Excerpt from Documentary “Mother Nature’s Child”

A small group of high school students explore the wilderness of the eastern United States during a 6-month semester at Kroka Expeditions. Led by Kroka founder Misha Goldman, they discover peer connection, self-sufficiency, and themselves.

We have posted this video before. It is an excerpt from the remarkable documentary called “Mother Nature’s Child,” and this clip profiles a small expeditionary school in New Hampshire called Kroka Expeditions. The connections between and among this small community of adolescents is visceral and inspiring. Manzanita has two alumni from Kroka, and a third student is currently there. 

Quote of the Day from Walt Whitman

“When I heard the learned astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.”

- Walt Whitman, Poet

Beyond the Anthropo-Scene

The renowned “anthropologist under Amazonian influence” and indigenous rights activist Jeremy Narby, author of such classics as The Cosmic Serpent and Intelligence in Nature, considers the intelligence of living beings and wrestles with his own culture’s anthropocentric concepts. In his view, constantly affirming the centrality of humans gets in the way of respectful living in the biosphere. Rethinking human-centered concepts such as “nature” and “anthropocene” can cast light on our relationship with the living world. Because the words we use influence how we think, we gain from examining them with care.

Please enjoy this talk by the brilliant Canadian anthropologist, Jeremy Narby. In his 20-minute presentation, from the 2017 Bioneers Conference, Dr. Narby discusses the ways in which indigenous peoples in the Amazon experience the intelligence of the more-than-human world.

Quote of the Day from Jeremy Narby

"The Asháninka people speak of plants and animals as intelligent beings with personalities and intentions, and who have kinship with humans…Biology has confirmed human kinship with other species, and has shown that all living beings are genetically related. The more that science looks at the natural world, the more intelligence it finds there… There is strong evidence that numerous species think, feel, remember, and plan, and have language-like abilities and systems of communication. This has led some western thinkers to move away from constantly affirming the centrality of human beings.”

- Jeremy Narby, Anthropologist

The Land Owns Us

Belonging to the Land versus ‘Owning the Land’

Bob Randall, a Yankunytjatjara elder and traditional owner of Uluru (Ayer's Rock), explains how the connectedness of every living thing to every other living thing is not just an idea but a way of living. This way includes all beings as part of a vast family and calls us to be responsible for this family and care for the land with unconditional love and responsibility.

How Trees Secretly Talk to Each Other in the Forest

What do trees talk about? In the Douglas fir forests of Canada, see how trees “talk” to each other by forming underground symbiotic relationships—called mycorrhizae—with fungi to relay stress signals and share resources with one another.

What do trees discuss? In the Douglas fir forests of Canada, trees talk to each through underground symbiotic relationships called mycorrhizae, where fungi relay stress signals and share resources with one another. The new discovery of these communication networks is teaching us more and more about the intelligence of the more-than-human world. Enjoy this video, and may it inspire our growing biocentric (versus ‘anthropocentric’) worldview.

Quote of the Day from Ralph Metzner

“The idea that the spiritual and the natural are opposed or that spirituality must always transcend nature is a culturally relative concept not shared by non-monotheistic religions or traditional societies. In indigenous cultures around the world the natural world is regarded as the realm of spirit and the sacred; the natural is the spiritual. From this follows an attitude of respect, a desire to maintain a balanced relationship…-in short, sustainability.”

- Ralph Metzner, “The Psychopathology of the Human-Nature Relationship,” 1995 

BBC Earth's Life Story, Courtship, Pufferfish

The most extraordinary display of all is created by a tiny, drab male pufferfish. He builds a spectacular submarine 'crop circle' in the sand. It's the most perfect and complex structure created by any animal. The crop circles were only discovered in southern Japan in 1995 and the fish architect was only identified in 2011.

The Pufferfish (order of Tetraodontiformes) has a truly majestic kind of courtship, creating a massive ‘mandala’ on the sea floor with its fins. This project takes nearly a week of non-stop effort in which it works day and night. The result is evocative. Please enjoy this short video on an incredibly artistic fish.

Quote of the Day from Alfred North Whitehead

“There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil…Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.”

- Alfred North Whitehead, Mathematician, 1929

How Quantum Biology Might Explain Life’s Biggest Questions

How does a robin know to fly south? The answer might be weirder than you think: Quantum physics may be involved. Jim Al-Khalili rounds up the extremely new, extremely strange world of quantum biology, where something Einstein once called “spooky action at a distance” helps birds navigate, and quantum effects might explain the origin of life itself.

This is very much worth watching! Dr. Jim Al-Khalili is a noted quantum physicist, and has been recipient of several prestigious science awards. He is an important contributor to public discourse within the emerging scientific field of “quantum biology.” His work is helping to open new frontiers around the role of quantum phenomena in our understanding of the question “What is life?” This 16-minute TED talk is beautiful and profound. 

