NatureBridge Outdoor Ed 2013!

Wow! What a fantastic trip!

When I think back on the three days that I spent in the Headlands with your kids, I’m amazed at how cohesively they approached their time together, and how engaged and grateful they were for the beautiful, joyful, challenging, hilarious, surprising, invigorating experiences that unfolded for us. 

Here are some of my favorite highlights:

• Teamwork on the volleyball court

• First meeting our awesome naturalist Jo! She was incredibly knowledgeable, engaging, and flexible. I'm so glad that we have a new friend at NatureBridge!

• Hiking to the pond where we collected and categorized the macro-invertebrates that help maintain the healthy ecosystem

• Way to go, girls! Nice work keeping your bunk clean and organized. There are few honors in this world greater than the Golden Pinecone!

• Sweet and silly morning faces after the first night

• Friends!

• Nature charades with our whole Lower Campus community

•  How lucky were we to enjoy that weather?! Sunscreen it up, kiddos!

• This is one of my absolute favorite moments. Jo challenged us to say a friend's name as we passed the squirrel around the circle in under 20 seconds! It took five tries, a lot of collaborative strategizing, and some innovative thinking before we got down to... 17 seconds! You should have heard the cheering!

• Welcome to the Hardcore Apple Club! Can you eat an ENTIRE apple? The trick is starting from the bottom so every bite includes delicious apple. I think these pictures are pretty hilarious. 

• Success! Cole learns the Hardcore Apple Club secret handshake! 

• Jo was a great storyteller. She told us a beautiful story about greed and sharing, illustrated by the gorgeous, bright orange carnelian stones on the beach. We searched until everyone found one and used it to make an unselfish, peaceful wish for the world. 

•   Deeply thoughtful wish-making

•  AND.... we're out. Sometimes you just need a 3 minute nap before lunch.

•  Here we are learning about invasive and native species on ice plant hill. Jo showed us how you can place the end of a piece of ice plant on your tongue and feel it sucking up water almost instantly. "How do you think that that might affect the ecosystem here on the dunes?" she asked. 

•  Love love love :)

•  Checking out the blue whale skeleton on the way the the Marine Mammal Center. One student said, "I knew they were really big, but this is UNBELIEVABLE." It really is remarkable to stand by a skeleton that size and imagine encountering such a massive creature in nature. 

•  We're so grateful that the MMC welcomed us to explore some of the important ways that local people are making a positive impact on our environment. 

• My favorite experience had to be our night hike down to Rodeo Beach. It was a full moon and we talked about perspective as we watched the moon rise higher and higher and appear smaller and smaller in the sky. We snuggled up on our backs to watch the stars as Naturalist Matt told us the story of the constellation Cassiopeia. Then he showed us the "stars in the sand" as we found bioluminescent plankton that sparkles when you move the sand around. 

I have a few more pictures from the service project that we did on Friday that I'm excited to show you tomorrow. Thank you to Ben and Dean for being with us in the evenings to support us in countless, gracious ways. Thanks to all our drivers and to Genevieve for coordinating. And thanks to all of you for the great honor of heading out into the world with your kids. We feel more connected that ever and it's so clear to all of us that this is going to be a year full of big growth for our very loving community.