Kim Simpson from Free Spirit Forest and Nature School talks about trusting the process, making spaces for kids to really show up, and fostering skills that help kids beyond a formal education.
//
When I started writing this blog years ago, I wrote a lot about the education system. As an unschooling parent of two boys who don’t fit well in a classroom space, I have had to do a lot of learning about what it means to learn. Some part of this journey have been very hard, but some has been really easy.
For me, forest school just makes sense. We all agree that kids thrive when they spend time outside in nature, and I firmly believe in mentorship as an alternative to formal teaching. Outdoor education has been proven time and again to help physical and mental health, social skills, cognitive development, environmental awareness, and even academic improvement. I really do believe that every kid could benefit from a day spent in the woods with peers.
In this episode of the podcast, I get to chat with my good friend Kim Simpson from the Free Spirit Forest and Nature School based on southern Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada. Kim and her partner Matt have been trailblazers for the forest school movement, having started their programming way back in 2016, when forest schools were just finding their footing.
In our chat, Kim and I share our experiences witnessing natural and place based learning outside of the classroom, where there is space made for exploration, inquisitiveness, collaboration, and a focus on encouraging kids to show up as their true selves.
You can support this project and podcast by becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.
If you have a person or project who you think is doing really awesome work in their community, please recommend them by emailing me at kel@novitasmag.com.
TRANSCRIPT (excuse the typos)
Intro: Welcome to Novitas, a podcast exploring stories about how we might live outside of the capitalist paradigm into a future that focuses on collective liberation. My name is Kel Smith. My guest today is Kim Simpson. Kim and her partner Matt are the collective force behind Free Spirit Forest and Nature School, an outdoor education program for kids and adults along southern Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada. Free Spirit is a school with no classroom, a one day a week program where kids can skip out on the modern education system and get connected to nature.
Full disclosure, my kids have been long time forest school participants and I am a huge advocate for this style of mentorship and natural education. I will also disclose that Kim and Matt are two of my favorite people on this planet. I was so excited to connect with them and for my youngest son to participate in the weekly programming at Free Spirit. In a time where we see anxiety and depression in young people at an all-time high, spending time outside with peers is a simple solution that benefits everyone. Free Spirit’s mentorship model empowers kids to actively shape their day, collaborate with one another in community, and connect to the natural world around them. It allows them to slow down, witness the world in a safe and caring environment, and it really allows them to show up as their true selves.
I have witnessed firsthand with both of my children how transformative these experiences can really be, and when I think about the kind of education and learning that I’m excited about in a post-capitalist society, the values and practices of outdoor education, like at Free Spirit, are exactly what we need for our children.
Kim and I share a beautiful conversation about Free Spirit Forest and Nature School, how it came to be, how it has changed and grown over the years, and why it is sure to continue for many years to come.
Kel: Hello Kim, thank you so much for being here and taking the time to chat today. Um, I was wondering if we could start off, uh, if you could tell me a little bit about how you first got interested in outdoor education.
Kim: Yeah. So I think like being outside and connecting to nature, it was just something that I was always interested in. Um, so like my, my childhood, I feel like that that’s like where I can pinpoint my love for being outside. And then I was the kind of kid that like really loves school. So I just, wanted to do school forever. So they kind of just like married in a really great way. Sorry, when I went on my first like canoe trip as a guide, I thought, wow, like you can get paid to do it.
Kel: Yeah.
Kim: Yeah. Blew my mind. And so I was able to like slowly understand that the jobs that we know don’t have to like they they’ve evolved, I guess, and they can kind of be anything. My my very first guided trip, I think was maybe one of the most profound moments for me, paddling in Algonquin, like in the starry night where the stars are reflected in the water. Like I could still, I can feel that in my bones, you know? I’m still gushing over it.
Kel: That’s really cool. I didn’t know you were a canoe trip guide. I was also a canoe trip guide. And I don’t think we’ve ever talked about that before.
Kim: No, I think there’s a lot of overlap.
