Intangible Necessities:
Skills, attitudes and mindsets to take into wild places

Gear will not get you to your goals. 
What's in your head and your heart will determine your success.

This does not just apply to hiking.
No matter which activity you choose:
  1. Take a child or teen along as you learn together.
  2. Have an agenda and then let it go... follow your curiosity! 
  3. Develop and sharpen your sensory perceptions. Use smells, sounds, sight touch and taste in an open and unfocused way (like a 3-dimensional sphere).
  4. Always expect everything in nature to be connected in some way; then expect the unexpected. Explore the imponderables.
  5. Never stifle awe and wonder. Ask questions and never stop searching for the answers. Occasionally declare, "A Day at the Library".
  6. Look on our Calendar of Events, other organization websites, newspapers, etc. and be vigilant for classes, workshops or lectures on subjects that interest you. Sign up and GO!
  7. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Scroll down and visit, IF I COULD HOVER, below.
Basic skills that I consider paramount:
Skills I highly recomend:
Skills that are helpful:

The key to surival is awareness: Kamana

Forget what you know
and approach everything as if it were for the first time.
If I could hover...
  
Nature Study and Nature Awareness is necessary to developing a close bond and understanding of the natural world. All outdoor hobbies, interests or activities are incomplete and subdued without forming that bond.  It's not just about learning and identifying the wildlife and rocks around us. Field guides are a good start
-- but only a start.

   There is an intense and intimate interrelationship of all elements and life forms in the natural world.  We have the ability to become a part of it.


   Before I go any further; allow me to toss out  a few buzz words or phrases so that you start to get my drift: Holistic, insatiable curiosity, hyper vigilance, acute sensory perception, wonder, awe, delight, joy, absorbtion, peripheral vision, breathing, aroma, texture, pitch, tone, spiritual, intellectual, physical, play, meditation, ponder, observation, mood, atmosphere, cosmos.


   Ok, see what I'm getting at? Develop a mindset of experiential discovery while learning.  Focus on the microscopic with one eye while trying to see the universe with the other. Try to touch the sky with an outstretched hand and stir the clouds with the tip of your finger.  Talk to the animals. Name a tree, "Larry" and spend a half-hour in his highest branches. Revisit your childhood. Expand your edges of knowledge and creep, ever so slightly, out of your comfort zone... beyond the edge of the horizon.

   If I could hover over my local community and scoop up three average people, I would probably be holding a modern hunter, a week-end gardener and some kid clinging to his video game controller. Now imagine transporting them back in time. If they would start over with a passion for learning and experiencing nature in the fullest sense; I think I would probably have a more successful hunter who could move like a ghost through the forest and catch game with his bare hands (maybe wrestling with the idea of letting go), a gardener who feeds a community and never has to go to a drug store again, and a kid who loves life to it's fullest, cares about tomorrow and thinks virtual reality is an insult to mankind.


Ok, maybe my head is in the clouds, but it CAN happen.  Let's get back to knowing the real world outside.
Nature Connections
Intangible Necessities
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