Trackers NW Blog

Walking backwards

28th

April

As a teen I once walked barefoot in my garden. Dirty feet and hands. The smell of garlic in the sun. My non-high school tenure was a three-quarter acre Eden blossoming from my parent's backyard. Every day, for all day no one told me what to do. For hours I would sit, step slowly and listen for what was coming next. Each action and movement became a conversation and correspondence with that gently sloping hill. It was not a lesson nor an assignment. Where did I end up? One college degree later, teaching…

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Beyond a Sense of Place

23rd

April

As an outdoor educator I've had the slogan "sense of place" drilled into me years ago. But I've learned that sense of place is not enough. I know plenty of people that can identify tracks, spot a bird, measure water quality and even make a bow drill fire. What this leads to is a willingness to help enact policy or an appreciation that your…

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Experts and critics: no difference

16th

April

When we first started TrackersNW many people told all of us to get a real job. Now those same people look at Trackers as a leader in the field. To them we were simply scrappy kids trying something silly and different then what they do. To us we were desperate to find a way of doing things that actually took care of our family and the families…

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Yes, I like nature

9th

April

The other day I had a conversation with a friend who's life is dedicated to tending to our phenomenal greenspaces. He told a story about a city leader who recently made a bold statement, "We need to find less ways to say 'no' and more ways of to say 'yes'." Of late, this is not the first tale I heard of intelligent relationship building overcoming…

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HomeSteading School Responses

2nd

April

I received many incredible responses from parents about our proposed HomeSteading School. In fact, I was wonderfully inundated with emails. I want to give you a taste of how inspiring some of those letters were. Since the HomeSteading School blog last Thursday there's been a lot of excited feedback about the notion of a school. We may have…

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HomeSteading School

27th

March

Whether you home school or not, this blog may be relevant to you. One day I was hanging out with a circle of Trackers staff. We were having pizza that Jason made from his sourdough starter. It was topped with buffalo we recently butchered from a local rancher. I asked the question, how can we provide an immersion experience for kids, not…

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