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This month on Mass Appeal, Sienna and Ashley talk about community-based events and resources that support an integrative approach to nature-based learning. The summer months are a great time of year to get outside with your kids and allow nature to become their classroom. In this video clip, Sienna talks about looking through the lens of your local habitat to find ways for your families to engage in your community while supporting interests and education. Look for opportunities and resources that integrate learning cross a variety of interests!
All summer long and through the fall, find out about nature-based learning opportunities happening around western Massachusetts here on Hilltown Families. These are terrific ways to let your kids (and yourselves!) learn and connect with your local environment. Children who come to understand and value nature often carry that perspective into adulthood. Give the children in your life a strong, early connection to the world around them through nature-based learning activities in your community!
Our watersheds are fractal and living patterns. In “The Ripple: Stories About Western MA Rivers” this month, Kurt encourages families to discover how nested we are in our watersheds this summer and to treat yourself to an adventure or two in the Westfield River watershed!
No Substitute for Health, Our Own and Our Rivers’ Last month, I wrote about how our native trout survive, miniaturized, in the plunge pools of our chilly mountain brooks, while in the main courses of our rivers, big fat factory-raised trout are set loose by the Department of Energy and Environmental Affairs so folks who want to catch big fat native trout out in the wild can pretend. They have to pretend because,… Read More
Stocking a river with fish life sounds like a good thing, right? While it can be an excellent learning opportunity when working as a volunteer to stock rivers, in “The Ripple” this month, Kurt brings up a serious river-life issue that emerge when we combine river mismanagement with the stocking of factory-raised trout. These nonnative trout press heavily on the natural evolution and breeding of the native trout- and that strains our river-life and ecology. Pushed to the brink, this is a serious issue… but there is hope for the natural restoration of native trout through proper management and education! Read on to learn more and to find how your family can learn more about our rivers by helping out.
This month’s Ripple focuses on the ecological fact that land is a living organism that we are part of—explaining how it is, and offering some imaginative riverside play to shake up and revive perceptual abilities.
The great thaw is coming! With the thaw means migrating fish will start to return to our rivers too. “The Ripple” is always an enthralling read with a new installment will make you smell Spring, and think deeper about our rivers and waterways.
Outdoor recreation should give us the opportunity to recreate ourselves. “The Ripple: Stories About Western MA Rivers” this month suggests how our rivers are the place we can go to get a new sense of ourselves.
You will be counting the zeros…so look at it this way: the sea lampreys have been around since BEFORE there was an Atlantic Ocean! Survival is an amazing concept because it requires a lot of moving parts to move in synch. This month in “The Ripple: Stories About Western MA Rivers,” read Kurt’s appreciative piece about this enduring and crafty species.
In this month’s edition of “The Ripple: Stories About Western MA Rivers,” Kurt walks us through the visualization of rivers flying… and they do! Flowing and flying rivers are here in Western MA, supporting our local community of food growers and local ecosystems here in our little slice of paradise. Our vibrant surroundings are nature’s gift to us to produce wonderful local food. This edition of “The Ripple,” covers the magical flying rivers…or as Kurt coins them: “dragon’s breath,” which spreads life through its moist movements. As ever Kurt is as lyrical as the dancing brooks that surrounds us. Let yourself drift as you read about our flying rivers.
What do storm drains have in common with art, watersheds, and poetry? They’ll all be a part of The Art of Clean Water celebration put on by Enchanted Circle Theater and their community partners on Saturday, November 8th from 10am-11:30am at the Holyoke Public Library! The celebration will feature an unveiling of new artwork inspired by Holyoke students on several of the storm drains in downtown Holyoke. The event will be focused on education and advocacy around water for youth and local families and will have activities and opportunities to learn for the whole family.
It’s getting cold now, and soon you’ll find yourself and your kids getting cozy indoors and thinking “movie night!” Movies that feature rivers are expressions of our culture’s relationship with, and attitude towards, them; and a few of these movies are fine entertainment. Here’s a list of Kurt’s favorite river movies.
Before the leaves come down—or better yet, while they’re coming down—get your family to the river. If they can’t make it, make sure YOU do! This month in “The Ripple,” Kurt shares special places on the Connecticut River you can visit as Summer turns to Fall, and things to observe when you get there.
Let the presence of frogs and ferns empower us! They have survived the test of time- having a lineage to the distant days when Mount Tom was a volcano! The question is…will we last as long? In “The Ripple” this month, Kurt challenges our view of nature and our rivers as we try to observe its mysterious movements in the context of our “busy lives.” As you read on, you’ll notice that Kurt always manages to take you into the hills and right into nature through his words…giving us pure gold!
Sometimes It happens that you have to get your feet wet to REALLY experience nature. The Westfield River Dead Branch State Forest preserves one of the more lively ecosystems, and is one of those places that could sort the fair-weather nature walkers from the more hardcore nature explorers! It provides the prize of a dry boulder in a swampy storm at the end of a slow but fulfilling nature walk (or waddle!)
