Forest Educator with Ricardo Sierra | A Podcast for Revolutionary Conversations about Nature-Based Education · Ricardo Sierra

The Gift of Magical Encounters with Animals with John Stokes

·1 hr 6 min·4 clips

A Hawaiian visionary told John in 1991 that he would “create a circle of people” ready “to catch the world when it fell.”

Ricardo Sierra welcomes John Stokes from the Tracking Project in New Mexico. He introduces him as a friend, mentor, and elder he has looked up to for years. The first question is simple, but it lands well: what does it mean when an educational program carries a real name instead of a generic label? John answers by tracing his own path, which did not start in public education. He talks about working with an Aboriginal community at a college, where the work was rooted in community rather than presentation. From there, the conversation circles back to naming and to the difference between something that only describes a program and something that helps people feel its purpose. Ricardo keeps the thread on how educators try to attract students without flattening the experience they are offering. The talk then shifts into field memory, and the pace opens up. Ricardo tells a story about taking a small group of children into the forest and building a shelter out of sticks and debris. They make a fire in a stone ring and settle into a quiet circle. He asks them to stop talking and listen. Wind in the trees and the crackle of the fire become part of the lesson. He notices movement near a creek and points out a doe crossing into the woods. The animal comes close to the children, stops, and looks at them. Then it turns and walks away. The adults are startled enough to wonder whether they somehow made it happen. John says no, not really. What mattered was the stillness, the attention, and the way the group made space for the encounter. The conversation closes by widening that feeling into a larger gratitude for the people who keep building a world connected to nature.

As heard by us

A patient conversation about naming, attention, and the teaching power of a quiet forest moment.

Ricardo Sierra and John Stokes spend this conversation on the practical weight of names, the sort that shape how a program feels before anyone shows up.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a forest story that makes silence feel like curriculum.

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