A Foundation Course: The Meadow
Welcome to the Meadow. This is your place to experience yourself in nature. A place to let yourself forget about social media & re-remember your senses. A place you might find yourself braiding grasses, inventing a new colour, listening to leaves, or tasting wild mint with a new friend.
What
When we began to imagine the Network as a place for people to share practices, ideas, and experiences with nature, we thought it would be nice for members to meet each other in a virtual group and engage nature with the same prompt, and we loved the Meadow as a metaphor and a place to explore & experience.
How
Each week you receive three invitations to learn and discover through a particular sense (see, touch, taste, smell, listen, move). It’s a prompt to get out into nature. We will help you find “your meadow” and there you will be invited to try something new from making a wreath of grasses to recording a soundscape to painting with rocks.
When
We ran this course twice. Our pioneer course was 6 weeks long in the summer of 2020. We repeated the course and doubled its duration from 6 to 12 weeks during the winter of 2020/21.
We allowed the Meadow to rest throughout this year while we tended to the needs of our community platform in order to deepen our roots in the soil to support our long term plans.
Our next Meadow Course is planned for the Summer in 2022. Further details will be announced closer to the time. Please sign up to our mailing list to hear more when the time comes.
Who
Our members are teachers & students of nature. We are foragers, poets, and bird-song recorders. Artists who want to work more closely with nature & lifelong learners who want to better understand the weeds in their favourite empty lot. Natural dyers, mudlarkers & anyone who wants to learn.
Every 1-2 weeks new prompts are released, inviting to experience nature in new ways with one of your senses.
Week 1 / Welcome to the Meadow
Module 1 / See
Module 2 / Touch
Module 3 / Taste & Smell
Module 4 / Listen
Module 5 / Movement
The Course includes virtual meadow meetings, hosted by our founding members & guides.
All meetings will be held via Zoom.
Impressions from our 2020 Summer Meadow Foundation Course
An introduction to the Network & each other, The Meadow Foundation Course is a space to reflect & explore from our geographic corners of nature. Here is a peek at the beauty, inspiration & wisdom we found when we focused our senses over six-weeks of invitations, each week focusing on a different sense (smell, touch, hear, move). We also considered what a meadow means, as an ecological location, as a metaphor, as a part of us.
“My intention is to map the colours with thread naturally dyed to match the colours. As I normally use Australian natives, green us hard to cine by ... but now living in an area where introduced flora dominates I will be exploring non native dyes. The photo shows threads dyed predominantly with eucalyptus and other natives with the exceptions of indigo, purple carrot, fungi and onions.”
— Sue. Week 2: Seeing.
i love how grasses translate the movement of the breeze into sound. ... the land comes alive to more senses, besides sight and smell and touch, it feels akin to being at the ocean's edge....the dialogue with nature, with wild :: elemental! — miss polly
“perhaps queen anne / was wild in her / very own way / the red dot / said to be blood / let loose / from a pinprick / when she was tatting lace.”
— miss polly, herbalist. Week 2: Seeing.
“I was so transfixed by everything I heard that I closed my eyes to hear the meadow even more. I know meadows have sounds but wow, was I blown away by them! Here are some of my notes on the sounds I heard, and a picture of the meadow, in Detroit:
Where it opens: clover and grass. Chirps, chitters. A breeze that I can hear in my left ear. It's as if all the plants are nodding, bowing. Are there really directions? The meadow actually has a constant sounds. I hear the leaves of trees, the spread of atoms: the quantum is very present and real here. Everything, even sound, constant movement.” — Elizabeth
Sue. Week 4: Touch.
For me, the meadow is an anchor and the sea. It's the space where things grow without any planning. There are several meadows on my farm in Michigan, and all of them hold memory. The meadow is a stage (where I like to dance), a place to learn, a source of inspiration, a site for growth, a site with endless potential. There are worlds inside a meadow, and so much possibility for ink making. — Elizabeth
“The compilation grew as I sat on an alder log beneath a spruce canopy. The colors are from local plants & iron water, mainly grape leaves & wisteria. The blue is from copper oxide scraps from a metal smithing friend. We have a phenomenon called duff in the PNW — a spongy sort of needle carpet formed from years of shedding. This has a tangy smell of deep earth. Thank you for this!”
— Marlana, artist. Week 5: Smelling.
“Thank you for the thoughtful prompts. These are small drawings I made today, all about 1.5” square. They are done with an ordinary fine ballpoint, so there is no erasure. It stills the mind so well.”
— Marlana, artist. Week 4: Touch.
