Learn to Plant and Grow. Explore Opposites in Nature. Enjoy!

Here in Sisters Country we are blessed with bounty. Deschutes National Forest spills out from our doorsteps, blanketing snow-capped mountains with pines and stretching out to the volcanic wastelands in McKenzie Pass. We also find blessings where the land has been tamed: our farms, ranches, and farmers markets provide local, ethically produced nourishment and community alike.

Notable among all the bounty is Seed to Table, a nonprofit educational farm helmed by a strong leader and lifelong Sisters community member, Audrey Tehan. Her team, including education coordinator Aude Girin, has responded to Covid-19 and Oregon school closures with home-based learning.

Aude Girin teaches kids with fun and farm activities at Sisters Farmers Market.

Usually, the Seed to Table team would be in the schools and kids would be on the farm, going hands-on at this time of year. Instead, the organization sent home seed packets and soil with the kids’ school packets.

Adults and kids from anywhere can take advantage of the videos Seed to Table has made for this time. Dig in and enjoy the possibilities at SEED TO TABLE ONLINE FARM.

Looking for a fun activity that doesn’t require planting a garden? Scroll down to their Week 2 exercise, “Exploring Opposites in Nature. “

Nature Sit Spots with Susan Prince

"Sit spots" in nature help us get plugged into the big natural world. Wonderful stuff! Read all about it below. Some of this information originally appeared in an article by New Oregon director T. Lee Brown in The Nugget Newspaper. Here, we’ve added some helpful links and other new info. Enjoy!

Local kids used colorful Sharpie pens to make a “story map” with nature connection teacher Susan Prince at New Oregon’s summer solstice event.

How to do a ‘Sit Spot’ in nature

Kids and adults alike can enjoy a regular “sit spot” in a natural setting. From reducing anxiety to improving test scores, the benefits of nature time has been proven both by common sense and by over thirty years of scientific research.

Formerly a nature educator in California, Susan Prince has taught Sisters Country kids through Deschutes Land Trust, SPRD, schools, and New Oregon Arts & Letters. Here she shares tips on getting reacquainted with nature.

The quick summary version?

1) Turn off your phone

2) Sit quietly in nature for 20 minutes

3) Share your experience by drawing a “story map.”

Now let’s dig into some details.

Fox Walk & Owl Eyes

Before heading out, try walking very quietly like a fox, while using your peripheral vision like an owl. “You can see so much more when you’re out there, if you use these tools,” said Prince. Here, she shares her own backyard experience with us. You can listen here on streaming, or download the MP3 file to your device:

Sitting

Quietly walk to a spot in nature. Your backyard may work. If you can go out into a field or forest, sit 15–20 feet away from other people. Housebound? Look out an open window. Set a timer for 20 minutes, and sit.

Observe what’s around you, engaging all your senses. The wind in your hair, the calls of birds, sunlight on water: notice everything around you. Try closing your eyes for a while so you can concentrate on sounds and smells.

It may take a few minutes to let go of everyday worries and settle into being with nature. “If you’re frustrated or impatient, that’s okay,” said Prince. “You’ll still notice things. Next time, it’ll be easier.” If people or machines intrude, notice them the same way you might notice a ladybug or a squirrel.

Story Map

After your sit spot, gather everyone around one big sheet of paper, with plenty of markers or crayons. Chat about what you saw, heard, and felt in nature, while drawing pictures inspired by your experience.

“Our ancestors would be going out hunting, gathering, during the day, and they would come back — no books, no TV, no phones,” Prince said. “They would share what they saw out in nature with everybody around the campfire, and that’s how people in the community learned.”

“They learned where the berries were, where the foxes lived, where the bear was, perhaps,” she said.

In other words: primitive social media, without hearts, likes, or swipes. While nature awareness on its own brings many rewards, Prince said “repeating the story back to the community is a really key part of it.” If you’re socially isolated, send a photo of your solo drawing to friends or family.

Postcard-perfect wilderness images are not necessary. During a Sisters High School sit spot, “you could hear people doing construction on the Hayden Homes,” said Prince. “Students worked that right into the map.”

Age and Attention Span

“There’s a certain amount of supervision required, to make sure that kids stay where they are” and don’t distract each other, said Prince. She said she’s been surprised how rarely they try to talk.

A person’s attention span is an important consideration, but “it isn’t necessarily age-related.” Prince told of a group of homeschool students, mere 2nd through 4th graders. “Those kids could sit for half an hour; they could really hang in there,” she said. “The middle school kids actually had a harder time.”

Sit spots are a practice. Just as in sports, arts, or music, the more you practice, the better results and the longer you can stick with it. “People can definitely get the hang of it,” Prince said.

