Nature as Mentor
A place-based educational tool intended to spark connection, inspiration, curiosity, and a sense of reverence as you see the “ordinary” around you with new eyes.
This deck inspires a reconnection to the local organisms and ecosystems of the Hill Country of central Texas, USA. However, many of these organisms can be found more widely.
The tool goes far beyond identification. It shares the well-adapted deep patterns that local organisms embody and expertly translates this wisdom for humans to leverage and learn from. Nature as Mentor offers insights into leadership, resilience, partnerships, communication, decision-making, trust, and network-building.
What will you discover when you make the shift from learning not just about nature, but from nature?
Nature as Mentor Cards
About the Eco-Region
Central Texas Hill Country sits atop the Edwards Plateau, a rugged, uplifted slab of limestone between more humid woods to the east and drier grassy plains to the west. Life here swings between extremes: long, scorching droughts followed by sudden, drenching storms. The soil is thin and chalky, and the ground here is full of cracks, sinkholes, and hidden underground caves (karst features) that make it act like a giant sponge. Rain can disappear underground into the Edwards Aquifer as quickly as it arrives. Creek beds are often dry unless they’re spring-fed. But when a massive storm hits, water rushes right down the steep, rocky hills, giving the area its nickname, “Flash Flood Alley.” It is unpredictable out here. The nature in this region is constantly walking a beautiful, precarious line, and it has a lot to teach us about thriving in uncertainty.
What Are Life’s Principles?
Life has evolved in the presence of Earth’s operating conditions - sunlight, water, gravity, dynamic non-equilibrium, limits and boundaries, and cyclic processes. Material resources are perpetually cycled as energy moves through the system. Over more than 3.8 billion years, life has adapted to Earth’s conditions in ways that allow it to be regenerative, not degenerative. Living systems are interconnected and interdependent. Life itself creates conditions that perpetuate living systems. The Life’s Principles explain what life does that makes it regenerative. They are design lessons from nature that reflect the overarching well-adapted patterns found in Earth’s diverse, thriving organisms. Every organism meets all 27 of these principles. In essence, they are the instruction manual for fitting in on Earth as a welcome species. They can be utilized by humans as a mentor, model, and measure for creating regenerative designs.
