As a collective, we seek to share the skills, knowledge, and perspectives we’ve found while playing in the forest by inspiring others to get out into their local wild spaces as well. In the two years that Knowing the Land is Resistance (KLR) has existed, our two main projects have been writing articles and facilitating workshops.

For the first year and a bit, we mostly worked on writing monthly articles in the Deepening our Connection series. These are investigative articles, about learning to read the forested landscape, to understand both its history and its current ecology. Although Deepening our Connection is an ongoing adventure, these days we are more focused on giving Workshops and creating useful resources.

The Spring Love Affair Series sprung from how much we love the Spring, and how sometimes it can feel overwhelming to try to keep up with all the changes and growth. Each of those short articles highlights one plant or creature that returns to us in the Spring.

In the summer of 2011, we visited ten different cities in southern Ontario for the Seeds of Resistance Tour to explore how different communities resist destruction and get to know the sites that inspire them, while sharing some simple tools for connecting with wild spaces. This lead to the series Downstream Stories: Towards a watershed-scale resistance. These stories tell of wild spaces in most of the towns and cities we visited how people have mobilized to defend their landbases.

In the Spring of 2012 we began a workshop series called North-End Raccoon Walks, that focuses on understanding North Hamilton as ecosystem and habitat. This understanding allows us to ground ourselves in the health of the land for dealing with local issues of class, development, and toxicity. These workshops are also a basis for creating useful local resources, like The Secret Language of Tree Bark, and Five Secrets of Healing Wildlands.

Under News and Commentary, we post the occasional response to current events dealing with wild spaces in or near Hamilton.

And last, but not least, we’d love it if you spent some time with our KLR Book Club, where we share some of our favourite books and resources for connecting with the wild and for acting in support of its health. This section is in the process of a major expansion, so look for it to fill up a lot more over the coming weeks!

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