Thirty-eight years of curriculum design taught me one thing worth passing on: people learn on their feet, in good company, with a book in one hand and the outdoors in the other. This little corner of the web is where I keep the lessons that never made it into a lesson plan.
A field note from the trail, narrated. Why I put the reading at the rest stop, read the way I'd pour tea, and never finish a book on the walk — because the point is the sentence, not the last page.
watch the film →A six-week reading circle designed for senior hikers — pairing classic chapters with walkable excursions. Every session has a reading, a route, and a question meant to be answered under open sky.
read the curriculum →Roles, schedules, and trail examples from three decades of leading groups — the practical skeleton of a program that keeps everyone moving at their own pace.
see the program →"Every good classroom I ever ran had two walls missing — one opening on the bookshelf, the other on the creek. The best lessons happened when the students stood in the doorway."— from my retirement, which lasted a Tuesday
When I'm not on a trail or a page, I keep a small herb garden (the rosemary outlives every volunteer), hum Mozart's Sonatas while I file, and over-book my own calendar on principle. The patients who taught me the most about pace — who taught me to read slow and walk slower — were the same ones who taught me to trust the long way round.
Built with the forest in mind. Sources and working notes live beside each page as machine-readable twins.