The Nature TRAIL
Guided Nature Tutorials
Did you know the word "tutorial" has the same roots as the word "intuition," (from the Latin tueri & tutus) meaning "to protect," "to watch over" or "look into"? The word "guide" arises from the root "weird," meaning "to see," and it shares ancestry with words like "history, story, wit and wisdom" (as well as the word "Druid"). The Nature Trail is an invitation "to look" and delve more deeply into what inspires you most in the natural world, with the guidance of story, history, wit, and wisdom.
Lose Your Mind & Come to Your Senses
Among the wilderness education community the phrase "lose your mind and come to your senses" is an oft quoted invitation into both the experience of the living world around us and the body (how we sense the world and its impacts). Whatever draws your attention to nature (plants, trees, animals, fungi, seasons, soil, sunsets, weather, water, wind, light, dark, etc), must captivate your senses. We don't think about a sunset and then go looking, the sunsets drops into our awareness by shifting our sense of light, color, attention and even time. We emerge from whatever was plodding about in the mind to what the world around us is communicating to our bodies. Presence. Beauty.
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There's no better teacher than Nature for such lessons, no better tutor to watch over and guide our attention.
The Nature Trail tutorials combine the slow-cook, delicious sense-based tutorials of the natural world with more the conventional methods of study familiar to us modern folk who do most our learning with thoughts, facts and words. There will be science, books and even googling to assist with learning on the trail!
What Inspires you to come and see?
Tutorials take place through any season, on local trails, in parks or in a garden. Each weekly tutorial is tailored to your personal interests and level of experience with "who's who?" in the natural world.
For folks just beginning on a path into deeper relationship with place, there's a collection of little lesson to choose from. These include the basics of...
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Plant Identification
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Local trees and plants
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Local Animals
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Local Fungi
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Seasonal rhythms
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Weather patterns
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Basic biomes
For folks with more experience, the path winds beyond the basics and into the languages and cultures of the land. Available topics include:
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Bird language
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Animal tracking
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Ethnobotany (edible, medicinal plants)
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Gardening relationships
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The histories of habitats
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Reading the (alive and shifting) landscape.
It's fine (and recommended) to pick one topic to get started and also fine to shift focus over time, based on your level curiosity and what the world around you is up to.
Not sure where you fit? Don't worry! Fill out the form below and we'll help you figure out where to begin!
Tutorials are offered as one-week lessons, but it is fine to set your own pace.
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A tutorial includes one hour of trail time, a lesson plan based on your interests, and a 20-minute check-in on how it's going.
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Pricing for tutorials is on a sliding scale of $50 to $75, depending on what you can afford.
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There is also a flat fee of $100 for each topic area that covers the cost of gathering materials and tailoring lessons to your interests.