Coyote Mentoring

Much contemporary education focuses on informing students of various scientific facts. Parents, teachers, and the Internet jump in with information long before a kid has a chance to observe and explore.

Prince prefers the “coyote mentoring” approach favored by her teacher Jon Young, author of “Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature.” If a student noticed a snapping turtle, the mentor might ask, “What do you think about that snapping turtle? How long has it been there? Where does it go in the winter?”

The student learns to think and learn from their personal observations. “If you have to go figure out what the snapping turtle is doing by watching the snapping turtle, you’re going to remember it,” Prince said with a laugh.

Returning

Experts recommend returning to the same spot over and over. “We notice the changes from day to day, week to week, season to season,” Prince explained. “We’re not just walking through it anymore. We’re integrated.”

Read all about Susan Prince’s approach in The Nugget Newspaper this week (online here).

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Happier, More Confident Kids

by T. Lee Brown

Most studies agree that "kids who play outside are smarter, happier, more attentive, and less anxious than kids who spend more time indoors." As Danielle Cohen writes on childmind.org, benefits of playing outside in nature include:

Building Confidence
"The way that kids play in nature has a lot less structure than most types of indoor play," writes Cohen. "Letting your child choose how he treats nature means he has the power to control his own actions."

Promoting Creativity
My own spin on this: current lifestyles in much of America put kids in structured environments most of the time. They're at school, being shown how to color in the lines, or on the soccer field, being instructed in the game's rules. Unstructured play encourages brain development, imagination, and creativity. In nature, there's an unlimited supply of unstructured objects and environments for play and curiosity. It may take a little while for your child to catch on; you and they will both need patience.

Teaching Responsibility
Kids learn to be responsible for their own bodies while interacting with unpredictable environments—with sticks, animals, mud, and the like. They also begin to understand how they're part of a larger web of nature. Smaller children will realize that pulling up a flower kills the plant, for example. 

Stimulating the Senses
As Cohen reports, "Nature may seem less stimulating than your son’s violent video game, but in reality, it activates more senses—you can see, hear, smell, and touch outdoor environments. Richard Louv, author of the book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, warns that 'As the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, and this reduces the richness of human experience.' "

Moving & Exercise
Take a walk. Pick up some logs and make a teepee. Make a pile of leaves, dirt, pine needles, and jump right into it. These are not sedentary activities like staring at a screen. "Not only is exercise good for kids’ bodies, but it seems to make them more focused, which is especially beneficial for kids with ADHD," according to Cohen.

Thinking More
The wonder we experience in natural settings causes us to ask more and better questions. Whether raking up pine needles in the backyard or watching a stunning sunset over Mt. Washington, our kids learn to think more and better when exposed to the outdoors.

Reducing Stress & Fatigue
"Urban environments require what’s called directed attention, which forces us to ignore distractions and exhausts our brains," Cohen reports. "In natural environments, we practice an effortless type of attention known as soft fascination that creates feelings of pleasure, not fatigue."

Read the Original Article
Read Childmind's Ideas for Getting Your Kids Into Nature 

Seven Steps to Sanity: Screen time during the pandemic crisis

by T. Lee Brown

Hooked on the news or constantly checking digital devices during the Covid crisis? Is it making you more miserable and anxious? You are by no means alone.

The following steps can help you get a grip on the situation and your own state of mind. Featured in today's steps are approaches from T. Lee Brown and from Catherine Price, founder of the Screen/Life Balance program and author of How to Break Up with your Phone.

1) ASSESS
For three days, keep close track of your media and digital device input. Using pen and paper, not an app, jot down the time you spend with various media, movies, news, email, even personal conversations and books. Here's the important part: note how each input made you feel.

Set aside 15 minutes before bedtime to look at your list. Note any trends. Which input inspired you? Which amped up your anxiety? If you checked the news 50 times, did any result in genuinely useful information that you could act upon?

2) MEDIA PLAN
Make a media plan for your self. Price says this allows your prefrontal cortex, the rational part of the brain, to take command over the freaked-out primitive part of the brain (see related article). Ask yourself: How many times am I going to check the news today, and what sources am I going to use? "Probably Facebook's not a good idea, guys!" said Price.

Your plan might include a Digital Sabbath—a day off for rest and reflection. Plan ahead to avoid logistical hassles. Our family does Digital Shabbat from sundown Friday through sundown Saturday, following the Jewish tradition. Kids love it. We light a candle at sundown, and Friday nights are now family game night.

3) LIMIT ACCESS
Reduce access to the cause of your stress. If you have TV or radio on in the background, "you're going to be constantly mainlining anxiety, and it's going to feel bad," according to Price. Turn them off.

