Rising to meet the challenges posed by climate change, ecological decline, and environmental injustice requires more than new technologies and policies. Changes to economies, political systems, and infrastructure must come in tandem with changes to values, attitudes, and practices. At Groundwork, we work to shift the foundations of the ways we understand ourselves and our place in the world, in order to work towards more just and sustainable shared futures for a time beyond our own.
Groundwork’s ecology field camps spend 3-7 days immersed in ecological inquiry in the mountains of Western Colorado, building relationships with the wild, edible, and medicinal plants of our bioregion. Course available May through August.
layinggroundwork.org/ecologies-of-colorado/
Camped on the slopes of the Western Colorado’s tablelands, you’ll spend a week learning to step into the relationships that people have cultivated with these ecosystems over thousands of years. Throughout the course, we’ll learn to read the landscape: where water hides, where soil and rock types affect the plants, how slope and aspect predict which plants will grow in a given place. Around the campfire at night, we’ll discuss the native and settler histories of the land, reflecting on the U.S. government’s campaigns against the Utes in present-day Colorado and Utah. Through this lens and a newfound relationship with this landscape, we’ll begin to imagine what a different future might look like.
From delicious wild mushrooms growing symbiotically with their chosen tree companions to acorns in maze-like oak forests, from herb-filled aspen groves to wild carrots historically planted and periodically tended in open sage flats, this place is full of food and medicine. Each day, we learn to identify new edible and medicinal plants, learning the fundamentals of botany, and identifying plants by families so you gain a solid grasp of the entire ecology, not just individual species.
Whether you’re new to Colorado or have lived here your whole life, this course has something to offer you. Join us this year and deepen your relationship with the place where you live.
More information and registration:
layinggroundwork.org/ecologies-of-colorado/