Kel: And so when did you, when did, I mean, the article in Novitas goes pretty in depth as to how you got started with free spirit outdoor school. Do you want to talk a little bit about that now?
Kim: Yeah, sure. So Matt and I met in 2012, and I think around like 2016 was like our very first winter. And it was sort of newish to the area. We had other jobs that worked over the weekend, so our weekdays were free. And this idea of forest schools was just kind of trickling into our area. We were sort of approached because we were both teachers and outdoor educators to sort of start a pilot program, I guess. And then we started with just a handful of children on like the snowiest day. Some of the children in that program have like, you know, they’re whatever the math is, like teenagers now, right? And they can remember their first day at firest school.
Kel: I feel like starting in the winter must’ve been very bold.
Kim: Yeah, yeah. It was like, are we doing this?
Kel: Right. And for context, for people who don’t know, Kim is located just, the first one was in Collingwood, is that right? Which is like top 10 snowiest places in Canada because of the juxtaposition of where it’s located off of Georgian Bay and in proximity to Lake Huron as well. It’s just a lot of snow, so starting something like that in the winter. But Collingwood also has a big ski hill and it’s kind of a destination area, so it’s kind of an outdoor destination I guess. And it’s nice that you kind of got head hunted that there other people that understood the value of what you were trying to do. And you were, you must have been one of the first forest schools, at least in Ontario.
Kim: Yeah, yeah we were. We um, which was kind of daunting, like jumping through the hoops of ministry guidelines and building rapport with with the schools nearby. Once we were able to do it, it wasn’t, it wasn’t as intimidating as we thought. And then we were able to help other folks, because there are a lot of forest schools now, which is a really beautiful thing, and more outdoor schools. And so we’ve been able to help folks who are just starting out on their journey and figure out how to navigate all the red tapes and stuff. Yeah for sure all the requirements.
Kel: Yeah yeah. So I will call him up after but Roland was very excited that I was chatting with you this morning and I was trying to come up with my questions this morning while I was drinking coffee with him and I asked Ro who is eight now what is the difference between for a school and normal school and for reference my eight-year-old has never been to modern like in the modern education system so he doesn’t actually know. His answers like I said what do you learn at Forest School and his answers were you learn about nature, you learn how to be respectful, you learn how to be kind to your friends and you learn how to make a fire. I thought those were very good answers and he was like yeah that’s pretty much it.
Kim: I’m crying. That guy nailed it.
Kel: I mean obviously I am a proponent of nature connection and I am not necessarily a proponent of the modern education system and I think being kind of an anti-capitalist person I can recognize in the modern education system that they are teaching the tools required in order for our young people to become productive members of a capitalist society and I think one of the reasons that I really love outdoor education in particular is because it doesn’t do that it is actually quite the opposite in a way that is almost visceral. Like I think outdoor education and nature connection gives kids a fundamentally different tool set to enter into the world. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and what kind of focus that you’ve had at Free Spirit as to what kind of tools you’re interested in providing kids as they you know graduate or head out into the world?
Kim: That’s a really great question. I think like what’s beautiful about outdoor schools, it’s just like being able to hold space in like a really, a really meaningful way for children. And we’re outside. So there’s like, there’s just so much room, I think I could go on forever, to like work through things. Whether that’s like between an adult mentor and a child or within like a child and child relationship. So they’re like, they’re strengthening so many tools in their toolbox, like the social emotional pieces, the physical literacy, like all of that stuff, that’s just so important in becoming like a healthy kiddo. Yeah, and so we do a lot of like community building stuff and we focus a lot on emotional intelligence. We are like, there’s resilience where we’re like working hard to build fires and we’re learning those like outdoor skills and bushcraft skills. We take time to do like creative arts and and it could be like your your classic like pen, paper, journaling, reflection, watercolors or maybe you’re using charcoal and and like making your own pencil like it’s can be really really creative. The nature connection piece just it looks so different for everybody and and that’s such a profound, impactful thing for everybody, but especially for kids. Just thinking about our future of our community and thinking about children having this really profound nature connection just gives me so much hope for later. There’s play. There’s so much play and a huge focus on gratitude and reflection. And so I think Roland was right when he said, we learned how to practice being kind to our friends and respectful and like that’s a huge I guess pillar right? Respect and connection for for your friends, for nature, for yourself like it’s I don’t know.
