To adapt Calvinism to changing times, he invented evangelical Christianity, and in his attempt to prove to his congregation that God was present in every facet of reality, tried to reveal the myriad ways God was alive in nature. As he put it: “There is an analogy between the divine constitution and disposition of things in the natural and in the spiritual world.”

William Cullen Bryant of Cummington grew up in the spiritual culture Edwards created, and his poems Thanatopsis and A Forest Hymn were celebrated by his audience as the first examples of American literature. Providing the model for what followed, they unleashed the nature-loving Romantic movement in the USA.

Thomas Cole‘s struggling painting career was saved by Bryant, who moved to NYC to become the dean of its journalistic and literary culture. Cole’s painting of the Oxbow is the first great work of Romantic painting in the USA, and is given the same status as Bryant’s Thanatopsis. The Oxbow secured Cole’s position as the founder of the Hudson School of landscape painters.

You’ve probably seen Kindred Spirits, Asher Durand’s famous painting of Bryant and Cole:

Emerson of Concord came after our local heroes, and is considered to be the premier Transcendentalist. His mixing of Pioneer Valley natural philosophy with German Idealism provided Americans with a way of living naturally and spiritually at the same time, and he gained an international readership. He belittled his protege, Thoreau, yet Thoreau’s work has had a much wider and more lasting impact upon world history—inspiring John Muir, Mahatmas Gandhi & Martin Luther King (& countless other natural rights activists).

America’s first landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead, designed Smith- & Mount Holyoke- College’s campuses, Boston’s Commons and NYC’s Central Park. Each of these public spaces is an inhabitable 3-D expression of Transcendentalist philosophy, a carefully conceived place where people can restore their sanity by escaping the clamor of human affairs. They were designed to infuse nature into lives of highly-refined and/or urban citizens, who Olmstead feared, might otherwise lose the green source of their spiritual and political liberty—and these places were inspired by Bryant and Cole, who had been inspired by Edwards: “New York City’s need for a great public park was voiced by the poet and editor of the Evening Post (now the New York Post), William Cullen Bryant.”

Yes; it’s true. Like Emerson’s Nature and Thoreau’s Walden, Central Park is a product of our place—the Paradise City where Transcendentalism was born!
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The Club is open to 6 people, who can be adults, college- or advanced high school students. All that is required is a deep curiosity about Transcendentalism. We will read and discuss key works together, and I will urge you to express, and share, your ideas in writing.

I have not firmly defined a schedule yet, because I want to fill the class first—but here is what I hope will work for us:

Our 4 discussion sessions will each be 2 hours long, and happen in Hadley @ Grey Matter Books on Sundays from 1-3. The first 1/2 hour will be devoted to a concise presentation of the author, their writings, and their historical contexts. Then we’ll discuss this content, play with the ideas found in the reading we’ve done, and consider our “Club member’s” questions and input (including some journal reading) in a round-table fashion.

One week after each discussion, we’ll have a Sunday field trip in the Biocitizen van to places that either inspired our local Transcendentalists, or were inspired by them; and we’ll revisit, and amplify, the ideas and feelings we expressed during our discussions. The 2 trips in our area will be 3 hrs long each and bring us to “hotspots” 1st in the Valley and 2nd in the Hilltowns. The trips to Walden Pond and NYC will be approximately 6-8 hrs long.

We are proposing the 8-event course cost $200., which includes transportation costs for our trips. Most reading materials will be digital, online and free, though you are welcome to buy hard copies (and we’ll suggest the best editions to buy).

Discussions & Walks

Edwards: Northampton as Paradise City

Bryant & Cole: The Valley and Hilltowns as Eden

Emerson & Thoreau: Concord’s American Religion

Olmstead: The Garden in the Machine

Tuition: $200.00, which pays for course instruction, digital and hand-out reading material, and transportation.

Transcendental Club

$200.00Price:

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They tell us—by their variety and size—how oxygenated (& healthy) our rivers are: an annual “physical,” just like at the doctors’.

Here’s a map of our sampling sites:

Donation

Support biocitizen programs with a tax-deductable donation

$25.00Price:

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For 5 days campers hike, climb, wade & swim “our place”: the 5 ecoregions of the Nonotuck biome. These activities aren’t just “fun”—they’re designed to increase camper’s perceptual abilities, stimulate their critical thinking skills, inspire their creative imaginations, and counteract “nature deficit disorder.” Through active physical and mental engagement with “our place,” they gain a deep & lasting appreciation of it—and themselves.

