Every year, Biocitizen & the Lone Wolf Cafe hold a fun-raising dinner to provide Our Place Summercamp scholarships so kids, who might not otherwise be able to, can spend a week off-the-screen-deep-in-the-green exploring our place, the Nonotuck biome. The value of these scholarships cannot be underestimated, because amazing things happen during the 5 days we spend in...Continue Reading

We’ll walk from the lower right to the upper left; click pic for googlemap (use Norwich Pond as an orientation point) Cross country walking—exploring terrain without worry of trail—is something we don’t get to do enough. It’s hard to get a sense of the “body” & vitalities of a biome, and of the microbiomes nested...Continue Reading

For many of us, our first attraction to nature arose from a good feeling of perceiving beauty in flowers, waves, the sky. Bird song. This good feeling—of biophilia—is key to environmental philosophy because it inspires a yearning to perceive, and understand, nature more deeply. Biophilia is also a key element of environmental conservation, because it inspires...Continue Reading

Wilderness is one of the fundamental concepts of environmental philosophy. It is commonly recognized as being a place without human presence; yet is also a feeling of fear and awe, and a particular state of heightened consciousness, as the “–ness” (re: happiness & sadness) implies. Wilderness: Theory and Practice is designed to help you understand...Continue Reading

Sent this to folks who are helping kids who need assistance this summer— Hi everybody, Thank you so much for participating in the Our Place scholarship fundraiser! Most of us are sick of ice and snow, and that’s why we’ll have 2 fires going outside, and the Glow Room will be 80 degrees—Chilean style! I...Continue Reading

Director’s note: A recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which contains work thousands of years old from myriad cultures) confirms the idea that our perception of beauty in nature is innate and universally shared. For many of us, our first attraction to nature arose from a good feeling of perceiving beauty in flowers,...Continue Reading

by Maegan Puzas, teacher of Woods in the Woods & Persephone Sarantidis, photography Creative Minds and Exploratory Finds Around six months or so ago, I found myself listening to the hum of the life around me in a local coffee shop in Northampton. It was early Autumn and I was waiting for a fellow colleague...Continue Reading

Aesthetic value is a keystone of environmental philosophy. We love, and take care of, things we find beautiful. Biocitizen and HCC professor John Calhoun have made a commitment to work together for a year, walking together, learning, and creating art that is beautiful, that expresses important moments in, and facets of, Holyoke’s biocultural history. You...Continue Reading

At Biocitizen, students learn about themselves as they learn about our place in the natural world. By bringing them into our outdoor classrooms—places charged with natural vitality, beauty and history—and unleashing their critical-thinking and aesthetic-feeling skills, Biocitizen gives students an opportunity to build upon all they’ve learned in institutional academic settings. Each outdoor class features...Continue Reading

If you know what bugs live in a river, you can gauge its health. So, every year just as Summer slips into Fall, the Biocitizen Corps ventures out and catches some, following EPA protocols, in a national citizen science initiative called “Rapid Bioassessments of Benthic Invertebrates.” Certain bugs need lots of oxygen. The cleanest coldest...Continue Reading