Kel: Yeah and and I think it goes beyond what you can teach in a curriculum right? You can’t… I know… I’m sure a lot of teachers, especially in the modern education system, will say yes there’s a big focus on being respectful but I don’t think there’s necessarily room within that system because you say like as you say like you have time you’re not adhering to a schedule so if there is conflict you can literally stop everything else and take the time to resolve that conflict whereas often when there’s bells ringing or kids running around or other things there’s not really the space to have that kind of reflection and moderating experience like where everybody can really feel heard and have their needs met and all that kind of stuff so I think that’s obviously different ways that different forest schools will approach their day. But one of the things that I really love about that free spirit and also the Guelph outdoor school where my kids are going now is that there is no schedule. I mean there’s a loose schedule, there’s a very loose schedule. We have to make sure that the kids are eating and that’s it. But I think the most beautiful thing reading kind of what you guys have done during the day or talking with your or Matt at the end of the day, like we set out to do this thing and then the kids got totally distracted with this other thing and so that’s what we spent our day doing. And having um I guess that’s a good thing to talk about is the the self-direction that comes with kids having the responsibility of making choices for themselves but then also doing that in a larger group so that it’s not 100% autonomy. They have to decide how they’re going to do things together and how their day is going to play out and if there’s conflict, how they’re going to resolve that. That’s a really beautiful experience that again I don’t think you quite have in the modern education system because of the way that it’s structured.
Kim: Yeah, yeah. I think you’re right like when we’re when we’re not bound to a curriculum there’s just there’s just so much opportunity. I really can’t imagine being in a classroom personally like the the load that they’re carrying is it’s it’s wild right and and so yeah for me and like coming into it with a plan and like, okay, maybe this is how the day will unfold, but probably not. And then to see that, like, that, um, it just says, you’ve said like the children come with their own inspiration of the day. They’re usually thinking about forest school beyond the day of forest school. And they’ll come like, Hey, remember last week, we were looking at salamanders while I found a guidebook and, you know, all of the stories, um, like help sort of pave the way of the day. And just as you said about like, I think collaborating is a huge piece of forest school. And that’s like removing any kind of authoritarian, you know, piece of it all. So the children are really valued as like, as members of our community, and they have such a role and have this like agency and autonomy that they and they get to exercise those muscles and they’re working with their peers to sort of forge the day, I guess. And it’s really beautiful. And then when they are engaged in that way, and they’re really passionate about it, like there’s such a buy-in. And we know when there’s a buy-in, like that’s when the learning happens. Yeah. When they’re able to, I guess, plan the day or like pivot and we can follow their lead and we can be the co-conspirers and really like just play with them. It’s really great. Which is really cool.
Kel: I remember when I started unschooling, one of the things that, I think was recommended to me is like count the number of times you have to say no in a day.
Kim: Yeah.
Kel: And I think when you create that kind of environment where the kids do have agency you’re limiting the amount of nos. You’re limiting the amount of times that you say sorry we can’t do that. And like yes we can do that and let’s get excited about it which is really cool.
Kim: It’s exhausting to say no. It’s so much easier to say yes. Or like how? What does that look like if we want to go up over the hill. Like how, it just makes so much sense, right? Like children, if we’re thinking about children and we’re thinking about like, you know, all of our, not that I have expectations, but when I think about the future of our community and future of our space we’re living in, and we hope that like the young kids that we’re mentoring now are like actively involved and engaged in that community. Like they need to practice how to hear other people, how to respect other people, how to just sort of work through conflict or like get excited about other things people are interested in and kind of big each other up I guess. Yeah for sure. Yeah and just to witness that is really amazing.
