Kids Walkabout
'Walkabout' is a free program that provides kids (ages 8 - 13) with an opportunity to get to know their place by wandering the local creeks, hillsides, and nature corridors in our area. Through group wandering and nature exploration, circle awareness games, guided nature observation, plant identification, and practice with traditional skills such as friction fire, cordage-making, and natural crafts, the goal is to awaken and nurture in our children their natural deep connection with wild nature, self, and others. We also tell stories, sit around the fire, give thanks as a group, make music together, and have a lot of fun! Sign your kid up here for free! (this program is funded by the New Mexico Outdoor Equity Fund)
Teen Walkabout - ages 13 -18
'Walkabout' for Teens is similar to the kids' version, but gets deeper into traditional or “primitive” skills, shelter building, and wilderness awareness. This group prepares youth to be more comfortable, self-reliant, safe, and confident in the backcountry. It also helps prepare teens who are interested in participating in longer wilderness journeys we offer in the summer time. Meets January through May and August - November on the 4th Saturday of the month. Sign up here (it's free!) (This program is funded by the New Mexico Outdoor Equity Fund)
Earth Ways 2024 Summer Camps
Our summer camps weave together hiking, nature awareness games, nature-based skills and crafts, music, and loads of summer fun! Kids will get a full taste of every kid's long-lost nature connection birthright as they wander, play, and interact with nature, learning hands-on skills and building competence and comfort in being outside. Ages 8-12.
Earth Ways Teen Wilderness Journey
An 8-day wilderness backpacking adventure where teens can be challenged, seek deeper parts of themselves, and enjoy the grounding effects of being on the land with friends, away from the distractions of the modern world. Participants will learn to make and tend fires in the old ways, make camp and shelters both modern and ancient, learn safe knife and tool handling, and create useful items from wood, bone, and stone. Through unique wilderness challenges, community fun, facing fears and sharing joys, this will be a journey they will never forget.
2024 dates: July 20 - 26
Village Drumming Classes
Group drumming classes are currently offered for adults and kids. In these classes, people can get to know their musical voices and learn how to listen and speak within a group ensemble of the traditional drums of West Africa. Drummers learn traditional rhythms and how each part fits together to create an amazing musical whole, and what that whole signifies in the context of a human community. Classes meet once a week on Wednesdays at 4:15pm in Gough Park. Call (575)519-9232 for more information. Instruments are available if needed.
About our Earth Ways Wilderness Skills
Programs and Camps for Kids, Teens, and “Tweens"
Deep in all of our roots, there are stories of people living in healthy, regenerative communities — communities where people of all ages were (or still are) in deep relationship with the land, each other, and themselves; not perfect or without problems of course, but in functional relationship. While our culture is full of teachers, one ancient binding cultural component that we finding largely missing today is the mentoring relationship.
While a teacher's role is to impart a specific skill to a student, a mentor's role is to develop a relationship with a younger person. Through that relationship, many things can be nurtured, including character-building, development of skills, and support along their way of becoming who they really are. Our human traditions are characterized by mentoring relationships in all realms of life, where every person is a mentor to many, and simultaneously mentored by many.
In our Earth Ways programs, the mentoring relationship is built through many different facets of an integrated whole. Young people are led in developing competency in nature-based ancestral skills such as tracking, wildlife identification, fire-making, and nature-based "survival" skills and crafts. This helps build a foundational connection to the earth that is so vital to our human potential for wholeness. Fun and physically-active awareness games help us to feel light and happy, connected to one another, and to develop the physical aspects of coordination, strength, and flexibility. Our core routines of nature connection help young people become more confident, more resilient, and more connected to self, others, and the natural world.