The wetlands are amazing with their multi-service mandate. It’s a home to so many species, it takes the quickness out of our step so we can regard and absorb the many movements of this wonderful reserve, and it is a sponge that heads off flooding. Read on in “The Ripple” this month as Kurt offers many excellent reasons why you should visit, and say ‘thank you’ to the wetlands for keeping those floods at bay!
Throughout the banks of western Massachusetts rivers and waterways, there is an abundance of life. For instance, in “The Ripple” this week, Kurt describes rivers as a mess hall- a provider of food for all kinds of creatures. As always, reading this posting puts you on the riverbanks of the various waterways, and reminds us that for most of us they are mere steps away, and where they are…nature flourishes.
Engaging your family in community service teaches kids positive values while opening up channels of communication between parent and child, and can increase their participation as future volunteers. Join Hilltown Families for an evening of community service art-making on Friday, June 6th from 4-7pm at The Art Garden in Shelburne Falls, MA, for “We (heart) the Deerfield River,” the final community-service through art event in a series of five free family community service nights!
Samuel Beckett spoke of the river Seine: “How in joyous eddies its two arms conflowed and flowed united on.” But “The Ripple” brings us to Western MA waterways and invites us to lose ourselves in the flow, through tubing for instance. Western Massachusetts is so lucky to have so many sparking streams spread wonder and intrigue through our very own communities. Explore? Yes please.
Once upon a time, people knew their places from the perspective of the river; and what is so wonderful is that this perspective is still available to those who pine for a way of seeing, and being, that is not pavement-based! The East Branch river valley a cure for all things pavement—and it awaits your spring migration. Read this month’s “The Ripple” and be inspired once again!
Our Friend, the Shortnose Sturgeon Spring equinox has passed and the great thaw is underway, turning greys into green and silence to chansons. Have you enjoyed the cold (as much as the otters, who fished the icy pools)? The ice it brought let us walk rivers and tributaries as if they were sidewalks, and grand boulevards. What a wonderful feeling! The perspective gained by walking above the river was as rare as… Read More
Ice-Walking Bugs, and the Lessons They Teach Us.
Our hills are gemmed with gifts—receive them by being present! This month in “The Ripple,” Kurt poetically inspires us to get out along side our rivers that run through snow-laden hemlock forests to connect with our surroundings and to discover our animal neighbors…
The leaves are down, so now is the time to discover the geomorphic character of your brook: how its pools, rapids and boggy spots sit in the land. Soon enough, it will freeze and its character will change. And before we know it, the leaves will return and the quiet and empty places will be buzzing and brimming with life… Make the world of rivers bigger than the world of pavement inside of you!
Last week an energetic group of Hilltown Families citizen scientists and Kurt Heidinger, Executive Director of Biocitizen, conducted our fourth annual rapid biotic assessment of the Westfield River in West Chesterfield. This month in Kurt’s post, “The Ripple,” hear all about it, what we found and images from the afternoon…
Kurt’s call to action this month in “The Ripple”… be stewards of the rivers! Take action in September as citizen scientists by joining Hilltown Families and Biocitizen for our 4th annual rivers health check-ups, through the EPA approved method called Rapid Biotic Assessment or “RBA” of the Westfield River upstream from the Chesterfield Gorge.
This month in “The Ripple: Stories About Western MA Rivers,” Hilltown Families Contributing Writer, Kurt Heidinger, writes about river access .Check out his 5 pointers on how to river walk, preventing a wipe out due to slippery rocks and strong currents…
An Invitation to Think Outside about Floods Floods, like weeds, are problems. Occupying places we don’t want them to, they ruin things we are growing. Weeds are plants in the wrong place. And what’s a wrong place, we decide. Floods are the return of ocean to mountain. They decide with the objectivity we (would) laud in our courts of justice. They’re not elitist; they are levelers. Floods would not be a problem… Read More
Before May Flies, Meet the Mayfly Imagine never getting swarmed and bit by mayflies as you revel in the vivacities unleashed by the ubiquitous green fountain of spring. Imagine gardening, or hiking, or simply sitting on a park bench without having to constantly swat and flinch and keep from going mad as the mayflies crawl on your neck and arms and ears, looking for a sweetspot to slice skin and lap blood…. Read More
How do spring peepers know when to start singing? How do spring peepers know when to start singing? They don’t have weather reports, or the ability to see the buds forming on trees, the snow melting, or teens walking around in shorts and T’s when it’s 40 degrees and climbing. Certainly, there are scientific reasons that explain how peepers know when to announce the return of the sun and the warmth; but… Read More
Cultural Itineraries
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- Season: March & April
- Season: May & June
- Season: July & August
- Season: September & October
- Season: November & December