Kel: Yes that leads really nicely into the next thing I was thinking about is what becomes your role then as a mentor or a facilitator or a teacher or whatever word you feel drawn to in helping the kids in that kind of environment kind of way.
Kim: Yeah, so I think like the biggest sort of unlearning that I had to do was like was learning how to step out of the way truthfully and how to like really trust the process. I think that was maybe the my biggest aha moment coming from the background that I had was like really trusting the kids in the process, sort of knowing the right moment to step in. And you can kind of, that’s like leaning into your intuition. That’s sort of just like reading the temperature of what’s going on. And I think sort of the more experience you have doing that, the sort of the quicker you know, like when, when to sort of pause or when to like go in with a new prompt or a different idea or, you know, kind of guide it because there’s lots of like, like finessing that happens and like gentle mentoring or guiding along the way. And I think it’s just something that evolves over experience, really.
Kel: Do you find it’s different depending on the kids? I feel like that’s a loaded question. Obviously it’s different depending on the kids. But what kind of variables, I guess, play into that with different groups?
Kim: Oh, so many variables, right? Like the dynamic between the children, the age of the children, even the weather, right? If it’s maybe like a trickier weather day. Sometimes morale is not as high. I think that’s an adult concept that like, well anyway, it’s a…
Kel: Yeah, no, it’s feel free to tangent. Like that’s a really cool idea that like adults on rainy days don’t want to go play outside but kids are totally fine with it.
Kim: It’s amazing, right? And like I think maybe the adult burden of like, okay, well now I’ve got to do laundry and your boots are wet for tomorrow. Like we just go so far downstream and children are just so present, right? And sometimes there’s consequences for that. Like they just need to be in that puddle right? And it’s 9 a.m. so they’re like okay well… but usually parents are really great at having extras so it’s okay for them to explore that and then then they’re wet and then we’ll change up from there but yeah definitely I would say all of the variables between maybe children know each other outside of school and and their their dynamics are different when they’re in programming or what’s kind of beautiful about forest school is that a lot of students come from you know… some are homeschooled or unschooled, some are in sort of modern education programs, so they don’t necessarily know each other. So it’s like this blank slate when they do show up and arrive, which is really cool. They don’t have like, you know, maybe the labels that they might have or they’re the class clown or whatever expectation that they are sort of known for and they get to just be who they are and they can show up in a pretty cool way.
Kel: That’s awesome.
Break: You’re listening to Novitas and my guest today is Kim Simpson. Kim contributed an amazing article talking about her experience mentoring kids at Free Spirit Forest and Nature School, an outdoor education program that takes kids out of the classroom and flips learning on its head. The articles from the first issue will soon be released online for paid subscribers on the Novitas Substack. You can subscribe at novitas.substack.com. There’s a sliding scale option available which I’ll include in the show notes. Now back to the conversation.
Kel: And I wonder sometimes when you remove the restrictions, can I say restrictions? Is that a fair word of a classroom environment? A lot of the kids who would typically be seen as bad behavior or disruptive, those labels just kind of melt away as well.
Kim: Yeah, like a tendency to thrive in our program for sure, because there’s so much movement, you know? You’re feeling like a little squirrely, and you wanna pull, like take the wagon, pull the gear, this is great, like there are less limitations for sure. Yeah. And if they need to go for a walk or like take a break, like often actually people, some students will say like, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed or overstimulated, like imagine saying that as a child, can I go to my sit spot, right? Like amazing, yes.
Kel: Yeah, to have the agency to do that is beautiful. Can you talk a little bit about sit spots and what they are? Because I think they’re, I mean, are a common trend.
