We are excited to announce that Exploring a Sense of Place and founder Karen Harwell are the subject of the Palo Alto Media Center’s Local Heroes program. Karen was one of five people to receive the award. An in depth look at Exploring a Sense of Place and Karen’s work was aired on the Palo Alto Cable Channel. To view the video click here.
This month we will be shifting our focus from the night sky above us to the land below our feet for our Autumn theme of the Harvest.
Our speaker on Monday, September 8 will be Susan Stansbury, who splits her time between being the Executive Director for Conexions and co-directing Valley of the Hearts Delight, a project of Conexions. Through the Valley of Heart’s Delight project, she has been working to strengthen the local food system for the past 8 years. Susan facilitates several programs that support and enhance the local organic food system. One of her most popular programs is “Getting Going Growing” a community collaborative that provides support to school gardens throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. At tonight’s enrichment evening Susan will be covering the local food solutions including the history, climate and soil of the region. She will also discuss models of sustainable food production and how the community can be involved.
On Saturday, September 13 we will visit Hidden Villa, a 1,600-acre farm & wilderness preserve nestled in Los Altos Hills. Before lunch we will learn about edible native plants and the foods of the Ohlones, and also about the farm’s CSA program, the educational gardens.
After enjoying a seasonable sustainable lunch, we will regroup and take a special tour of the 3,300 square foot Wolken Education Center, which became the home of Hidden Villa’s environmental education and summer camp programs. This sustainable building features solar electric generation, rammed earth and straw bale construction, recycled materials and more.
Tunitas Creek Ranch near Half Moon Bay will open its farm for 20 participants on Oct. 3-5, 2008. The goal of the training program is for participants to:
· be inspired to create their own exploration of the place where they live
· experience explorations of place in this ecosystem as examples for their own ecosystem
· become well oriented with the guidebook
· see themselves as part of a shared learning and initiating community
· develop a plan for taking next steps.
Through a concentrated weekend of first hand experience with local guides, we will learn how to read the landscape of place through its deep time geologic story, weather patterns, water cycles, plant and animal communities. We will experience strategies for teaching nature awareness. We will also learn how the indigenous communities sustainably nourished themselves with native plants and animals, and the importance today of choosing local, organic and seasonal food by spending time in the garden where greens and vegetables for our dinner were grown. In the evening, with guidance from a NASA scientist, we will experience our place in the cosmos, orienting us to the stars, planets and constellations of the night sky. Throughout the weekend participants will be relating these experiences to how they apply in their own watershed or bioregion. By the final morning, working with the Exploring a Sense of Place guidebook and notebook materials, participants will develop initial plans for their own local explorations and learn how to connect with one another online to share ideas.
Our seeds are spreading and taking root in beautiful San Diego. Chris Khoury and Linda Corey have started a group exploring the San Dieguito River Valley modeled after our guide book “Exploring a Sense of Place”. They have graciously allowed us to publish their article for the newsletter of the San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy announcing the start of the program. Check it out at A Journey Down the San Dieguito River. We will keep in close touch with the group.
Our yearlong course consists of one Saturday Exploration and one Monday Enrichment Evening per month. The evening speakers prepare us for the Saturday explorations where we go out in small groups into our bioregion, with a concentration on our own watershed. While we provide wonderful guides and materials, these explorations are designed for each person to make his/her own connection.
As the year progresses, through every season, in every weather, and through the different ecological zones, we become more familiar with our place. Every month we focus on a different theme, and by using different lenses, we develop skill in using all of our senses. Through facilitated exercises we learn to express our connection with our sense of place. And by experiencing this together, we form community, deepening our roots with those around us.
The yearly program starts in May, however, new participants are welcome to join the course in progress, at a prorated fee. Register now or experience us for one month for a $35 guest fee. This includes our Monday enrichment evening, from 7-9 pm at the Conexions Center, 1023 Corporation Way, Palo Alto and our Saturday exploration at one of our local parks. You can also find more information, including the schedule, here. Or contact Judy Cronin at 650-938-9300 x12.
The new Exploring a Sense of Place, How to create your own local program for reconnecting with Nature is now available! Order it today. This guidebook will help you with your own process of discovery and reconnection with the natural world where you live. This book will inspire you and give you all the practical tools you need to design, develop, organize, and produce an Exploring a Sense of Place program specific to your own bioregion. Click here to order yours. ORDER THE BOOK
“Exploring a Sense of Place” offers an opportunity for people to create new patterns in their lives by making themselves available to new experiences, being imprinted by and becoming more intimate with the natural ecosystem in which they live their lives.
This is a course that offers a chance to restore your connection with the particular place where you live, its natural dynamics, systems and processes, while gaining an appreciation for your powerful impact on them so that you can consciously choose how to participate in the world around you.
