March 22, 2008

The Everything Outside Nature Challenge

Have you ever wondered: what would happen if we started to listen to nature? What would we hear?

–>> What would we hear from the melting polar ice caps?
–>> From the islands in the middle of the ocean that exist just a few feet above sea level?
–>> From the endangered species who no longer have their habitat?

How are they speaking to us? What are they showing us? What are they doing now that is different from 10, 20, 30 years ago?

Have you ever stopped to wonder: How fast is change happening in our own back yard? Have we stopped to notice?

If we chose to stop and notice, how would we go about it?

The Everything Outside Nature Challenge invites you to stop and notice the changes in your own backyard.

The Challenge: Choose one spot and monitor it for one year. It could be a favorite corner of your backyard or front yard or the entire yard. Apartment dwellers can select a favorite patch of nature - in fact any of us can select a favorite patch of nature.

Select a spot and take care of this one spot every day for an entire year. Take pictures or video, create works of art, write about your spot - document the changes in your spot. Take care of it - include it in your daily life.

We’ll announce each of the spots as they’re selected and then invite you to submit your updates to us weekly and we’ll post them on our blog.

Wouldn’t that be easy and fun? Wouldn’t you be curious to see if anything changed over the course of a year?

Document what would happen if there were a heat wave, a torrential downpour, a quick and early freeze…

By monitoring our spot, we begin the process of listening to nature’s message. It would be like a daily practice. At first we may not be aware of much, but as time passes there may be many surprises in store for us.

As our Challenge grows, we’ll have a chance to listen to nature’s message from other corners of the world and compare what we are noticing and begin to understand nature’s message.

So, let us listen and watch as nature does what it does and we do what we do.

To join us in the challenge, please visit

http://www.everythingoutside.com/challenge.htm

Special thanks to Richard Ford for inspiring the challenge.