The mysteries of the universe have long tantalized mankind, from the peoples of the earliest days of recorded history to the 21st century where space travel, underwater exploration, and even Google Earth have opened new and exciting vistas to us. Throughout these days, years, decades, and centuries, humans sought to explain the universe, whether through […]
Storytelling is an important part of children’s play in nature because stories help children understand their outdoor experiences. Adults can learn from children’s stories and can encourage their storytelling by helping them observe closely, and by telling stories to and with them. What is a story? And why do we tell them? First of all—stories […]
Here at The Immersion, we practice the skills of our ancient ancestors. We use these skills to better interact with the landscape and increase our ability to thrive in any scenario. Here is an example of some of the skills we learned this quarter. Stone Tools We spent a day down by the Tolt River […]
Imagine a wonderful story you’ve been told. Where were you? What was the place like? Who were you with? Was it night or day? By a fire? How did you feel when you were hearing it? And now consider…what did the storyteller do that drew you in and captured your imagination? These are elements to […]
This week at The Immersion, we touched briefly on the delights and gifts that the plants offer us if we so choose to learn how to harvest and process them in the proper ways. We then were taught how this plays into the bigger picture of stewarding our school’s land in a good way that […]
A good story has a way of getting inside you. It can reveal something about where you are in life. Stories also give us a cultural context and sense of continuity. They teach us how to live. In many Native cultures there are stories of the First People, or the Ancestors, that show how people […]
Village Week – October 27-29 2015 What a week full of fun! We gathered with our class this week for our first of three Village Weeks we will have throughout the year. We all headed into the week with a sense of mystery and unknown as there was not much telling of what we would […]
The past 9 months at The Immersion has been quite a plethora of new experiences, adventures, crafting, external and internal explorations, and the fortification of our connections with the earth, the natural world around us, ourselves, and each other. This Immersion year has been nothing at all of what I expected, and at the same […]
Hi, my name is Brian Mertins and I love Wilderness Awareness School. A few years ago I left my life on the east coast of Canada and traveled all the way across the continent to live in Duvall, Washington where I participated in The Immersion at Wilderness Awareness School and the Nature Instructor Training program. […]