Uninstall all news apps from your phone. Turn off notifications on your devices. Cover your TV or computer monitor with fabric or a towel. Take a cue from kids at Sisters Elementary School, who drew their own posters to hang over monitors for Screen Free Week.

Set up a charging station for tablets and phones—away from where you hang out most. Try a closet or the garage. Block websites and apps that are problematic. Price likes the app Freedom, which she says changed her life. A more blunt instrument is the app Self Control, a personal favorite.

4) MAKE BOUNDARIES
Friends and loved ones might push us too far into Covid craziness. Setting up boundaries with them is important. Price said many people "haven't yet gone through a process of getting to the point where they conclude, 'Yes, this is happening and it's terrifying—but there's only so much we can control.'"

She encourages mentioning that you're trying yourself to decrease your own stress around the crisis. Ask to speak about something else. Suggest concrete alternatives, such as holding a virtual dance party, knitting, or putting together puzzles via Zoom, Skype, or FaceTime.

5) PREPARE ALTERNATIVES
Changing habits is most successful when we have an alternative at hand, something to replace the problem behavior. "Identify something that you want to do with your time," Price said.

Lay books, magazines, and journals out on tables. Set up stations with craft supplies, model cars to build, shoes to polish. Try a letter-writing area. Get out your old knitting bag. A pack of cards for solitaire. Plan on healthy use of digital devices: replace news apps with meditation apps.

This could be a good time to try mindfulness meditation, where you set aside some minutes to pay attention to your breath, body, and immediate surroundings. "Recognize that your mind will run away during those minutes," said Price, "and that it's totally normal."

Nature time and Sit Spot exercises work well, too. Keep an eye out for more on these in future issues of The Nugget Newspaper.

6) SET GOALS
"Many of us are feeling frantic right now," Price notes, yet we're finding time to stress out on the news. Write out a list of soothing, healthy things you would like to do this week: Take a walk. Make a collage. Sew a face mask. Listen to a symphony. Send a letter every day in April, for national letter-writing month.

Said Price, "I don't mean to downplay the craziness of the moment, especially for parents of small kids…Consider that there might be something you can do with your news time that would make you feel more nourished and cared for."

Ambitious goals like inventing a better mousetrap or memorizing the complete works of Shakespeare might cause more stress. The priority now is getting through this crisis healthy and sane.

7) START & END
Start and end the day screen-free. If your phone is in your bedroom, chances are you're checking it first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Resolve to turn off news and devices by 7 pm or earlier. Keep the phone in another room overnight. If you need the phone nearby for health reasons, switch it to airplane mode and wrap it in a towel. Do not remove the phone from its swaddling until after breakfast.

And always remember: at any moment, if your thoughts whirl into catastrophic mayhem, you can stop and take a deep breath.

Part of an ongoing series of articles in The Nugget Newspaper for several years, the advice related here is based on expert research along with personal experience and feedback from my clients. Note that this article does not constitute medical advice. Seek help from trusted medical and spiritual advisers if you face a serious addiction or mental health problem. Got a hint for Nugget readers? A question you'd like answered? Email freelance writer T. Lee Brown, tiffany (at) plazm.com.

This article, written by New Oregon’s director, originally appeared in The Nugget Newspaper in Sisters, Oregon.

Virus-Time Anxiety

Perhaps you’ve noticed that digital devices and news are a problem for you (and your kids) during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic shutdown. New Oregon director T. Lee Brown is writing several articles on the subject for The Nugget Newspaper in Sisters, Oregon.

Keep reading below to learn how this might be affecting you, and how Seven Steps to Sanity can balance things out. 

Virus-time anxiety increased by constantly checking news and devices

What's stressing you out more: the coronavirus, or thinking about it all the time? The Internet, TV, news, and smartphones help people stay informed and feel connected during the Covid-19 crisis. Unfortunately, there are side effects, including anxiety and addiction.

We turned to Catherine Price for advice. The founder of the Screen/Life Balance program and author of How to Break Up with your Phone, Price is producing a series of #QuarantineChats on Vimeo.com. From the confines of her apartment, she recently explored "compulsively checking the news."

Price researches the physiology behind our behaviors, so we can have more control over how we spend our time—and how we feel. "Basically, when we're stressed out, the part of our brain that's in charge of rational thought goes completely offline," explained Price.

"It's kind of unfortunate. In the moments when you might need it most, the prefrontal cortex — the area of your brain that's in charge of this — is like, 'See ya later! I'm going to go hide under a rock. I'm gonna let your primitive brain take over.'"

