Human & Natural Colorado of Colorado Video
We’re excited to share a short video talking with participants on our Human & Natural Ecologies of Colorado courses on the Grand Mesa in Western Colorado. Participants built their connection with the landscapes of Colorado, from the high alpine down into the aspen groves, scrub oaks, and piñon/juniper forests. Leaving the course, participants walked away with knowledge of wild edible plants, wild edible mushrooms and how to go mushroom hunting, knowledge of ecosystems to help in their foraging, and knowledge of landscape-scale human interactions in the present and past.
Transcript (Automatically Generated)
Gabe Crawford: We have this orphan complex in our culture where we feel like we don’t belong and we have this emptiness inside and we just consume and consume and consume just to kind of fill this void that’s been left in us by a lack of place. Like a sense of identity rooted in our place.
Ona: Get to know yourself better and get to know the earth better.
Walter: It helped me connect more to this beautiful landscape that I live in. Uh connect more to the earth. Uh connect more to the food that I eat and the history of the place I live. Uh It, it really, I’ve learned so much. This isn’t a week where you go, you go to class, you take notes, you do homework. This wasn’t school, this was an experience, this was all encompassing every aspect of my time out here. This week has been profound, has been enriching and has been um and really healing in a lot of ways.
Mackenzie Sains: I can’t imagine how I can even go on a walk or a hike and have it ever be the same? We talk a lot about this like green curtain and just kind of seeing everything as plants and that certainly, that veil has been removed, being able to find similarities to find friends that I know along the trail and being able to incorporate that in my day to day life and wanting to share that with my friends, wanting them to know who’s around us. Now, when I’m walking in the outdoors, I find myself excited to see friends in the plants, uh, in, in the landscape.
Drew: It’s been pretty mind blowing of just how much is out there that I didn’t know much about that was medicinal or edible. Um It was really eye opening, going out and picking and harvesting and foraging and then coming back and being able to incorporate that in your breakfast, lunch and dinners. Um and really get to, you know, experience all those flavors together.
Gabe Crawford: People’s choice to come and learn ecology in this specific way. It’s an inherently radical decision because we need more people to get a sense of who they are in relationship to their bio region. People are really going to step up advocacy when their identity is rooted in their place, you know, in their places, co creates who they are. We’re not separate from the land. You know, we’re, we’re co-creating the natural world with the natural world.
Ona: This course will change my life moving forward, helping me be more present both in nature and with people and with myself. And this program has only deepened my curiosity and my drive to learn more about things that we’ve forgotten as humankind.
Mackenzie Sains: And when our world seems really doomed, I think one of the best things that we can do for ourselves and for our community and for our world is begin to develop relationships with these plants. And that first comes with understanding the long standing relationship humans and animals have had with these plants and how much they can teach us. It opens us up to something far greater than ourselves. And I think that’s a really vital step forward into this unknown future.
Drew: Groundwork changed my life forever, man. I really did just makes you have faith in humanity um that we can turn this around.
Gabe Crawford: If you want the eyes to see the land through the same lens that you would see a best friend through or a lover or a, a parent that you really care about and who, you know, really cares about you. I think it’s worth it, you know. Uh This has changed my life. It’s vast, it’s a mystery and we’re a part of it, you know. And I think that to me, ecology is like being a part of it. It’s beautiful. I mean, it’s who we are, you know. We are an ecological being.