Youth and Nature

Dear Friends,

We hope you enjoy this first episode of recorded conversation hosted by the Foundation for Health Creation (FHC). In this episode, titled “Youth and Nature” (see video below), we filmed an unscripted conversation between young people from different backgrounds and parts of the country. All of them are genuinely searching for answers through nature and new ways of thinking about the world. I can’t tell you how warming and informative it was to hear everyone share their thoughts and stories. It was quite difficult to edit down an enthusiastic 90-minute conversation over tea and cookies into this 30-minute episode. We sincerely hope you will share this podcast with high school students and young people you know. A fun side-note, one of the participants is an up-and-coming musician with the band Arrested Youth. You can hear their music at the beginning and end of the podcast.

Some of these participants are students at the M.C. Richards Program, which challenges people to think in ways that promote life and community rather than estrange us from life and each other. This program is sponsored by Free Columbia, located in the heart of Columbia County, NY. They provide affordable residential programs for adults that bring together studio and performing arts, social theory and action, and nature studies. There
pedagogy is inspired by contemplative inquiry, aesthetic education, and action research.

The other participants are associated with Churchtown Dairy as farm or medicinal garden apprentices. Drawing on the work of Rudolf Steiner, Bill Coperthwaite, Wendell Berry, and many others, Churchtown Dairy functions as a community farm, worked by many and welcoming to all. A project of the Foundation for Agricultural Integrity, Churchtown Dairy brings people together to work on the land in a way that is regenerative for both the land and the people working it. Farmers, cheesemakers, growers, learners and administrators work together to create a whole-farm organism, in which work, challenges, opportunities and joys are shared.

Thanks for listening and sharing these youthful perspectives. Please consider supporting our work and helping in our collective efforts toward Health Creation. If you have something you would like to share in our newsletter, please let us know!

Sincerely,

Dr. Steven Johnson

“If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor; then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”

Film and Sound: Jordan Neves
Music: Arrested Youth