The Riekes Center Nature Awareness Department provides nature immersion opportunities that promote fun, adventure, and life-long learning. We strive to build strong affinities between people and the natural world. We provide participants from age 0 (yes we have pregnant moms in our programs) to 99 with the opportunity to explore an interest or pursue a passion within the various areas of wilderness living, outdoor study, and recreation. Whether you want to backpack in the desert of Death Valley, surf the Pacific Ocean, study the natural history of California, track weasels along a river bank, make fire by rubbing two sticks together, teach your classroom more about their school’s “back yard” or enrich your personal nature hikes, we have the program for you.
Our Approach
Creating deep connections to nature is the cornerstone of our department. We aim to foster these connections to nature while helping students achieve personal goals in this environment. Whether it is learning to identify 20 species of birds by song, how to track coyotes, or how to build a debris shelter, each student follows their own passion in nature. Our instructors mentor the students through the art of questioning and by their own individual expertise and passions in specific natural history subjects. Our curriculum draws upon elements from the core routines of nature awareness as detailed in the recent book Coyote’s Guide by author Jon Young, who helped to found our department. Richard Louv, author of the landmark book, Last Child in the Woods, describes these mentoring techniques as “good medicine for nature deficit disorder.”
Our core routines include:
- Hazards
- Sit spots
- Journaling
- Mapping
- Wandering and exploration
- Tracking
- Survival skills
- Sensory awareness
- Bird language
