Apprenticing to Nature to imagine a more just, loving and sustainable future.
Our work in the world and on this site is to apprentice to the metaphors of nature, the stories of humans in our lives, and the experiences we open ourselves to as we ask the lifelong question: How can we shift our cultural paradigms for the tumultuous planetary times we are entering? As we encounter increasing effects of climate change, economic disparity, and ecosystem collapse, we will need new maps, guides and ideas to lead us forward.
The Ponderosa, a hardy and resilient tree that can grow in difficult conditions, lives in the margins, between the basins and the beginning of the ascent into the mountains. They signal a change in geography, just as the time we live in is signaling a need for us to shift how we are showing up collectively.
Our Team
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Rae Swenson has been in private practice as a licensed mental health counselor since 2012 in Spokane, Washington. Swenson completed undergraduate work at Gonzaga University with a brief study at Oxford. After some travel and work overseas, she earned a Master’s in Counseling with a focus on marriage and family at Montana State University in 2008.
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Natalia is one of the founders and the current Director at Discovery Lab of Ellensburg, an innovative learning environment using Project-Based Learning and Humanistic Classroom practices to foster growth, belonging and a sense of place in children. She began her educational journey by studying Psychology and Special Education at Gonzaga University and continued her education in Infant Mental Health at the University of Washington.
Listen Closely. Listen Deeply. Listen Carefully.
We have grown up in a place where beautiful, enormous ponderosa pine trees have been a backdrop of many of the places with which we are most familiar. In fact, Spokane, Washington is actually the place these great trees were first given their own unique name.
What I Hear When I Stop Talking
One hot and humid Friday afternoon, I took my computer and my lukewarm iced coffee and relocated myself away from the kitchen table laden with crumbs and a lanky, brooding teenager to the front porch. Here I sat, surrounded by beauty and a different kind of unfinished chores, and looked through lists and calendars, things to schedule, places to be and my head started to feel like a slime container I once found that had been left in a hot car for several days.
Little Creatures Teaching Big Lessons
Last year, at the small multi-age school where I teach, we started a Project on the Shrub-Steppe. Partway through this exploration of the ecosystem that we are surrounded by, but often know so little about, we met one of it’s inhabitants that completely captured our hearts and imaginations.
“If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.”
— Joanna Macy
Author, Active Hope
Contact
Feel free to contact us with any questions.