Beautiful Fridays

Fridays bring a different rhythm to HCMA.  The must do list of the week gets set aside and we let the season and our interest pull us where they may.  The winter pulls us to the Mountain, but the fall pulls us to the woods.  This foliage season has been the most magnificent in recent memory and the weather just exceptional for soaking up every last moment of fall goodness.

This past Friday found us making applesauce with our apples from Cardigan Mountain Apple Orchard, creating art with loose parts of the season and exploring along the river and in the fields at Profile Falls.  We prepared the applesauce and put it in the crock pot before leaving for the Falls.  When we returned, the classroom smelled of warm apples and cinnamon.  After an afternoon outside, we filled our bellies with warm applesauce and took to our rest mats.  By the time we finished listening to our favorite guided relaxation CD, 11 of our 12 explores were fast asleep.

“Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.” 
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder