Teaching Kids to Love the Earth
by Ann Linnea, Marina Lachecki, Joseph Passineau & Paul Treuer
Now that “nature deficit disorder” is a recognized issue for today’s digitalized and highly scheduled children, Ann Linnea’s first co-authored book, Teaching Kids to Love the Earth, written with fellow teachers of Sense of Wonder Workshops for parents and children, is more relevant than ever.
As parents of young children, the authors taught Sense of Wonder workshops at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, Minnesota in the 1980s. Other parents and children came to winter and spring workshops seeking to find ways to empower themselves and their children to spend time outdoors together.
With the encouragement of other parents, the co-authors spent seven years teaching and writing together. Teaching Kids to Love the Earth is a gentle guide to exploring the natural world with a sense of discovery and curiosity, a great gift for anyone taking children outdoors. As the natural world changes around us, adults and children need to explore nature, learn its needs, and become its activists.
Winner of national and regional environmental awards, the book has been reprinted many times and is a recognized leader in the field of environmental education—written and illustrated with charming stories that will get you and the little ones you love out where the wind blows free.
Published in 1991 by Pfeifer-Hamilton/ the University of Minnesota Press.
Ann Linnea, Paul Treuer, Marina Lachecki, Joseph Passineau
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Deep Water Passage: A Spiritual Journey at Midlife
by Ann Linnea
At forty-three years of age, a naturalist, educator, a Midwestern wife and mother, Ann Linnea set off around the inland sea of Lake Superior to immerse herself in nature, test the depth of her athleticism, and to review all that she has taken for granted in her life.
Deep Water Passage is the resulting profound memoir of Ann’s heroic and soul-baring voyage battling the biggest lake on the planet for insight and survival. The 65-day, 1800-mile journey chronicles a gripping tale of personal courage and honest self-review. It also serves as a metaphor for many kinds of mid-life passages, honoring both women and men.
Ann went on to establish and guide an Elderquest for women 50 years and older in the Inyo Mountains of California with Anne Stine for eight years. With Christina Baldwin and Deborah Greene-Jacobi she established Cascadia quest for men and women in eastern Washington. The quest was offered from 2010-2021. Ann now serves on the Elder’s Council of the Wilderness Guides Council.
It is a time-honored favorite for book club reading, constantly being discovered and rediscovered by word of mouth and book club favorites lists.
Published in 1995 by Little/Brown and then Pocketbook in 1997, New York.
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A Journey Through the Maxwelton Watershed
by Ann Linnea
In the Pacific Northwest a watershed that is still home to returning salmon is a treasure to be respected. A Journey Through the Maxwelton Watershed – A Natural and Social History focuses on such a watershed – the Maxwelton Valley on the southern end of Whidbey Island (20 miles north of Seattle, WA). Its history and environmental issues stand as a template for understanding similar watersheds and their issues throughout the Cascadia bio-region.
This book details the histories of fourth and fifth-generation farmers, explains complex land use laws, and explores the biological/geological backdrop of the valley. It was compiled through a grant by the Puget Sound Water Quality team and completed just before many of the valley’s original farmers passed away. One of the grant’s intentions was to build a bridge between agricultural and environmental citizens through history and story sharing.
Fully illustrated with black and white photos, the book stands as a fine example of the phrase, “Think globally, act locally.” As an active volunteer at the Organic Farm School in the Maxwelton Valley, Ann now uses the book to teach new farmers the important concepts of watershed and community building.
Published in 2002 by a Washington State Water Quality Grant.
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Keepers of the Trees:
A Guide to Re-Greening North America
by Ann Linnea
Keepers of the Trees: A Guide to Re-Greening North America is an honoring of those who have in various ways devoted their lives to trees.
We save what we love.
We learn to love through story.
People are the keepers of the story of the trees.
Within a five-mile radius of wherever you are reading this book there are dozens of “keepers of the trees”—people whose lives and connections to trees have come together, growth ring by growth ring. Ann Linnea has chosen fourteen people across North America whose stories illuminate this fascinating interdependence.
E
ngage in the life stories of fourteen people whose lives have been shaped by trees—featuring the true stories of a tree doctor, big tree hunter Will Blozan, Plant Amnesty’s pruner, and ninety-four-year-old logger Merve Wilkinson. Also interviewed is Vietnam veteran Bud Pearson, whose post-traumatic stress disorder found healing and acceptance as a wood carver in the wilds of Montana, as well as Andy Lipkis, founder of TreePeople, who has spent thirty-five years ripping up concrete in L.A. to plant over two million trees in an effort to stop flooding and reduce air pollution. Each tree keeper reveals the inspiration and organization behind their advocacy with detailed explanations and touching stories of how their lives have come to be shaped by the forests they are fighting to preserve. Keepers of the Trees includes stories from all over North America, including Vancouver, Chicago, North Carolina, L.A., and Montana.
This book includes one hundred color photographs of the tree keepers in action (including Ann’s own story) as well as diagrams illustrating the keepers’ work. These are inspirational stories of conservation, healing, passion, and advocacy for any classroom, conservationist, activist, and nature lover.
Published in 2010 by Skyhorse Publishing, New York.
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The Circle Way – A Leader in Every Chair
by Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea
Christina and Ann and our office manager, Debbie Dix, reached out from a small backyard office to the far corners of the world teaching participants and facilitators how to use circle to shift meetings into collaboration.
Ann Linnea, Christina Baldwin, and Debbie Dix
Everyone takes a seat and brings their offering to the purpose of the gathering. In the center space something symbolizing the understood purpose is laid out for all to see. Circle works for informal groups, like book clubs, family reunions, support groups, and formal groups like project teams, volunteer organizations, boards and management teams. Circle builds cohesion and community while achieving stated goals. Circle encourages people to speak a larger context, to bring stories into the process, and ensures every voice is heard in decision-making. Circle shifts the “operating system” of power structure and equalizes interaction so the wisdom in the room can emerge. The book is full of examples and stories of application and help for the challenges that arise.
We acknowledge that Indigenous peoples, despite intentional, genocidal treatment from white supremacist colonization, have kept the circle pattern in human consciousness. As two white women, we worked to culturally neutralize the principles of circle so that its social structure could be adopted in many situations and take on the culture present among participants. We are humbled and grateful that circle has survived and is now coming into dominant culture at a time of huge mutual need.
In 2016, we gave all our resource materials to the nonprofit entity: www.thecircleway.net. A simple, two-page outline of the social structure that supports circle is available in 15 languages at: https://www.thecircleway.net/circle-way-guidelines. The Circle Way is growing in diversity and global adaptation. Below the attention of media or the threat of cooption, one circle at a time an alternative way of being returns in the world.
Published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco.
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