About Riekes Nature

Overview

The Riekes Center Nature Department has been providing high quality nature immersion and education for more than two decades. All of our Youth Nature Programs bring students outside to form deep connections to the natural world through learning and through immersive experience.

Our learning focuses on a diverse range of topics including: learning about the natural history of local ecosystems, how to identify and use native medicinal and edible plants, wildlife tracking, bird language, ancient living and survival skills, developing sensory awareness, homesteading skills, rural skills, and learning to be comfortable being fully immersed in nature.

Our Mission

As a dynamic part of the Riekes Center for Human Enhancement our mission, as the Nature Department, is to recognize the inherent value and importance of each person and to provide each person with the best possible environment for pursuing their individual goals. Like all people, all goals are valued equally. What this looks like in real terms is that the student who wants to learn how to light a match (one of our favorite foundational lessons), is celebrated and treated the same as the student who would like to develop the skills necessary to solo-hike the Pacific Crest Trail or who would like to become the next David Attenborough (in collaboration with our amazing video production department!)

Our mission in the Riekes Nature Department is to provide all students, of any age and all backgrounds, with a gateway into connecting with nature. This looks different for each person. Here are some ways that a person might connect to nature:

Planting and pruning roses.
Experiencing the enchantment of planting bean seeds in a garden and watching the first bean leaves push up out of the soil.
Learning how to make fire-by-friction and how to identify the trees and plants needed for making fire-by-friction.
Playing nature games out in the woods with your friends.
Catch and release of lizards, frogs, and newts.
Learning to identify constellations from your home balcony and looking at the moon through binoculars.
Canning jam, making pickles, and baking bread.
Processing acorns into flour and cooking acorn flour pancakes.
Raising chickens for eggs.
Going on off-trail wanders through dense thickets and brush.
Climbing the tallest peak in the Bay Area or backpacking in Death Valley.
Making salves and tinctures from wild medicinal plants.
Sitting around a campfire playing guitar, singing songs, telling stories, and drinking hot cocoa.
Developing a composting project that uses all the green-waste from an organic restaurant.
Learning to use fox-walking, owl eyes, deer ears, and raccoon hands.
Learning nature journaling
Making baskets from willow that you have harvested from a river bank.
Swimming in a high alpine lake.
Earning a Track and Sign certificate from CyberTracker International
Building a cob oven.
Making arrowheads from obsidian harvested from a volcanic mountainside.

All of these things, and so much more, have been done in Riekes Nature! There are unlimited ways to connect with, love, and live in awe and wonder of the wild earth and the universe that we live in!