For Irina Contreras, a program manager for Los Angeles County’s Department of Arts and Culture, outdoor education was a refuge for both her and her daughter during the pandemic.
Now, much of that refuge has been burned in the raging wildfires around Los Angeles.
Her 7-year-old daughter, Ceiba, hikes with a kid’s adventure group called Hawks and attended Matilija, a bilingual forest school for preschool and kindergarten. Rain or shine, she and her friends would spend their days climbing, jumping, hiking, and swimming in places like Eaton Canyon Nature Area, a 190-acre (77-hectare) preserve near Altadena, now destroyed by fire.
Ceiba learned to ask plants for permission before taking samples to glue
→ Continue reading at The Associated Press