The primitive part of the brain mostly operates from a fight-or-flight response mode. It "seeks out quick fixes to feelings of anxiety," according to Price.

For example, your rational brain might think meditation, prayer, or exercise sounds like a good idea. Price said, "Your more primitive brain is like, 'That sounds hard. Why don't I just have a drink?' Our brains are going to seek out rewards, something that will trigger the brain to release the chemical dopamine."

Dopamine produces a temporary feeling of goodness, a mini-high. Common "quick fixes" for dopamine rewards include alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Most people understand that these substances cause health problems and can lead to serious addictions that destroy lives. "Alcohol and drugs most definitely activate trigger dopamine circuitry in your brain," said Price.

"Interestingly, the news does too," she said, "because novelty is a really big dopamine trigger. So every time you check the news and find something new waiting for you—which you will, every single time, because it's the news!—your brain is going to release a little bit of dopamine."

On a quick-fix level, that dopamine hit makes us want to repeat the behavior. It doesn't matter if the news is unhelpful or makes you stressed out or breeds even more anxiety. Price said, "Your brain does not care. It's just like, 'Oh, I got a hit of that new stuff. I'm going to do it again.'"

Today's newsfeeds and social media apps are built by designers and engineers trained in provoking that dopamine response. Interface design elements—scrolling and "pulling" the bottom of a phone to refresh the screen—work in tandem with content algorithms to keep users coming back. This produces more advertising revenue for media companies.

Price believes it makes sense that we would try to relieve our anxiety by turning to the news. "We're hoping to find answers," she said. "We're hoping they're going to tell us the pandemic is slowing down, a vaccine has been discovered, or that a common throat lozenge is the cure."

Looking for a concrete answer and not finding it causes more anxiety. This is "sending our rational brains even further under that rock," according to Price.

To crawl out and start feeling better, people can use solid techniques for reducing device and news engagement while sheltering in place. See "Seven Steps to Sanity.”

A Grant for Tea & Poetry

“Sometimes it only takes a little bit to inspire and create something bigger,” notes writer Teafly Peterson in The Source Weekly. The subject of her article: Deschutes Cultural Coalition’s small but significant grants for local progrms—including our very own Tea & Poetry. Thank you, DCC, for awarding us a $2000 grant!

Nealy Borla was a winner in the 2019 Food & Farms Haiku Contest, judged by State of Oregon Poet Laureate Kim Stafford. The contest was one element of Tea & Poetry, a presentation of New Oregon Arts & Letters. Her prizes were a gift card to Paulina Springs Books and a special sheet of collectible poster stamps from The Portland Stamp Company and Sisters Farmers Market.

“New Oregon Arts and Letters also received a grant to continue its Tea and Poetry program at the Sisters Farmers Market,” Peterson continued. “Doesn't that sound amazing? Live poetry and art while you buy vegetables.” Many thanks for the props, everyone.

The second annual Tea & Poetry is scheduled for September 20, 2020, at Fir Street Park in Sisters, Oregon. We are delighted to bring on a new sponsor, Metolius Artisan Tea. Join them at our event for a professional introduction to tea blending. All are welcome!

Sick of finding trash on your public lands? Paint it.

Mariah Reading makes trash into art. While there's nothing new about reusing or upcycling discarded items to make art or crafts, Reading's paintings offer a unique twist. On items from hubcaps to plastic bottles, she paints the very landscapes where she found the trash.

Brooke Warren of High Country News recently wrote up Reading's work. An excerpt follows:

In 2016, Reading took a cross-country road trip from Maine to California to start a new job. On her way she visited as many national parks as she could and started picking up discarded water bottles, cans, plastic bags and even shoes. She painted the objects that people left behind and turned them into colorful scenes that blended in with the landscape where they were found.

'Her project, called “Recycled Landscapes,” carries a few lessons. At face value, it raises awareness about Leave No Trace practices, and just how much refuse is left in parks. But Reading hopes it also inspires people to make art, stifled by the notion that you have to have the “right” materials. She sees discarded objects as multi-functional. “I’m making art accessible to all,” she says. “And I take things that pollute landscapes and turn them into meaningful objects.”

Read the HCN article

Visit the artist's website

What's This Blog All About?

Arts, writing, and nature. Wellness for kids and adults—being aware of how technology affects us, and how time spent outdoors can make us stronger and wiser. Love for the environment. Engaging with trees, forests, and communities. Contemplative, spiritual, and reflective practices in art and nature.

Based in Central Oregon, the New Oregon Arts & Letters blog takes on these subjects and more. If you're interested in blogging here, send a sample post to the editor at neworegonarts@gmail.com. Thanks!