Reading the Landscape & Telling the Story is designed to acquaint you with Vermont landscapes in the Champlain Valley and to provide you with an integrative framework for reading the land here and around the world. This framework explores an understanding of the pieces, patterns, and processes that shape the natural world.

Learning to identify trees can be a powerful way to connect to your local landscape. They are big, charismatic, and always around us, and knowing who they are provides a baseline of ecological understanding for the rest of our surroundings. Join Jonathan Shapiro of Fox Paw School for a dive into tree ID, focusing on a pattern-based approach that we are hardwired to understand. We'll talk about tree silhouettes, branching patterns, leaf shapes, bark, and more, and you'll leave with the observational skills to learn not only trees, but the rest of your landscape as well. By meeting in three different seasons, we'll have the opportunity to see how trees' lives change throughout the cycle of the year, and how they fit into the broader ecological context of our North Woods home.

This class will focus on botanical illustrations at all scales, from the whole plant down to its smallest parts. At times we’ll practice with magnification, measurements, maps, and diagrams to expand our techniques. We’ll work primarily with graphite pencils and technical pens, and move into watercolor and colored pencils on our final day together.

Sounds a bit strange, “slow birding.” Watching birds isn’t really fast in the first place and the pace of a birder in the field is already slow and methodical. But, it is possible to change how we approach traditional birding and what we get out of it. Slow Birding is a practice that builds a deeper observation of birds while at the same time creating a deeper connection to yourself and the place you live.

A casual, slow, naturalist-led evening paddle around Curtis Pond. Once on the water, we'll head slowly north across this quiet pond, enjoying beavers, fish, botany, birdlife, and whatever other flora and fauna we come across before returning to the boat launch near sunset.

Quarry Hill is a dry low-elevation marble hill with an exceptionally diverse flora. Marble hills rare in the Northern Forest Region. Some of the best are in western New England. This one, which has been famous botanically since the early 1900s, is one of the best of the best. We will focus on limestone mosses and also look at some distinctive woody plants, herbs, and indicators. A Northern Forest Atlas day course hosted by NBNC's Biodiversity University.

The course will provide an introduction to old forests, including their forms, functions, and inhabitants. Each day will explore an old forest field site in Northern Vermont, combined with time back at NBNC to share slides and discuss concepts in a classroom setting.

A one-day course in low-water and floodplain grasses, sedges, and woodies along the lower Winooski River. Vermont has about forty species of late-blooming sedges (mostly), rushes (a few) and grasses (even fewer) that are best sought on river and lake shores in late summer and fall. They are a distinctive and fascinating flora; the lower Winooski is one of the best places to find them and learn them. A Northern Forest Atlas day course hosted by NBNC's Biodiversity University.

In this course, participants will explore the diversity and ecological importance of the kingdom of fungi. Over this two-day course, participants will learn the fundamentals of mushroom identification through a combination of classroom and field experience. Topics include fungi ecology, taxonomy, field identification, morphology, edibility, toxicity, fungi as medicine, bioremediation, utilitarian function, as well as ‘best’ harvesting practices.

Learning to identify trees can be a powerful way to connect to your local landscape. They are big, charismatic, and always around us, and knowing who they are provides a baseline of ecological understanding for the rest of our surroundings. Join Jonathan Shapiro of Fox Paw School for a dive into tree ID, focusing on a pattern-based approach that we are hardwired to understand. We'll talk about tree silhouettes, branching patterns, leaf shapes, bark, and more, and you'll leave with the observational skills to learn not only trees, but the rest of your landscape as well. By meeting in three different seasons, we'll have the opportunity to see how trees' lives change throughout the cycle of the year, and how they fit into the broader ecological context of our North Woods home.

Wild Art is a form of dialogue between you and the world beyond your skin; a means of expressing what you sense inside yourself and what you attune to around you. We will first engage in a sensory awareness practice, then go onto the land to be in conversation with the plants, animals, and wild elements. Utilizing the ancient art form of the mandala, we will create our own expressions of wholeness, attentiveness, and relationship to the Wild, inside, and out.