VOTING STEPS
Click on “VOTE” button (above)
Click on “San Francisco Bay Area”
Select “Start Voting”
Click on the “Outdoor” tab
Check box next to The Riekes Center Nature Camps
Select “Submit Vote” tab
Fill out information and click “Submit Vote”
Right now, our young people are feeling more stressed and anxious than ever. The world can feel pretty overwhelming, but being part of a community can help. We're here to light a fire within them - to help them find their purpose, walk with resilience and love, and rise up together.
Wild Hearts is a community of teens, young adults, and parents who are all about living and leading with love. We guide them in finding their authentic selves, building confidence, and having honest conversations. We call it Fire Talk, and it's all about giving young people the essential life skills they need to make choices that truly serve them.
With Wild Hearts, they'll learn to:
Speak their truth with confidence
Set healthy boundaries
Take care of themselves
Be leaders in their own lives
Express themselves authentically
Stand up for justice and integrity
Build healthy relationships
Explore their identity
Take appropriate risks
Spend quality time with friends in nature
Honor their bodies and natural cycles
Connect with the earth
And when they graduate from Wild Hearts, they'll do it with a secure sense of self, knowing they're worthy of love and respect. Our mission is to connect young people with their inner nature, the natural world, and the nature of life - and to build a world where we're all devoted allies to each other and to the earth. So let's gather 'round this fire and be in this together!
Hosted around a campfire on the second Saturday of every month! Located in Felton, CA.
To learn more visit: https://www.riekes.org/wild-hearts-nature-program
The Riekes Center Nature Department has been providing high quality nature immersion and education for the past 20 years. 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.
Creating deep connections to nature is the cornerstone of our department. We nurture these connections while helping students achieve personal goals in this environment. Whether it is learning to identify 20 species of birds by song, how to track coyotes, or how to build a debris shelter, each student follows their own passion in nature. Our instructors mentor students through the art of questioning and share their own individual expertise and passions in natural history subjects. Our curriculum draws upon the core routines of nature awareness as detailed in the book Coyote’s Guide by author Jon Young, one of our department’s founders. Richard Louv, author of the landmark book Last Child in the Woods, describes these mentoring techniques as “good medicine for nature deficit disorder.”
We have homeschool nature programs for youth 3-17 in Woodside, Cupertino, Santa Cruz, and Pebble Beach.
To learn more visit: https://www.riekes.org/homeschool-programs
We have just opened registration for another year of our adult nature program!
Do you feel a calling to have a deep connection to the land, and to know the earth and its ecosystems as your ancestors once did? Would you like to develop the confidence and competence to walk into the forest alone with all the skills you would need to survive? Do you feel a loss of the kinds of human connections that nourish and support you on your human journey, and do you want to plant the seeds for creating those nourishing connections in your life? Join us for this transformational class where you will put your feet onto the path of diving deep into the world of nature connection and being in community with other awesome humans along the way!
This adult class takes a Cooper’s Hawk eye view on one focus per day, giving participants a highly concentrated experience of our nature curriculum. Each day centers around a skill or activity in one of our core areas of nature study, and also introduces the core routines of nature connection through practices like cultivating a sense of place through going to a sit spot and honing our senses to reclaim our wild awareness. Participants will also develop tools and confidence to continue down the path of nature-connection.
The core areas of knowledge that will be explored are: Ancestral Skills, Fire Making, Naturalist Knowledge, Survival skills, Edible and Medicinal Plants, Wildlife Tracking, Sensory Awareness, Sense of Place, Navigation, and Community.
Hosted at Huddart Park in Woodside, CA.
To learn more visit: https://www.riekes.org/adult-nature-programs
