Spinney Program
Dear Ones,
“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.” - Rainer Maria Rilke
I am painfully shy. So meeting new people is always hard for me. Recently though, I was speaking at a conference and a friend of mine, Josh, said come to dinner with me and another one of the presenters, Tamar, who is also my friend. My friend Deepti agreed to go with me so that I wouldn’t have to talk if it was all going horribly awry (Deepti is very good a making friends). We all met in the convention center & we walked to dinner & it turned out to be completely magical. We met Tamar who is completely fascinating. We ate wonderful food together. We talked in the restaurant for more than 2 hours together. We laughed at each others’ stories. We were interested in the tales of each others’ lives. We sat at the table laughing and sharing long after we were finished eating and we walked the streets together because we didn’t want to be parted. In the end, we stood in the lobby of Tamar’s hotel and we exchanged phone numbers as a small way to still be together. We spend 2 and a half, maybe 3 hours together, a small thing in the little more than 100 hours I was at the conference, but it is my best memory, it has become great and immeasurable.
On Sundays, we want to spend 2 hours with y’all in a new program that we are calling the Spinney programing, nature based programming for all families. We want to spend time walking trails, maintaining land, building relationship, studying Bulverde Oaks Nature Preserve.
We want to share a meal with y’all. We want to hone our science skills by observing the world around us, using tools to describe and measure that world, making hypotheses and predictions about what we’ve observed, classifying and sorting that world into easy to identify plant and animal groups, and more. We want to engage in multiple kinds of play in multiple ways with y’all - we want to climb trees (risky play) and build forts (nature play) and feel the difference between walking on rock and walking on sticks and walking on leaves deep in our core (sensory play). We want to do real work together, necessary work together to help the land that we live on, the air that we breathe, the water that we drink. We want to exercise our bodies and our minds together. We want you to be there. We are asking for you to share 2, maybe 3 hours with us. It is a small thing, a small part of the 168 hours of your week. But (hopefully) it will be your best memory of each week, it will become great and immeasurable.
Come to Bulverde Oaks Nature Preserve Sundays at 10:30. Join the collective in our work, staying close to nature, joining our children with nature through nature play. Let’s start with this small thing. And let’s build the unexpected.
“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.” - Rainer Maria Rilke
Peace,
Ms. Linda
PS A spinney is a British word for a group of trees and other plants that are found together.