My neighbor Nick, he was a long haired Jesus-esque hippy who ran forest schools for inner city kids who didn’t do great in classrooms.
He also managed the forest in one of the areas thought to be an inspiration for Tolkien.
He taught me to whittle, about having a greater respect for nature. His partner ran a potions club (during the height of Harry Potter popularity), which was mostly identifying and collecting herbs and plants to make balms, syrups and creams for our parents.
He and my dad built me a playhouse on stilts (like 7 foot high, so we could still store things under it)
For a couple of my birthdays he did a forest schools type thing where we would go out to the woods, build dens, forage food, start a campfire using a bow drills etc
One of the birthdays, he’d brought a fishing rod along; the plan was to catch some invasive rainbow trout. After about 10 minutes we here “Oh bloody hell” and turn around to see he’d hooked a huge native brown trout, which we manage to get back into the water.
He tries again and this time only manages to hook a tiny thing as small as my hand, luckily my mum was ready the camera this time!
My neighbor Nick, he was a long haired Jesus-esque hippy who ran forest schools for inner city kids who didn’t do great in classrooms.
He also managed the forest in one of the areas thought to be an inspiration for Tolkien.
He taught me to whittle, about having a greater respect for nature. His partner ran a potions club (during the height of Harry Potter popularity), which was mostly identifying and collecting herbs and plants to make balms, syrups and creams for our parents.
He and my dad built me a playhouse on stilts (like 7 foot high, so we could still store things under it)
For a couple of my birthdays he did a forest schools type thing where we would go out to the woods, build dens, forage food, start a campfire using a bow drills etc
One of the birthdays, he’d brought a fishing rod along; the plan was to catch some invasive rainbow trout. After about 10 minutes we here “Oh bloody hell” and turn around to see he’d hooked a huge native brown trout, which we manage to get back into the water. He tries again and this time only manages to hook a tiny thing as small as my hand, luckily my mum was ready the camera this time!