News-Record.com

Peters Creek flows fewer than a hundred feet from the entrance to Brunson Elementary School on the edge of downtown Winston-Salem, a geographic feature that would have doomed the 50-year-old school’s construction today.

“We’re real fortunate to have the creek,” said Andy Lester-Niles, an assistant principal at the school. “You get a full ecosystem with the birds, snakes, fish and turtles. It’s pretty cool and we see it all. But it is in a flood zone.”

The creek will serve as the centerpiece of an outdoor learning project spearheaded by parents Colleen Lopina and Steve Davis. They helped the school apply for a $5,000 grant from Lowe’s Home Improvement that would add raised garden beds, compost bins, an outdoor classroom and paved patio area.

“It’s really a beautiful setting in and of itself and it’s a unique urban green space in downtown Winston-Salem,” Lopina said about the school’s location.

Dozens of parents have volunteered their Saturdays over the past several weeks to upgrade picnic tables, lay out concrete pavers, and construct tables and benches for outdoor labs. Officials expect teachers to start incorporating outdoor learning into their lesson plans at the 500-student school in the fall.

Lester-Niles said he hopes the gardens will take off next school year, with so many beds crowded with young hands that teachers request a bed on every usable space on the school grounds. Lester-Niles, who commutes daily to the school by bicycle, said he hopes this project will demonstrate to district officials the school’s interest in sustainability.

“I think the outdoor classroom and garden space are part of a broader vision,” he said. “We’ve heard that we’ll get a new school in five or seven years and we would love for it to be LEED-certified and a teaching tool in and of itself.”

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission released this week its "green growth toolbox" to be used by communities to preserve natural habitats.

From a press release:

The Green Growth Toolbox contains information on the state’s most important habitats, as well as community-planning methods and site-design techniques that can help conserve North Carolina’s priority species.

“Our goal is not to inhibit development,” said Jacquelyn Wallace, a biologist with the commission. “We want to show how we can build new homes, businesses and shopping centers while conserving habitats. We have put together a menu of conservation strategies that counties and towns can pick and choose from, and we can help communities choose the best options.”

I mentioned in a previous post my interest in "slow living" in 2009. Slow living, is basically a practice of mindfulness and deliberateness in one's activities. It can take many forms, whether it be simplifying one's life to avoid overcommitment and burnout, cooking seasonal foods at home, or walking or biking to one's destination instead of driving. It's really all about savoring one's life, connecting to others, seeing even the mundane aspects of life as educational or sacred, and better stewarding one's resources.

This week I stopped by the home of Greensboro architect Jill Spaeh, who was having a fallen red oak tree in her yard cut up to be dried and used in the future as flooring. Spaeh makes a living designing buildings with environmentally-friendly and energy-efficient features, and she wanted to give the dead tree a second life that she could personally connect with.

Rather than have the roughly 150-year-old tree hauled off, Spaeh decided to have it cut into blocks and air dried for nine months to eventually be used as flooring in a future project.

"I want to do it because I can't imagine cutting it up and saying goodbye to it as mulch," Spaeh said.

Harvey Friddle saws the tree in front of Spaeh's Old Starmount home.

Spaeh figured this approach could be an option as other old trees in the city die and need to be taken down.

The project turned out to be somewhat of a community event, with neighbors watching and children sawing pieces of the wood themselves or painting the ends to prevent checking. Spaeh and a neighbor talked about what to do with the massive tree trunk.

"I'm stumped with the stump at the moment," she said. "I don't know if there are any uses for the stump. I haven't gotten that far."

The tree cutting for me was one example of turning a problem ("Oh crap, there's a dead tree lying in my yard") into a learning experience that could be shared with family and friends rather than just exercising the typical knee-jerk response. And everything seemed to fall in place for Spaeh, including the facts that the tree fell during winter break and it caused minimal property damage.

But other opportunities exist to practice mindfulness in one's life. It might be contemplating the uses of old baby jar bottles rather than throwing them away or taking regular walks through your neighborhood. What ideas do you have for living slow and consciously amid all the busyness of life?

More about the 250 acre tract here.

A national movement to reconnect today's youth with nature has picked up steam with multi-state "Take A Child Outside" initiatives and the recent U.S. House passage of the No Child Left Inside Act.

Question is, will local children get to play outside on a regular basis after the class field trips and organized nature events are over?

Richard Louv, author of "Last Child in the Woods," told a crowd of about 300 people at Greensboro Montessori School on Thursday that he longs for cultural and political change that keeps this back to nature movement from becoming another fad. His presentation and book signing was part of a week of events that sought to get children and their families outdoors.

"Our children have a fundamental right to that place in their hearts," Louv said. "When we cut that away from them we cut away a part of their humanity."

Louv then described his three-ring theory of cultural change, starting with program, then volunteers and last family or neighborhood-initiated activities. He said programs can fall victim to budget cuts and competition and volunteers can suffer from a lack of organization.

"What if an idea like that could catch on like neighborhood watches and block parties did in past decades?" Louv said.

He referred to examples of citizens taking it into their own hands to reconnect with nature, including Geeks in the Woods and a youth nature club called -- what else? -- "Girls Gone Wild."

It will be interesting to see what springs up in Greensboro and beyond. Perhaps I'll drive through neighborhoods and see more children climbing trees or playing in ravines. Or maybe I will overhear parents say they pulled their children out of formal extracurriculars to give them time for unstructured play. Any maybe I'll learn the joys of nature play myself so that I may establish a foundation for my infant daughter.

President Bush and many educators have worked over the past several years to close the academic achievement gap between groups of students. Should his educational legacy also include closing the nature gap as well?

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is gathering support for the No Child Left Inside Act, a federal bill that would offer states incentives to develop Environmental Literacy Plans and integrate environmental education across K-12 curricula. The No Child Left Inside Act aims to ensure that schools have the resources and training necessary to help the next generation understand and address the challenges of protecting the environment.

Connecting children with nature is a goal that is beginning to gain steam here in Greensboro. Last Saturday, about 30 people viewed a documentary at The HIVE in Glenwood about the disconnect between today's generation of children and nature and unstructured play.

Given that No Child Left Behind has been underfunded since its inception and criticized for faulty implementation, I'm not sure another federal law is the best approach toward this issue. However, a healthy dialogue about the children's lack of exposure to the outdoors is needed.

The "Simple Living" television show will feature Guilford County on UNC-TV at 6:30 tonight. 

The segment, called "Connecting with Nature," will include a visit to The Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World, and interviews with Thomas Berry, cultural historian; Richard Louv, nationally-known author of "Last Child in the Woods"; and Joseph Cornell, head of the Sharing Nature Foundation.