Back to nature

As 10 children sat on shade-dappled grass in Bidwell Park during a recent Thursday morning, they gasped in anticipation.

The students—part of Earthbound Skills’ Forest Foxes class (for homeschooled children ages 4 to 7)—were about to handle the preserved skin of a dead rattlesnake brought in by instructor Rachel Rickard. Many of the children delicately traced the scales as they passed it around and stared in reverence. One boy placed the hide on the grass and curled it up, shaking its rattler, pretending to bring the creature back to life.

Every moment was a teachable one for Rickard, fellow instructor Jahnia Mitchell and instructor trainee Catie Roberson. How does this creature differ from the gopher snake they recently studied? Its scale patterns, the children replied. How old was it? They weren’t sure. Count the segments of the rattler, Rickard hinted. Nine, the children counted, in awe of its age.

Rickard explained why it died—her husband killed it to protect her family. They honored its existence through a ceremony at her home, and “it still gets to live on as a teacher for us.”

This was just the beginning of the itinerary for the day. Soon the kids would go off to explore Big Chico Creek, and later they’d make sun tea with lemon balm and fir tips gathered from Rickard’s garden.

Mitchell and her partner, Matthew Knight, founded Earthbound Skills in 2012 to teach naturalist, wilderness-survival and primitive-living skills. The nature observation and awareness school started with workshops in the couple’s backyard, then progressed to school field trips and regular outdoor classes across Chico, primarily through partnerships with local chartered homeschools.

In the beginning, the couple held a one-hour weekly class with four students. They now offer four- and six-hour classes to more than 80 students across three different age groups, five days a week.

The pair studied at the Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracker School in New Jersey, which specializes in nature observation, wilderness therapy and survivalist training. Earthbound Skills’ six instructors have a variety of skillsets. For example, Wyatt Hersey, also an artist, works as a field ornithologist in the summer months.

Mitchell said she loves what she does, in part because of the “undeniable” impact it has had for the children, who discover that they have an “intuitive passion and curiosity of nature.”

The instructors often stumble upon spontaneous teaching moments—the students, for example, discovered beaver chew marks on cattail and tule a few seasons ago in Bidwell Park. Naturally, they began tracking the animal.

“We finally found where the beaver was living in the park, and it was a super exciting day for us,” Mitchell said. “[These discoveries create] a connection with the students and their environment. A track is not just a lifeless depression on the ground … eventually that track leads to a live animal somewhere.”

In addition, the kids learn how to identify poison oak and other troublesome plants, as well as those that can be sources of medicine. Every year, they learn how to safely ignite and put out an outdoor fire.

Lessons go beyond plant identification and survival skills. The children create relationships with the plants and animals, Mitchell said. They learn the story of each living thing, and how it relates to everything else in the natural world: what they look like, where they live, and what they like to eat and why, for example. This helps foster “that love and desire to protect those things” as they get older.

Portia Ceruti told the CN&R that her son, Sabin, discovered he is great at creating rope and now knows how to start a fire using a bow drill he made. He has a hard time leaving each class at the end of the day, she added. That also was true of her daughter, who has since aged out of the program.

That Thursday afternoon, as the Forest Foxes wrapped up a modified game of tag (emulating foxes and rabbits), the Woodland Scouts arrived with instructors Knight and Ian Wallick Colunga. The 10- to 14-year-olds pored over field guides, working in three teams to complete a naturalist study of a mountain lion, red-shouldered hawk and poison oak, respectively.

Then, they excitedly whipped through a naturalist skills obstacle course. Among other things, they practiced archery (with padded arrows), simulated the gait of a monkey on a balance beam, twisted plant fibers into rope and identified animal tracks using molds they created on a previous trip to the Sacramento River.

Knight said the course was designed to recap everything the kids had learned during the semester and to encourage them to interact in a “playful way that cultivates a higher level of awareness” with their surroundings, their bodies, one another and plants and animals.

Though the school year is winding down, Earthbound Skills soon will launch into its summer camp season. One day, Mitchell and Knight hope to establish a permanent location to expand activity and learning opportunities—they could grow, cultivate and harvest plants with the children on-site, for example.

The hands-on nature of the school has resonated with parents and kids alike.

“So much focus is put on book learning and standardized testing and stuff that we’ve forgotten kids learn a lot through play,” Mitchell said. “Every time that they learn about something, it’s not just from being told … they learn because they have a direct experience with it that creates a relationship with that plant or with that animal.”