What We Plant Today Becomes Tomorrow’s Shelter.
Fifteen years ago, at the Burton Educational Preserve, a group of Fox Walkers planted tiny Alder saplings into the soil with their bare hands. They tended the saplings without realizing what they were creating, just small hands doing small acts.
Today, many of them stand over forty feet tall.
Each season, new groups of children walk beneath their branches, children who weren’t even born when the saplings went in the ground and yet, they inherit the relationship and the memory.
The trees remember, because we returned.
Because the land was not a backdrop, but a teacher.
This is the essence of place-based knowledge, what many know as Traditional Ecological Knowledge. It is the understanding that wisdom grows from returning to the same place over and over again, from noticing the stories unfolding across seasons and generations. At some point in history, every human culture practiced this kind of knowing.
It isn’t about owning land.
It’s about stewardship and responsibility.
About teaching the youth that the natural world is not separate from us, but part of our community.
When we do this well, the trees themselves become storytellers, witnesses to the children who grow up beneath them, providers of shelter, fire, medicine, and memory. They become part of the lineage.
These trees, on both coasts, remind us that we are part of something longer than a season, longer even than a generation. They remind us that what we plant today becomes the shelter someone else stands under tomorrow.
Trees grown in wind grow stronger. Roots deepen in adversity.
And communities come together most powerfully when something they love needs care.
Your contribution helps us:
Keep Burton thriving as a living, learning landscape
Restore and support the primitive camp rooted in our lineage
Keep programs accessible for families across all income levels
Protect and pass forward the place-based knowledge that once belonged to all people
Tend the teachings carried from Grandfather Stalking Wolf, to our teacher, to us, and onward
If 4EEE has touched your life…
If your children have learned confidence, courage, or connection through the land…
If you believe these teachings matter for the next seven generations…
We ask you to stand with us this season.
With deep gratitude,
The 4 Elements Earth Education Team
On the East Coast, at the Primitive Camp, another tree holds that lineage. The Gift Tree. Once a young sapling planted by Tom as a gift to Grandfather Stalking Wolf, it now stands tall along the path so many have walked. Thousands of families have passed by it, hearing the story of a gift given long ago, and learning that place-based knowledge becomes real only when we return, remember, and tend.
This year, that truth has meant even more as we’ve faced one of the hardest years in our history:
We lost our teacher, Tom Brown Jr.
Wildfire swept through our cherished Primitive Camp
Both of our teaching bases, Burton and Primitive Camp, are requiring large amounts of unexpected funding to continue our programming on them.
At moments, it has felt like a storm season.
But the elders, both the human ones and the rooted ones, teach us that storms are part of the story, too.
Be Part of the Story
-
Tend the Lineage.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
-
Protect the Land.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
-
Grow the Future.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Make it stand out.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
