I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico last week taking in the clean,
dry air, the warmth of the high desert sun, the scent of pinion smoke, sage
brush and scrub pine. We admired the beautiful richly hand-woven rugs with
their subtle earth tones and indulged ourselves with the wonderfully spicy
taste of chilies.
Besides revisiting many favorite haunts, we also discovered
a few new ones. One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Seton Village
and The Academy For The Love Of Learning.
Located outside of Santa Fe on 86 acres of high desert,
Seton Village was the home of the late Ernest Thompson Seton, (1860-1946) naturalist,
artist, author and pioneer of ecology and environmentalism. My husband keenly
recalls receiving a copy of Seton’s Wild
Animals I Have Known as a child and finding the naturalist’s stories about
wild animals and the underlying activist message of conservation and wildlife
preservation life changing.
After his experience with Lobo, Seton reinvented himself
from hunter to champion of wildlife for the remainder of his life, writing and
illustrating over sixty-five books about animals and nature, and starting
Woodcrafters—a youth organization that gave young people the opportunity to participate
in native American crafts and personally experience the natural landscape. It
also greatly influenced Baden-Powell and the formation of The Boy Scouts of
America.
It is well fitting that The Academy For The Love Of Learning,
founded in 1998 by composer Leonard Bernstein, chose what remained of the once
2500 acres of Seton Village as their home. They felt that Seton’s own
transformation proved the human capacity to grow, change and embrace
“life-affirming values and justice.” One of their many projects is The Learning
Landscape, which “seeks to draw out the natural impulses of this land, just as
our transformative learning model draws out people’s inner voices and gifts.”
For more information about this inspiring organization, check out their
website: www.aloveoflearning.org
To bring this around to my own writing, I have been thinking
a lot about character transformation and the kinds of experiences and epiphanies
that can bring about this extreme transformation. I believe that Ernest
Thompson Seton is a great role model for character development!
I’ll leave you with a short video that shows another
transformative project at The Academy For The Love of Learning—their LifeSongs
project.
Take Good Care,
Sharry
I am incredibly touched by these stories - the story of Seton and the story of lives being enriched so beautifully through music.
ReplyDeleteYou've filled my heart this morning! Thanks.