who have a big influence on this planet to really gain this deeply rooted sense of ourselves as nature. For having this sense enables us to make the choices that truly support this earth. (And we have been making choices that do not truly support this earth for long enough that we have begun to damage it in ways that do not support many aspects of life on this earth, including our own lives.)

Some would put it differently. Some would say it is the deeply rooted sense of ourselves as part of God, or as God, that we’ve been walking away from and blinding ourselves to, and that now we have the opportunity to rediscover and come back to again. Consistantly coming into awareness of ourselves as part of the “spirit who moves through all things” (as others have called it), us as one part of the great spirit�this causes us to live our lives in a way that supports all things. And when we’re in this space of understanding our connection and feeling our connection to all things, all of our actions are in line with this feeling sense and understanding.

We are Nature.

It all begins with who we are. This is the ultimate focus, since all of our input into this world naturally begins with this. We are, we make choices from our understanding of who we are, we create results from our choices which are based on who we are.

So our job is to support ourselves, our families, and our communities in recognizing our deeply rooted connection with nature. We can do this now, or later, but it is an inevitability that we will return to this understanding of truth. The sooner we come to this understanding, the sooner we can reap the excitement and wonder that comes from loving this earth and all that is a part of it.

And who, truly, wouldn’t want this?

Today we have a special guest blog from Kathy Mezger, one of our summer instructors. Take it away Kathy.

In August, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with my daughter Anna as a neophyte Ninja. Spending a week in the woods, playing like the Lost Boys in Neverland, was my idea of a vacation. I’ve watched the birthing of Whole Earth Nature School and was really looking forward to seeing the school and instructors in action.
I grew up in the wilds of Silicon Valley in Cupertino. Well, at that time in the late 50�s and 60�s it was the wilds. I remember my mother saying that we lived in the sticks, in a brand new housing development. The rapidly disappearing orchards provided a rich natural wonderland, with birds, rabbits, and glorious yellow mustard up to my waist. Mum provided more wild lands with her beautiful flower and vegetable gardens, where I was introduced to toads, praying mantis, and big fat tomato worms.
The best place to be was Calabazas Creek, where I roamed as often as I could, dry in summer, raging in winter. It was here I perfected my lizard catching skills, and fantasized about living a life in the wilds.
Growing up, I made it an essential part of my life to be in natural, open places. It was comforting to hear only bird song, the wind in the trees, bees buzzing, and little else. I was fortunate to marry a man who understood this too, so it was easy introduce this way of being to our daughters, Anna and Caitlin.
Being a part of that magical week at Hendricks Park brought back the glorious feeling of being a kid again. My favorite part was stalking. Our clan was always being stalked by either the Cougar or Wolf Clan. Our main goal was to stalk the Wolf Clan, who were the advanced group. Anna and I split the clan, and my group went Fox walking off to stalk the Cougars. We very seldom saw the Wolf Clan, probably because they were so adept at hiding. I had some hesitation about going off the trail into thick fern, blackberries, and kind of big spider webs. That doggone adult thing. But suddenly we all looked at each other and signaled, �Go for it! It was incredible how perfectly we worked together, using the signs we�d learned to communicate, getting down on our bellies to go through negative space and not move branches and ferns. I felt no age difference. We were one, stalking through thick undergrowth, making decisions about which deer trail to follow. The seriousness of the boys was inspiring, and when we finally got within sight of the Cougars eating lunch at their shelter, there was a great sense of accomplishment. During the action-packed week we built a village, faced our fears, compromised, gained each other’s trust, and took one step closer to understanding what it means to be one with nature.
Being a teacher, I always try to find common ground with each of my students in order to find that special connection that opens the way to mutual understanding. This was easy to do at nature camp. The many activities challenged the clan to think in so many different ways, and I had the wonderful experience of watching these young people grapple with a concept and learn it. One afternoon as we were sitting in a circle, Anna placed two sticks together. She announced that this was an old stick counting game and moved the sticks into different positions, each time asking what number they represented. Each time the answer was no, what about this? We couldn�t figure it out. Anna said, �Look at the bigger picture�. As most of us struggled with it, I noticed a couple of boys showing signs of beginning to understand. I knew they were going to take this home for further study.
Every morning before arrival, as the instructors stood in a circle to begin the day, someone would relate a story they�d heard from a parent. Parents were being stalked, a child, hearing a bird outside at breakfast, suggested they all go outside and find a sit spot. This is the hallmark of success � when children take what they�ve learned and apply it. To have these experiences with your own children is priceless. My priceless moment was having the opportunity to play in the woods with Anna again. I had a blast.

