Nature is essential for both our personal wellbeing and the health and development of our society. Unless we build in opportunities and structures that support our interconnectedness with all beings, we will continue to create alienation and unsustainable life practices. EEI students live and learn outdoors with regular times set aside for hiking, backpacking, and canoeing or kayaking in wilderness locations. We meet outside, cook outside, sleep outside, hold seminars and check-ins outside. We experience, by day and night, the turning of the planet and the weather conditions of the places we are exploring. We begin to unlearn being fearful of the dark as we become familiar with the stars, planets, and phases of the moon – leaving behind the feeling that we need to go inside once evening comes.
