Headwaters Trip: Why Our 4th Grade Goes Every Year
Sep 03, 2024
The first time I went to Headwaters Outdoor School, I was a 4th grader at Peninsula Waldorf in 2002. Drinking from the spring water, climbing ancient pine trees, sleeping in bark teepees, and learning from the founding teacher Tim Corcoran (A.K.A Bear) was a formative experience I have carried with me all my life. I visited again as a 7th grader, which is when I took part in my very first sweat lodge - another unforgettable experience. Fast forward two decades, I find myself bringing students from the New Village School to Headwaters. In two weeks, Spadarnia Marta and I are taking the next batch of 4th grader. This will be my 6th trip in total and it is always a true joy and honor to lead. A little about the founding Headwaters teacher Tim...
"I first went to the woods at age six. I knew then that this was my home. At seventeen I spent four months alone in the Canadian Wilderness practicing Earth living skills. I began a career teaching wildlife conservation, in 1974. During this time, I learned how to communicate with the spirits of the animals I worked with. In 1992, with Headwaters Outdoor School, I realized my lifelong vision to share what I have learned from the Earth and to inspire people to discover their own connection with the Earth." -Tim Corcoran
While every trip is unique there are always common themes addressed with the students at Headwaters. Tim shares stories about being raised by indigenous people and having his first sweat lodge at age 10. As a young adult, he trained many animals like elephants, tigers, and chimpanzees. He shares tales of his favorite pets, like his wolf and one-eyed falcon, that helped him find Headwaters. His spirit animal is a Bear, hence his nickname.
Tim will host evenings around the fire and tell the children that his goal is to help them Earth Caretakers by deepen their connection and relationship with nature, to help them feel part of the plants, animals, and water. He is so passionate about earth caretaking that he sometimes sheds tears while speaking to the children. Seeing a large, bearded man being so vulnerable and passionate about our earth is beautiful and moving.
This trip is both wonderful and challenging for 4th graders. They sleep under the stars in a shelter they built, jump into mud puddles, swim in cool water, hike through dark caves and forests, and do it all as a tribe. I cannot stress how important these trips are for the children to embark on together. During the New Village journey, there will be many more trips like this that allow our students to develop flexibility and grit. Experiences like these help them grow as individuals and as a class.
Why Headwaters in 4th grade?
After the completion of the "nine-year shift" or "change," otherwise known as "Crossing the Rubicon," the children begin to experience themselves as individuals, separate from parents and other adults they are close to. With this individualization comes a new responsibility to begin to build new relationships to one's parents and teachers (the "chiefs" of the tribe, so to speak). This individuation is then built on a new sense of strength, a new sense of being capable, and a new sense of wanting to be "free"... it can manifest itself in many different ways.
It is the time that one must allow the children to feel that they have their own separate biography, their own independent story, a life that is separate from the adults, especially from parents, so that they begin to deal with fears, separation anxieties, overzealousness in the quest for freedom, questioning authorities...The list is long here.
Giving the children a chance to step away from the home environment, school hopefully being a part of the sense of "home" as well, and to be in a stunning natural setting, such as the one in Shasta that they visit, to sleep in the kinds of homes that our ancient ancestors slept in, and to feel the Earth under their bodies...it is an "earthing" process so to speak...an orientation process...feeling one with nature, feeling one with the universe as the child feels their own uniqueness and often loneliness in the vastness of the everything.
To learn more about Headwaters and Tim Corcoran, he has published two books:
Growing up with a Soul Full of Nature & just published March 2024, The Earth Caretaker Way