At our recent Big Bear Village nature camp we instituted a new tradition. At the end of the session, the oldest kids were sent out on a supervised “survival” outing. I was really impressed by the way that it worked out and we will definitely be doing it again. However, after camp one of the parents submitted some feedback that she was concerned about her son being cold on the trip. Of course, she phrased it in a very positive and constructive fashion. Reflecting on her concern I realized that perhaps we sometimes don’t do a good enough job of communicating to families why we do what we do. Everything that we do and teach at Whole Earth Nature School has an intended purpose. In this case, this is what I wrote back to that parent. I think it may be instructive to others who might sometimes wonder why their kids come home a little scratched up after camp.

Hi,
I really appreciate your feedback about your son being cold during the overnight portion of his camp experience. I really value feedback from parents because it always reminds us of how we can be doing better.

I have a feeling that your son may not have communicated well to you or perhaps may not have fully understood the intention behind the overnight that he and his peers undertook. A big part of our philosophy of nature education is based around having students experience nature as directly as possible. The natural world is a much more powerful teacher than any of our instructors could ever hope to be. Sometimes we get kids to experience nature through activities like camouflaging our bodies with mud and crawling through the woods. Sometimes we do it by having kids harvest their own wild food to eat. In this case, we really wanted the kids to have the experience of spending a night in the woods intentionally unprepared. We tried to create a situation that would safely imitate what it would be like if they were actually lost in the forest with just the things they might have carried on a day hike and had to spend the night. In order to do that we limited the amount of gear that they were allowed to bring. Each student brought a knife, a full water bottle, a jacket, a bandanna and a hat in their gear. Additionally, I provided the group with one bowdrill kit and one hatchet to share. They also were able to bring a bag full of the rabbit jerky that they had cut and dried earlier in the week specifically to take on their ordeal. In order to recreate the disoriented feeling that comes with being lost in the woods we blindfolded the kids while they were led to the site where they would spend the night.

I was really impressed how the kids worked through their challenges together. Not only did they manage to create a great shelter to fit all of them, but they worked through hunger, frustration and personal conflicts to get through the night. Perhaps most impressively, they worked diligently on fire making for about five and a half hours before they were finally successful. I know from my own personal experience how frustrating that is to spend so long trying to get fire in a survival situation and they dealt with it amazingly well.

I think that we succeeded in making the overnight survival trip a powerful rite of passage for those kids. In the morning after they erased their shelter we saved a coal from their fire in a “slow match” to transport back to the main camp and contribute it to the cooking fire on Friday. As we returned to camp the whole rest of the camp was waiting to greet them and celebrate their ordeal. All of those kids came away stronger and with a better self knowledge from their experience.

I hope this isn’t an excessive explanation as to why your son was cold on Thursday night. But I do want you to know that it was by design that it happened that way. I read a great article recently about a man who has been blind since he was two years old and who has taught himself to use a form of echolocation to navigate in the world. This man even goes mountain biking alone without the use of his eyes. The most poignant part of the article for me was when the interviewer asks if the man ever gets hurt by running into things. The man’s response was “Sure, it sucks when I run into a light pole. But many blind people are never given the opportunity to experience running into a light pole, and that is a tragedy.” He was saying that never feeling pain is a greater tragedy than feeling a little discomfort now and then.

So, I really do appreciate your feedback. I think that the lesson for me is that in the future we need to do a more thorough job of helping kids understand the purpose of this ordeal and help them have better tools to explain it to their families. That way your son can explain all of this to you in his own words instead of me telling you.

Sincerely,

Matt Bradley