Category Archives: The Dirt: News & Events
Open House & Garden Party
Our next (and last!) open house is Saturday, June 1 from 1-4pm. Stop by 307 Hungry Hollow Road to take a tour, ask questions, and learn more about camp. Before our open house, from 11am-Noon, we’ll be partying in the garden! Specifically, in the Pfeiffer Garden across from 285 Hungry Hollow Road. Join The Nature Place as we plant, harvest, weed, learn, and eat! Green thumbs and thumbs yearning to be green are welcomed alike.
Garden gate
Gear
Gear!
We have been really ‘gearing’ up for this summer! Flashlights, whistles, water bottles, hats, sweatshirts, fleeces, special-edition T-shirts and more!
For the first time we are offering our camp family an opportunity to purchase gear and apparel that will be useful for the summer, fun in other ways, and can make great gifts! All products are top quality and come with The Nature Place logo. We’re also hoping to make it easier for parents to get many of the items on our overnight packing lists!
Keep your eye out.
Catching some spring fall
In my backyard I’ve been experiencing at times a blizzard of ‘things’ (no leaves, autumn is for that) falling from the trees – old flowers, stems, bud coverings, I’m not sure what else. Why not get a sheet, tarp, baskets, bowls, upside down opened umbrellas, and place on the ground under a bunch of trees and see what you ‘catch’. You may get some surprises.
Catching some spring fall
Climbing at Camp
Climbing at camp
We have a new addition to camp this summer, geared especially toward some of our older groups. Monkey hardware is basically a portable climbing wall that uses secure rachet straps to put climbing holds up trees. Using a belaying system, climbers ascend in harnesses and helmets. We’ve just spent three days doing low and high ropes course training to prepare for this exciting addition to our summer programming. Climbing at camp will be especially practical for our oldest group, before they go climbing during week six on actual rock face in the Shawangunk Mountains!
Ed’s Corner
I have heard this time of year, mid-May until the beginning of July, referred to as ‘The High Tide of Life’. It seems an apt image to me, as the green world is definitely growing and flowering and seeding. Insects are doing their usual multiplying, bird song fills the early morning air, baby animals abound. Life everywhere seems to be teeming, moving, and busy. If I close my eyes and think about all this activity as a whole, I can almost see the high tide of life swelling upward toward a high-water mark before receding again toward autumn. We partake of this tide with readying gardens, cutting the grass, putting in new flowers, spring cleaning, trying to get in a hike or two. And although we might not always see it, our activity is a necessary current in this rising tide, lapping up next to the animals and the plants and the earth that make up this green surge.
High tide
So ride the wave while it’s here!
A sea of dandelion parachutes