We go from site to site—mountains, forests, brooks, industrial brownfields, you name it—enjoying an adventurous, inquiry-based investigation of how our biome is a bio-home (the home of diverse forms of life). Each day we visit new places, and meet new creatures; campers read resource maps, locate & explore rare ecologies, identify native & non-native species, understand watersheds, rivers, wetlands, public water supplies, and how different soils grow different trees.

Every day, campers enlarge their scientific and cultural “background knowledge” and apply the knowledge as they interpret or “read” the landscapes we visit. The ability to “read a landscape” is the first important step a person takes towards what Aldo Leopold called “thinking like a mountain.”

Depending on their age level, and what the weather is like on any particular day, campers also visit farms, power plants & museums, read & tell stories about nature and culture, take pictures & write in their campbooks or field journals. After a week, they know why Nonotuck—our place—is unlike any other place in the USA. They also know some of the best places to take you hiking, swimming and picnicking!

We’ll have these groups (1 instructor, 1 ass’t instructor & 6 campers) on these M-F dates; click link for specific info about the differing programs for each age group:

Grades 1-3: June 11-15; June 25-29

Grades 4-6: June 18-22; July 9-13

Grades 7-8: July 16-20; July 23-27

Grades 9-10: July 30-August 3; August 6-10

Dr. William R. Peck School: August 13-17

We will meet at Forbes Library in Northampton for pick-up and drop-off. Campers will be transported to outdoor learning sites in the Biocitizen van. They’ll bring lunches, suitable clothing and exploration gear.

Our Place was great for my homebody son. When not playing soccer, my 13 year-old likes to stick to the familiar, but Kurt brought him somewhere new everyday. They learned about where we live by reading, talking, observing and literally diving in—they swam in rivers, hiked in beautiful places, and met new people. Now our son has led the rest of the family on a few adventures. Thanks to Our Place for getting us off the couch to enjoy this beautiful valley!
-Ann Lewis

Put this on your ‘where should my kids go to summer camp’ list. Lucien (& our friend Sam Jackson) adored this camp heart-&-souled by Kurt Heidinger.
-Sarah Buttenweiser

“I hear from my two boys that Biocitizen camp for kids is a great summer adventure: ‘You learn cool stuff but it doesn’t seem like you’re in a classroom…it’s fun.’”
—Tom Martin

The cost of the 5 day camp that runs M-F from 9am-3pm is $300.00.

For more information, please use our contact form (top, on main page) or call 413.527.9092

Itinerary:

The Biocitizen van will leave the Norwottuck Rail Trail parking lot (Northampton, Damon Rd. & Rt. 9) at 5am and return to the same between 7 and 9 pm. (5 person limit, to ensure the highest quality wilderness experience.)

We’ll begin our hike on Rt. 2 in New Hampshire and ascend on either the famous Airline Trail or the notorious King’s Ravine Trail. Both are as rugged and hard as any trails in the US, and both lead to sustained incredible views of the Presidential Range and the surrounding watersheds.

Hikers will receive a roving natural history lesson that focuses on how soils and climate determine the ecological communities at different altitudes.

On the way back, we’ll stop at Frank’s Pizza in Brattleboro for dinner.

Required:

weather and terrain appropriate gear, including hiking boots, non-cotton hiking clothing, fleece and rain jacket.

lunch, energy snacks and large water bottle

$65. fee

Date: Saturday, Oct. 15  with a rain date of Sunday, Oct. 16

HyperHike

HyperHike is for adventurous high schoolers, a one day high-intensity hike to the top of Mount Adams, NH—the 2nd highest peak in New England—and back.

$65.00Price:

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Roi du Latium et Circé de Thessalie, 1904 Giulio Aristide Sartorio (1860- 1932)

This is unfortunate for at least two reasons.

1) Tylor argued that animism is simply “the doctrine of the human soul” that is common to all religions, including those of the modern West: “The theory of the soul is one principle part of a religious philosophy which unites, in an unbroken line of mental connexion, the savage fetish-worshipper and the civilized Christian.” Despite his vulgar social Darwinism, Tylor expressed a truth: to be real, God must be accessible, and to be accessible God must exist in nature, here and now in our lives, as our “soul”: the interface, and simultaneity, of God and nature. To disparage animism as “primitive” or “savage” is to disparage the idea that humans have souls—and isn’t that unfortunate?