Quote of the Day from Dr. Lisa Lattuca

“Disciplines, it now seems clear, are powerful but constraining ways of knowing. As conceptual frames, they delimit the range of research questions that are asked, the kinds of methods that are used to investigate phenomena, and the types of answers that are considered legitimate.”

- Dr. Lisa Lattuca, Creating Interdisciplinarity: Research and Teaching among College and University Faculty

World-Class Explorers Help Scientists Collect Elusive Data

Adventure Scientists equips partners with a global network of trained volunteers — from mountaineers to surfers — who collect research-grade, hard-to-reach data in extreme environments.

We had an inspiring day of learning and tending in Stewardship this past Thursday. We had rich discussions about microtrash and it's impact on the watershed both locally and worldwide. Students helped serve the land by spreading out to their stewardship zones and picking up as much trash as they could. We ended the day with some fun skits about microtrash impact and we started the day with the video above. Please watch this quick 2-minute video. We hope it sparks a conversation with your child about their impact on the world. 

Excerpt from Documentary “Mother Nature’s Child”

A small group of high school students explore the wilderness of the eastern United States during a 6-month semester at Kroka Expeditions. Led by Kroka founder Misha Goldman, they discover peer connection, self-sufficiency, and themselves.

As noted above, one of our beloved high school juniors, Rubey-Grace Carey (who also happens to be Ms. Jennifer’s daughter), is traveling to Ecuador as part of Kroka Expeditions, based out of New Hampshire. Watch this excerpt from the documentary “Mother Nature’s Child,” which featured this segment about Kroka’s Vermont Semester. You will get a strong sense of the deep community this program generates for participating youth. Enjoy!

Quote of the Day from Dr. Mae Wan Ho

“Our education already suffers from a surfeit of facile, simplistic answers which serve to explain away the phenomena, and hence to deaden the imagination and dull the intellect…To me, science is a quest for the most intimate understanding of nature. It is not an industry set up for the purpose of validating existing theories and indoctrinating students in the correct ideologies…It is the enigmas, the mysteries and paradoxes that take hold of the imagination, leading it on the most exquisite dance."

- Dr. Mae Wan Ho, Biochemist, Geneticist, and Author

Students Who are Listened to with Intention Become Leaders

Transformative Experiences Need a Listening Ear. Having someone to listen, intentionally and with curiosity, deepens the experience, leading to the "aha!" moments. Those who are really listened to and are then asked good and thoughtful questions, grow to become leaders.

In each Manzanita Message, we provide a link to an inspiring video. These videos often relate to our unique curriculum, or simply help to inform our vision as a school. We encourage all parents to watch these videos. We build this community together by staying connected with the ideas, theories, and understandings shaping our school. In this short clip, one of our school’s mentors, Jon Young, speaks to a local Topanga audience shortly after the school opened in 2014.

Quote of the Day from David Abram

“To our indigenous ancestors, and to the many aboriginal peoples who still hold fast to their oral traditions, language is less a human possession than it is a property of the animate earth itself, an expressive, telluric power in which we, along with the coyotes and the crickets, all participate. Each creature enacts this expressive magic in its own manner, the honeybee with its waggle dance no less than a bellicose, harrumphing sea lion. Nor is this power restricted solely to animals. The whispered hush of the uncut grasses at dawn, the plaintive moan of trunks rubbing against one another in the deep woods, or the laughter of birch leaves as the wind gusts through their branches all bear a thicket of many-layered meanings for those who listen carefully.”

- David Abram, Becoming Animal

Bee and Woman Become Best Friends After Garden Rescue

When she found an injured bee in her garden, this woman took her in and was surprised when she got so attached to her. Today on Soulmates, watch how Bee and her mom developed such an unusual, special bond.

Many of us have had otherworldly encounters with animals, those touching moments when the ropes of connection with the more-than-human world are built. Please enjoy this sweet video about a woman who befriended a most unusual little creature.

Quote of the Day from Ralph Metzner

“Due to a complex variety of social and historical reasons, a core feature of the Euro-American psyche is a dissociative split between spirit and nature.  We have a deeply ingrained belief that our spiritual life, our spiritual practices, must tend in a direction opposite to our nature. Spirit, we imagine, rises upward, into transcendent realms, whereas nature, which includes bodily sensations and feelings, draws us downward. Spirit is not only separated from nature, but incompatible and opposed. The human spirit is then always regarded as superior to the animal nature. By the time of the Protestant reformation, the idea was firmly implanted in almost everybody’s mind that we have to overcome our ‘lower’ animal instincts and passions and conquer the body in order to be spiritual and attain ‘heaven’ or ‘enlightenment.’ This image says that in order to enter into the city of God, the divine realms, you have to work against your nature; this was called the opus contra naturam… The idea that the spiritual and the natural are opposed or that spirituality must always transcend nature is a culturally relative concept not shared by traditional societies. In indigenous cultures around the world the natural world is regarded as the realm of spirit and the sacred; the natural is the spiritual.”

- Ralph Metzner, American Psychologist, Writer and Researcher