Kim: So it’s kind of funny because I was feeling a little bit nervous about meeting this morning, full confession. So I was like, OK, I found myself pacing or trying to do, trying to make coffee, not sure, writing down ideas. Anyway, and I thought, you know what? I need to quiet my mind. I need to go outside, just be in my body. And so I have a little sit spot near my house that’s in our backyard. I visit as often as I can and and not enough. Like the more that I go the more I almost need to go. Okay, so a sit spot is like a quiet spot in nature where you just you spend time. I’d say it’s like a pretty pivotal piece in nature connection. It could be like somewhere near your house. For some folks it could be by the window, you know. Just sort of a spot that that you can kind of just arrive and usually like you’re just like observing things that are around you and noticing some of the things that might be changing, heightening your awareness of kind of what’s going on around you. Whether it’s the color of the leaves or like the grass was really wet this morning. Yeah. And it’s something that we practice at school. Even like our four year olds will, will like have a good time doing a sit spot. And sometimes they like sneaky sit spots and they don’t, they don’t know that they’re sitting and quieting their mind. And then another times it’s like intentional piece that we try to like foster.
Kel: Cool. I only know of sit spots through secondhand information that I am told about. How do the kids kind of respond to it?
Kim: Yeah, now like they love it. Older kids especially like genuinely genuinely love it. They sometimes will go with a journal and a prompt, sometimes they’ll come back and say like that wasn’t long enough, you know, and that’s… for an eight-year-old to say, I could actually use a little more time at my sit spot. Our older ones really like going to the same spot because they have this relationship that they’re building with the spot that they’ve chosen. I don’t want to say it’s ownership but it’s a relationship so they start to take care of it. They start to notice the animals that are nearby or how it takes about 10 minutes for things to sort of settle back in before the birds start coming back, like, I saw this in my sit spot or I heard this in my sit spot.
Kel: That’s very cool. So some of the other things that you guys do during the day, um, do you want to talk a little bit? Maybe this is a proud mama moment, but Ro was leading his balloon breaths in the morning for a long time.
Kim: Yes! It was amazing. I can’t remember how he stepped into that role, but um, just for folks listening, Ro… What a pleasure to be around him all day. He is really, really amazing. You’re blushing.
Kel: I am.
Kim: If anyone’s wondering, Kel’s blushing. Just what a special kid. I miss him a lot. We would have like 15 children. And here he is at the beginning of the day, leading everyone in our circle before we did our song, just to get everybody sort of on the same page and grounded. Everyone comes with different starts to their day, different mornings. So we would always like reach, reach up high, breathe in really big and deep, and then like exhale in a really funny like way. And he would lead this and we would start with our hands on the ground touching the earth and we would end touching the earth. And it was just like, and we would do that a couple of times and he would be facilitating this. And then we would dive into like a big loud, you know, morning song that got us all pumped up for our hike out. Yeah. And there’s just like little casual ways that we can, you know, pop in some like, that’s something that like my child will do when she’s feeling overwhelmed. So I’ll have to take some balloon breaths and I’m like yes that’s so great. Like just like a little tool that we have in our back pocket that we might not really know that we need until we need it. Yeah.
Kel: I also as far as events that are part of your daily practice when you’re outside with the kids, sometimes I would come to pick up Ro and go for a little walk because the space where obviously the foreschool is is beautiful.
Sometimes I would hear these kids being very loud close to the end of the day and I always meant to ask you what that was about. Like riding on a roller coaster kind of loud.
Kim: I know it. I know the loudness. They love it. At the end of the day. So song is just woven throughout our day. And so there’s one song. Can I do a shout out to my pal Pete Moss? He has a song called… Is it called the Finch song? I actually don’t even know the name. But it was like our closing song. So we would all sing the song as loud as we can. And the very last word, it says like shout out loud and everybody screams, potato chip. And that’s just what, and they would hold it. So it would be like, I mean, you could hear it at the water and we were up in the forest. And they would sing it as loud as you can until someone, you know, made the motions of like, okay.
Kel: And what a beautiful thing to be in a space with your peers and your friends having fun and be that loud.
Kim: Yeah and that was all like they wanted to do it you know. Well, which is great.
