Today we will join other organizations at the Earth Day Peace and Social Justice Craft, Gift, and Info Fair in Palo Alto California. We will be there from 11:00 to 2:30 p.m.  (First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, 1140 Cowper Street, Palo Alto.) If you are in the area, drop by and say hello. Our guidebook will be on display and for sale, and we will be sharing information on the importance – and joy! – of experiencing a Sense of Place.

Recently Exploring a Sense of Place also participated in Eco-Go Green Week/BioSITE Open House at the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose CA, and enjoying interacting with children and their families with the subject of water. The energy and enthusiasm was high, and we celebrated the wonders, beauty  and necessity of water, and of getting to know our own watershed.

Coming up:

Next week, April 28th, we will have a table at Spring in Guadalupe Gardens in San Jose, put on by the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy. Come and enjoy a beautiful Spring day in the gardens! Join in the resurgence of a Sense of Place!

Our current focus is to mentor individuals and groups through the use of our Exploring a Sense of Place guidebook to create their own process/program for exploring the place where they live. Our intention is to broadcast this possibility to new watersheds and landscapes by getting our guidebook into the hands of many more people who will use it to initiate their own process.

Watch for updates on this website!

Arastradero Preserve is a beautiful mixture of rolling savanna grassland and broad leaf evergreen forest. It varies in elevation from 275 feet in the northeast to 775 feet in the southwest. Wildlife abounds on the preserve and it is not uncommon to see deer, bobcats, coyotes, and many varieties of birds.

On Saturday morning we will join Paul for a habitat Restoration Day at the Pearson-Arastradero Preserve. We will, enjoy ourselves while breathing the fresh air and helping restore the lovely Pearson-Arastradero Preserve!

After lunch we will be joined by Franklin as we go for a walk though the Preserve. We should see serpentine soil, the Arastradero Lake, riparian areas, oak woodland and grasslands. We will see many native and non-native plants.

Featuring Drew Dellinger, Betty Kissilove and David Ergo

When: February 28th, 4pm-6pm

Cost: $30, $27 for Conexions members

Location:  At a beautiful sustainably designed home in Portola Valley overlooking the Bay Area – Address and directions to be provided upon registration

Space is limited!  To register, click here,
or contact Karen Harwell at (650) 938-9300 x15
or kharwell@conexions.org.

Drew Dellinger is the founder of Poets for Global Justice. His collection of poems, love letter to the milky way has sold thousands of copies to eager readers all over the world. He has shared his work at gatherings and conferences; in classrooms and prisons; in women’s’ groups, mens’ groups, and spiritual communities.
In 1997 Dellinger received Common Boundary magazine’s national Green Dove Award.  Dellinger co-wrote the documentary film, “The Awakening Universe,” which premiered at the United Nations in 2005.  Dellinger has studied cosmology and ecological thought with Thomas Berry since 1990 and is finishing his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Dellinger lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Betty-Ann Kissilove has taught English as a Second Language at the City College of San Francisco since 1980.  She has been captivated and influenced by the Story of the Universe for over twenty years.  This interest, along with her history as a teacher, led her to write her epic poem, Great Ball of Fire!, a whimsical rendition of Earth’s 13.7 billion year story.

David Ergo was raised in Northern California, where at an early age he felt a deep disconnection between the western world and the damage being done to the natural world. No longer able to ignore the escalating ecological and social crises he first sensed as a child, he left his corporate training and flight instruction careers to pursue a path of learning and teaching about the need to face up to the ecological, social, and spiritual crises of the age. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Holy Universe: A New Story of Creation, and Humanity’s Journey Through the Great Transition. He now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Then on Saturday, February 13 we will be at the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve, the largest tract of undisturbed marshland remaining in the San Francisco Bay. “The Baylands’, is considered to be one of the premier birding locations on the entire West Coast, providing a safe residence for the endangered California clapper rail, among a multitude of other birds. With such lush bird life, unique plant distribution (which includes interspersed cordgrass and pickleweed habitats) and various waterside settings, we will have the opportunity to develop our sense of place.

Baylands Naturalist, Annette Coleman will join us in the morning. We will be refining our observation skills, and learning about the Baylands as a resourceful migratory habitat. We will absorb the great expanse of this preserved marshland, while observing both migrant and residential birds interacting with their habitat. Tidal salt marshes, found in the Preserve, are known as the most productive biological zones on earth. This is frequently demonstrated in the Baylands, whether by a Snowy Egret poised in its foraging stance, or the sweeping bill of the Avocet, or the hovering American Kestrel ready to pounce.

In the afternoon we will be with Naturalist, Drew Harwell, for our Reflections segment of the day. Drew has a BA in Environmental Restoration from Prescott College and was trained in nature awareness at the Regenerative Design Institute. . Drew has worked with children, teens and adults for over 13 years. His style of mentoring is to help students explore nature through their individual passions and creativity. Drew will be assisting us in deepening our skills in sensing, seeing and reflecting. We will have time for a silent, solo walk along the Baylands to a lovely spot where we can sit for a while and ponder our sense of place, reflect, write, draw. Following some sharing we walk back to the Conexions Center.

Exploring a Sense of Place is delighted to host an afternoon with Nils Peterson, First Santa Clara County Poet Laureate
Space is limited to the first 30 people! Please make reservations and payment by January 15th by contacting Laurel Smith at (650) 938-9300 ex. 17 or lsmith@conexions.org.
Click here to register online using your credit card.

Cost:
$30 Regular
$27 Conexions Member – Become a member
About the Instructor/Speaker:

Nils Peterson, Professor Emeritus, taught for the English and Humanities Departments at San Jose State University from 1963 to 1999. For over twenty years he was the Coordinator of the Creative Writing Emphasis as well as the Coordinator of the Creative Arts and Chair of the Humanities Department. The Student Honor Society also chose him as Professor of the Year.
Peterson is a published poet and science fiction author, and has written articles in a wide array of subjects ranging from nature to Shakepeare. He has been an editor for “Discover America”, a contributing editor of “The Blue Sofa Review”, and a poetry consultant for San Jose State Studies.
Peterson was nominated for a Pushcar prize in 2005, and was named Santa Clara County’s first Poet Laureate in March of 2009.

We will then spend the majority of the morning walking and looking for animal track sites. During our walk, we will also observe flora and fauna of the area and learn about serpentine soil ecology. Of course we will also be keeping an eye out for any lichens, mosses or fungi that catch our interest. This time of year and with all the rain, we are sure to discover a variety of colored fungus! (If you have any field books on the subject, please bring them.)

On the way back to the Jasper Ridge Field Research Lab for our picnic lunch, we pass though riparian woodland area and might possibly see a wood rat nest or two. After lunch, we will then visit an old Ohlone site with grinding stone area and cave. This day should be a full and rich experience!