Intent is one thing, action quite another. What actually is occurring after a decade of quiet existence? Activities and opportunities at EarthTeach are numerous, diverse, and growing.
3000 graduates of Rogue Valley middle schools over the past six years have spent a day on the Challenge Ropes Course that was built and is managed by Team Synergo of Portland. Many of these teens declare that day the highpoint of their year! Youths, families, athletic teams, corporate staffs and several Southern Oregon University groups use the Course to learn about life transitions, team building, and leadership…all intent upon having fun while getting themselves “on the same page.” Several programs for youth at risk and adjudicated teens have also tapped into the Park's challenge course curriculum and facilities to produce tremendously positive results.
Also utilizing the ropes course is LEAP–the Leadership Edge-ucation Adventure Program that focuses on teens discovering and developing their leadership “self. Summer campers play and explore together through initiative games, use of the ropes course, and backpacking through the Park.
EarthTeach hosts school field trips for all grade levels, including: Nature awareness, observation skills, basic science, and self-expression for elementary students; natural science, ecology, environmental and arts studies for middle and high school students; geology, plant and wildlife biology; environmental education, and anthropology for college students.
Like an urban park, this forest counterpart requires care and stewardship. Youth Conservation Corps-type experiences are ongoing at EarthTeach, and its 1680 wild acres offer plenty of work opportunities. The Job Council of Southern Oregon, and many school groups, such as Ashland’s new magnet school, The John Muir School, assist and volunteer in educational maintenance programs on the land.
During past summers, parents of enthusiastic young artists
described the magic of their child’s week of painting,
dancing, music making, and theatre at Fine Arts at
EarthTeach, the Park’s flagship youth camp. That camp
returns this summer 2007 having evolved into
eARTh!
a wild and nature arts component of
Coyote Trails School of
Nature
who's curriculums expose youth, teens, and families to the
benefits of wilderness through tracking, awareness,
storytelling, primitive skills, and nature study. In
addition to a staff trained in everything from culinary
arts to primitive living skills, Coyote Trails will now add
professional artists to their faculty at EarthTeach.
Other regular events on the park’s calendar are initiation
and rite-of-passage experiences, including vision quests
and Native American sweat lodges, as well as the
Celebrations of Season and Cycle, outdoor observations of
the Equinoxes, solstices and cross-quarter Earth festival
days that mark the turning of the year. Many of these
events at are honored with spectacular bonfires and potluck
dinners.
Another spiritual offering at the park (and perhaps one of
its "crowned jewels") is the 55’-diameter stone and gravel
labyrinth, set in a mountainside meadow at 4000-foot
elevation. The EarthTeach Labyrinth was consecrated on the
Summer Solstice of 1999 and has been walked on by thousands
of Park visitors since that time. This ancient tool of
meditation and introspection provides for group and
individual ceremony, celebration, insight, instruction, and
many a solace-seeking hiker has found it be a unique place
of peace and reflection.