Thank you, Sir...  You engaged our children and will forever cause people around the world to see the importance of

exploring their world.

making mistakes.

climbing a hill.

facing their fears.

screaming.

smiling.

laughing.

sighing.

having "nakie" time.

crying.

finding magic in a special place.

feeling sad.

finding a way to express themselves.

a warm dinner at the end of the day.

a…

Our oldest came in the kitchen while I was fixing dinner last night (turkey burgers) and saw me sporting the new CRPA (Cowpasture River Preservation Association) hat that I got in the mail today.  She giggled and said, “Do you like your new hat, Daddy?”

 Yes, indeed I do.  These busy days have me pining over the leisure hours and days we spent…

School starts up again for me tomorrow.  Wow!  I really can’t believe that.

With that said, it explains why I have been trying desparately to check too many things off of a day’s list lately.  A hike here, a visit there, a book read and a house cleaned.

While visiting the library, I stumbled upon a sweet treat: Pioneer Naturalists: The Discovery and Naming of North American Plants and…

In January of 2008, Ashley and I started Kids In the Valley, Adventuring!, a free nature club for families in Roanoke, Virginia (www.kidsadventuring.org). Since then, we have connected with wonderfully creative people around the United States and beyond who have started their own nature clubs. To increase our conversations and to document them to help other families, we created a facebook page for leaders as well as the NING…

“When people connect with nature, it happens somewhere. Almost everyone who cares deeply about the outdoors can identify a particular place where contact occurred. This may have been a wilderness, a national park, or a stretch of unbounded countryside, but more often the place that makes a difference is unspectacular: a vacant lot, a scruffy patch of woods, a weedy field, a stream, a green ravine…