Kel: But like I appreciate your mentorship model so strongly Kim because you make space for the kids to be as loud as they possibly can or to move as fast as they possibly can or do all of those big things that so often in our world or held in or restricted saying no you can’t do that this isn’t the space for that but then there ends up being no space for that right and so I really love that that for school is a place where all of those things can come out and I don’t was that intentional was that kind of like when you were thinking about the space you wanted to create was that part of that vision?
Kim: No I truthfully everything is blown any part of my vision ever like um it’s evolved in such a beautiful way that can only exist this way because of the children in our program for sure. Not every group ends the day that way, right? There’s kids who need to be loud, like are loud when they need to be loud, and it works, yeah. But going into it, I mean the idea of like holding space for people to be themselves, I guess that was the goal and is the goal, but it’s definitely looked a lot different than I anticipated. You should have seen us in the early days. I was like, it was funny. Kids would go home with the water cycle and a Ziploc bag. So it’s evolved instead of really valuing the process and fully believing in the process. And before I think we were trying to make it a little bit more product oriented to be like, see your child learned, look at the water cycle. And now they maybe know the water cycle because of and like just how they’re playing or like what’s going on with their day and Yeah, like why their shoes are wet in the morning. So it’s definitely it has shifted a lot.
Kel: That proof of learning is a funny one for sure and I understand it and like there’s nothing wrong with giving your kids the printed water cycle sheet like that’s really but when we… I think there’s a really beautiful thing that happens within the framework of education – I’m using scare quotes education – that natural learning really works like it really works in a way that will blow your mind when you come to trust it where like my kids are coming home from forest school and telling me about all this cool stuff that they’ve learned and there’s no proof of that like there’s no… it wasn’t taught it wasn’t part of the curriculum that morning it wasn’t anything that anything that any teacher has set out to teach my kids, but they’ve learned it. Like, Roland has learned to read. He’s eight, like maybe that’s on the bell curve, it might be a little bit later than some kids if he was in the modern education system learning to read every day, but he’s never been taught to read. And I remember when I started unschooling, it was helpful because my oldest one had already learned to read. He was in Montessori and he learned to read around the same age, maybe a year younger. But he was practicing reading every single day. And I was like, genuinely, can kids learn to read without that kind of environment where they’re being taught it every day? And some kids can, and some kids can’t. I’m not going to speak across the board. But when it happened, it was kind of like, oh my god, it does work. They do learn. They can experience things. And I think as a parent, I’m sure you can relate to this. We always worry that maybe we’re fucking up our kids, right? There’s always this worry that… I believe in the system and I trust it, but if it doesn’t work, I’m not the one that’s going to suffer from it. So it’s always very affirming and very rewarding when you witness, I’m feeling teary eyed saying this, when you witness that natural learning that happens. I feel like in some ways the Forest School model has kind of taken that totally like much more palitable for people to say this is an educational model where you send your kid for the day and there’s structure to it but it still allows that natural learning to evolve. Does that does that resonate?
Kim: Like is that again like maybe not the intention of setting out to saying we’re gonna do a nature immersion program but to have that happen have you witnessed that as well? Yeah like Roland is probably interested in reading right now because well because there’s things that that are interesting to him right and and so when there when there’s buy-in like there are like leaps and bounds and their growth right so when children are fascinated by like the bugs and critters and the crawlers and all that stuff, they’re turning to guidebooks and they’re looking up and they’re looking at the picture and maybe the name and looking at the habitat. Maybe it’s also an opportunity to talk about our mentors. The quote is, nature-connected kids need nature-connected adults. When you have a mentor team that’s passionate about nature and being connected and moving in an unhurried way and in a good way and just in relation and a collaborative approach, like it just like screams good things, I guess. So the mentoring and the modeling that happens is also really inspiring. When we bring things that we’re really passionate about into the program, it’s just so contagious. Just like when someone, like a child brings something that they’re passionate about, like it ripples through the whole community. And it’s really, really amazing to see and to support. And like it brings a bunch of like, beauty to the day really.