To show you Tylor was correct, it’s worth sampling how two revered theologians in the Jewish and Christian traditions expressed animist beliefs. Moses Maimonides, the premier Torah scholar of the Mediaeval era, wrote “The Hebrew nefesh (soul) is a homonymous noun, signifying the vitality which is common to all living, sentient beings. (Gen. i. 30). It denotes also blood,” as in ‘Thou shalt not eat the blood (nefesh) with the meat’ (Deut. xii. 23) .” This equation, which explicitly links human souls to those of all other creatures, is observed today in the Kosher prohibition of eating blood.

Closer to our own time, “America’s most important and original philosophical theologian,” Jonathan Edwards developed his “vision of God’s visible glory in every aspect of the natural world” (Ahlstrom 299). He was walking in Northampton, very close to what is now our downtown, when this happened:

I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father’s pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walking there, and looking upon the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, as I know not how to express.—I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction; majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet, and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness.

After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of every thing was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet, cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost every thing. God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun, moon and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for a long time; and in the day, spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things.

Careful not to stray too far from the Calvinism of his forefathers, Edwards ultimately retreated the pantheist implications of his near-deification of nature. But later philosophers were happy to develop the equation of God and nature, and none so influentially as Ralph Waldo Emerson of Concord, who wrote: “Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing ; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”

2) Hopefully you are curious, if not excited, about what you’ve read so far. The question remains, though: why would learning about animism benefit you and what does it have to do with environmental philosophy?

To answer the first part of the question, we can see that for both Edwards and Emerson, the feeling of unity with God and nature was the most profound moment in their lives, and served to inspire them to live a full, meaningful and productive existence. If you have ever felt such unity, this course will help you to understand that your experience was/is wholesome, and that it is not “out there” or “primitive”; it is a central part of a universal spiritual tradition that—though seldom taken seriously in our culture—is the foundation of religion itself. In short, no matter what your religious background is, this course will give you the materials and support to explore and develop your own experiences of animism, and perhaps revitalize your commitment to personal and collective spiritual growth.

Secondly, at this pivotal moment in history when we are compelled to imagine and build a civilization without cheap fossil fuels, we need to re-assess and revise our antiquated conception of nature. For over two hundred years, our culture has been driven by industrial capitalism, a kind of economy that by necessity regards nature as dead, or as a soulless repository of “limitless resources” that are to be exploited for short-term financial gains. When we look at our own communities, we see the tragic, and economically devastating, results of this worldview.

As a result, we have been deprived not only of a sustainable civilization; we have also been deprived of a healthy, empowering way of knowing ourselves, and how we fit into the designs of God and nature. Given that the purpose of institutional education is to train students to succeed in the economy as it is (and not as it should be), we lack the words and stories to express our connections to nature, except in those scientific, legal and economic terms that business condones; and this is why animism is still considered the religion of “primitives.” Lacking these words and stories, we are deprived of the materials—intellectual and social—that would stimulate our imaginations, individually and collectively, so we can envision and achieve a new and healthier way of living. Needless to say, if we cannot imagine a new way of living that is economically “green” and spiritually fulfilling, we will fail to overcome the immense challenges we face. So: animism is the concern of environmental philosophy because it offers the words and stories we can use, share, and re-envision, to develop the”green” worldview that will necessarily accompany the civilization we will build in the post-fossil fuel era.

Classes: Sun. 3-5; Dec. 6, 13, 20, holiday break, Jan. 3, 10 & 17

1) The Sun, the River, the Moon, the Earth: Animism in Ancient Egypt
2) The Gods are with Us: Animism in Hellenic Greece
3) When God walked with Adam and Eve: Animism in Ancient Judea
4) The AUM of Siva: Animism in Ancient and Contemporary India
5) The Land is Sacred: Animism in Lakotan Culture
6) Becoming Native to this Place: Animism in Modern American Culture

The texts for our classes will be accessed primarily from the web. Suggested editions for the other texts are found by clicking on the class title.

You’ll also receive links to, or hand-outs of, secondary sources so you are introduced to the historical contexts from which animist theologies emerged. The curriculum is structured recursively so that each class builds upon contexts established on the one before it, so that when we get to our investigation of animism in contemporary America, you have the conceptual tools you need to understand how animism manifests itself around us. Finally, you’ll be provided with questions and prompts online that will help guide you through the readings, so when we meet you have already begun to understand what animism is. You are not required, but are strongly encouraged, to keep a journal of your reflections and questions which, if you desire, your instructor will review and comment upon.

