Coming into Dialogue with Nature
A One Day Workshop in Point Reyes Station
Saturday, April 11, 9am to 4pm

This workshop is an invitation to encounter the natural world by giving your whole attention for one full day to a tree, the California buckeye, which is also known as the California horse-chestnut. We will meet a California buckeye not as an object of study, but as a living presence with which dialogue is possible.

We will spend time with three buckeyes in spring—one mature tree, one younger bush-form, and one that was cut down and is now returning as new shoots. Rather than treating these as stages in a linear development, we will approach them as distinct expressions of a single formative power, each responding in its own way to time, place, and interruption.

Dialogue, as it will be practiced here, does not mean speaking about the tree, nor projecting human qualities onto it. It means learning to listen with the whole of our attention—to notice how form, gesture, and rhythm answer the quality of our presence. Buds, branches, and growth patterns become not data to be extracted, but expressions through which the buckeye articulates its life.

As we slow our seeing and suspend habitual explanations, we may begin to notice how our own assumptions, expectations, and beliefs quietly shape what appears. The workshop, therefore, involves not only encountering the buckeye but also becoming aware of the stance from which one meets any living being.

No botanical expertise is required. What is asked instead is a willingness to remain with what shows itself, to allow understanding to arise through relation rather than control, and to experience how attention itself can become a form of dialogue.

Hosted and facilitated by John Gouldthorpe. John is a longtime resident and lover of Point Reyes, and is daily immersed in its natural beauty. HIs work is guided by many years of association with the Nature Institute in Ghent, New York (www.natureinstitute.org), first as a workshop participant and, for the past seven years, as an educator. John is also the coproducer and host of the Nature Institute’s podcast, In Dialogue with Nature.

Workshop Details:
When - Saturday, April 11th, from 9am to 4pm
Where - On the Mesa in Point Reyes. Address given upon registration
Cost: $60-$180, sliding scale. 
Bring a bag lunch 
          - water 
          - clothes for variable weather
          - a notebook and something to write with

Registration or questions, contact John Gouldthorpe - jggouldthorpe@gmail.com