Kel: I read a stat or I read a stat the other day and it’s totally unsourced so I might be wrong but it was something like the human brain learns something when you’re learning things through repetition on average it takes about a hundred times before that neural link forms or the synapse or whatever in your brain except if you’re learning through play in which case it’s only 20 repetitions.
Kim: Oh wow.
Kel: Yeah and again totally unsourced might be totally wrong but I think that speaks to the type of thing that we’re talking about here.
Kim: Yeah. Well, it’s like, it’s like meaning making in your learning, right? Like it, of course it sticks in a deeper way, right?
Kel: Yeah. When it’s contextual, for sure. If we were going to expand, I mean, culturally, a cultural we, if we were going to expand on the model that’s kind of been developed around outdoor education and the forest school system, where can you see it going? I, I asked this specifically, like, I think about my teen who is really lucky to still have a forest school program available to him here, but I know a lot of teens don’t. And I think about adults who are, it’s hard to make time to do things like nature connection as adults. Is there, is there room for nature connection for the rest of us?
Kim: Like hard yes, right? And, and it doesn’t have to look like through programming, I guess, either. And it’s obviously easier for a teen to show up to a program but just to speak to adults like even just like five minutes a day in your yard or your garden. I think that that’s a start, right?
Kel: Can you talk a little bit about the adult workshops that you guys are running and how they’ve been received?
Kim: Sure. Yeah, they’re really great. So we kind of just like keep our ear out and hear like maybe what the community is missing or wanting. And so lately, a lot of like wild edible stuff in the fall. We have like an upcoming mushroom workshop. Usually in the spring, we’ll do like a wild edible walk. We have a really cool plant dying workshop I’m like especially excited for using like natural, yeah, natural material. So we basically are supporting folks in and around our community to come in and just share their expertise and their skills. Yeah. So, and for me, like, I think that’s a highlight sitting around the fire with a bunch of adults. It’s just a different, it’s a cup filling experience. Conversation’s really great and usually you end with a neat project too, which is fun. And you can see like the hours of work you put into the spoon or whatever your project was. And then we take that into our world. So then I find myself like wanting to tinker a little bit more or like looking at plants in a different way. Yeah.
Kel: Yeah, definitely. That’s been my experience for, because I think sometimes as an adult, it can be kind of daunting because you don’t really know where to start right? So my experience with like I really wanted to learn more about wild edibles and herbs and things like that and like you can look online and there’s lots of information but there’s really nothing that can replace having like a teacher or mentor who has this knowledge that can share it and I find that experience that the experience of taking those workshops to be really really instrumental in something that I’m now passionate about.
Kim: So usually it’s like in a space that you know, too, right? Where reading it online is one thing, but like, if you know, on the trail on the left, there’s false Solomon’s seal, you know, like things like that. We’re like, I don’t know. I think in context and that connection to place, it’s just like hammer is home. And you can’t, you can’t taste something online either. Not that I suggest tasting all of the, you know, disclaimer.
Kel: If there is kind of one thing that you’ve learned from your experience working with kids and, you know, diving into this world of nature connection and natural education, what do you think it would be?
Kim: I think it’s trusting the process, like, like, fully and really trusting the kids. Like, I think the value of holding space for people to show up as they are and with the things that they’re interested in and like just trusting the landscape, that it’ll provide. I guess the ultimate thing is trust. At the end of the day, it’s not about a product or an outcome, it’s really about the quality time spent together in nature and the connection to self and to others and yeah, to nature.
Outro: Thanks for listening to the Novitas Podcast with my guest Kim Simpson from Free Spirit Forest and Nature School. You can learn more about Free Spirit on their website at www.fsforestschool.com. My name is Kel Smith, and if you’re feeling moved, you can support this podcast by becoming a paid subscriber at the Substack at Novitas.substack.com. There’s also a sliding scale subscription option in the show notes below. Thanks for listening.
Leave a Reply