Animism

This 6-session course investigates the traditions of animism in the cultures of Egypt, Greece, Judea, India and Native, and contemporary America.

$100.00Price:

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1) Springsources: Hindu, Judaic, Greek and Roman nature mysticism

2) The Transcendental Experience: Emerson’s Nature

3) Living Transcendentally: Thoreau’s Walking

4) Collective Transcendentalism: Whitman’s Song of Myself

5) Transcendentalism in the age of Gaia: Margolis’s What is Life?

Fall session classes are scheduled for Weds. 7-9pm; 12/2, 12/9, 12/16, 1/6 & 1/13

The texts for our first class will be accessed from the web. Suggested editions for the other texts are found by clicking on the book title.

You’ll also receive links to, or hand-outs of, secondary sources so you are introduced to the historical contexts from which these ideas and works emerged. The curriculum is structured recursively so that each class builds upon contexts established on the one before it, so that when we get to What Is Life?, you have the conceptual tools you need to see how Transcendentalism continues to guide our understanding of the human place in the designs of nature. Finally, you’ll be provided with questions and prompts online that will help guide you through the readings, so when we meet you have already started interpreting Transcendental ideas. You are not required, but are strongly encouraged, to keep a journal of your reflections and questions which, if you desire, your instructor will review and comment upon.

Transcendentalism

Learn where Transcendentalism came from, and how it informs our way of perceiving nature. In five easy 2-hour classes!

$80.00Price:

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freedom is the gift of nature
Jefferson

In 1736, the Reverend Jonathan Edwards observed that the Nonotuck bioregion encouraged spiritual and political liberation:

The people of the county in general, I suppose, are as sober, and orderly, and good sort of people, as in any part of New England; and I believe they have been preserved the freest by far, of any part of the country from error and variety of sects and opinions. Our being so far within the land, at a distance from sea-ports, and in a corner of the country, has doubtless been one reason why we have not been so much corrupted with vice, as most other parts.

Edward said the land defined the character of the people he was leading. Geography and geology ensured they would remain morally pure.

He was thinking of the Tom and Holyoke mountains when he stated this environmental philosophy–this idea that “where you are is who you are.” These mountains can not be ignored; they dominate and define the region. Their abrupt inclines have always been striking and, when Edwards was writing, their east to west alignment was singular in North America. He was pointing out that these mountains enabled, inspired and protected his Great Awakening, the first consequential expression of a genuinely “American” theology. Edwards felt free to experiment with his concepts of God, and develop a “new and improved” way to experience divinity–all thanks to where and what Nonotuck was.

The mountains and soils and waters of Nonotuck continue to provide the basis for a bioregional culture unique in the U.S. Other small cities and towns can claim similar attributes, Boulder CO and Arcata CA come to mind, but none are so deeply rooted in the American history of liberation (and none are so close to Vermont!).

After the Revolutionary War, Daniel Shays and his supporters revolted against the Federal government in Northampton. Upon hearing of this while in Paris, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

A few decades later, Sojourner Truth joined the utopian communal society called the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. These figures and their stories provide the model for later denizens who continue to develop and display the high-minded liberal y backwoodsy libertarian ethos of Paradise City.

Look closely around Nonotuck, the farm land situated between the coast and the mountains, and you’ll see the biocultural history of land and liberation alive today, a history that links Jonathan Edwards to Rachel Maddow. This one day touring and hiking intensive lets you smell, touch and taste its fading traces and freshest productions. Readings (beforehand) and discussions while en route let you entertain the most interesting thoughts about nature and culture. Letting the season and weather dictate our course, we’ll investigate whatever seems ripe at the moment–the mountains, forests and fields; the downtown streets, markets, stores and cafes; the museums and greens, the architectures, and the not-marked-on-the-map places: wherever Nonotuck’s biocultural history is expressing itself.

Land and Liberation introduces you to a way of reading the environment so it tells you the stories of humanity. Once you perceive how that story is told, you’ll be able to see it anywhere.

Think outside.

“There’s more there than you think.”

Land of Liberation: Fall

A 1-day intensive that investigates the biocultural history of the Nonotuck bioregion.

$80.00Price:

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sunset gardening, northern Nonotuck

Land of Liberation: Fall

A 1-day intensive that investigates the biocultural history of the Nonotuck bioregion.

$80.00Price:

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