Pine Mountain Arts is an independent Institute where Adults and home schooling and other children of all ages can experience the fruits of Rudolf Steiner’s curriculum in a nature based environment. Most classes are conducted in the tranquil forested mountains and meadows of Big Basin near the Pacific coast, north of Davenport. Other classes are privately arranged in more urban settings in addition to courses at Waldorf schools throughout the United States.

In the last 20 years we have experienced a tremendous increase in learning challenges and nervous disorders due to fast changes in our society, lifestyles and environment. Our children have become the innocent victims of these changes combined with the ever increasing influences of unhealthy use of media and virtual realities of the internet. Our curriculum strives to address the inner need of the students to learn about and experience the world through an integrated approach of heads, hands and heart. What does this mean?

A lot of learning today takes place mostly indoors, becomes an accumulation of facts and formulae and the student is then tested for standardized results. While this might work for many others suffer greatly and are emotionally disconnected from the process. Young people develop and mature at different rates and may have vastly different learning styles.

Steiner took this into account when he designed a curriculum where academics, practical learning and the artistic work all contribute to a wholesome learning process. It has been recognized by modern research that much is missing in our modern way of educating (see Howard Gardener: Multiple Intelligences, Harvard University).At our Outdoor School we foster practical, nature based learning, the artistic, love and respect for our environment and our fellow human beings with all their differences.

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Classes are formed on a need or interest basis. As of now there are no set classes or programs.Schools Students or the parents of students approach us with interest in our work and the classes are formed around these.One parent usually takes on the role of a coordinater and point person for a group.My work as a consultatant is available for institutions and individuals.

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About Bodo Langen and Johnny Finn-Romero

Bodo Langen

Johnny Finn-Romero

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Inspiration

Caution Visitors This page contains some images that some of you may find disturbing. Please do not view pictures with children under the age of fourteen.  

During the course of my life Rudolf Steiner’s work has been the most influential. At first, during my late teenage years,it was indirect. While in boarding school I befriended 5 boys, all students of a Waldorf School, and the effects of the Steiner education greatly distinguished these friends from all my other friends. Today, looking back, I can say that the care, that had gone into the development of the whole human being, as it manifested in their warmth as humans, their bright and openminded intelligence, as well as their many creative and artistic impulses, made them stand out like beacons by the sea. Of course none of that was known to my conscious mind. Later, in my mid twenties, after immigrating into the United States I was working as an artist and also raising bees. A beekeeping neighbor introduced me to 9 Lectures on bees by Steiner, assuming that I already was well aware of his( Steiner’s) work. It were these nine lectures that set me onto a path of spiritual – philosophical inquiery and changed my life profoundly.

One cannot imagine the body of Steiner’s work without becomming aware of another great individual, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe is widely known for his fine poetry and other literary achievments, but hardly for his scientific work, even in Germany.Steiner was entrusted in his younger years with the editing and preparations for publishing of the complete works of this famous German writer. The fusion of artist, scientist and spiritual searcher as it manifested in Goethe, influenced Rudolf Steiner and consequently the curiculum in our Waldorf Schools. Questions about the duality of human nature as presented in Goethe’s great drama “Faust” and Goethe’s scientific and artistic inquieries into the living nature of the natural world are of an immense value for the education of young people, who are meant to become true world citizens and stewards of our living planet.One could say, that today at the dawn of the 21st. century, with all it’s human and environmental challenges, we all might take a moment and have a look at the genius of these two men and what they had to offer to humanity.

to be continued.

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Last Chance

Last Chance is the name of the privat road which leads from the western boundary of Big Basin into the Park. It starts out as a ridge road between Wadell and Scott creek and then winds for about 8 miles through tracks of privat land with quite a number of spur roads and private drives leading off it. Locally last chance also refers to the region of forest, or I should say forests, which it traverses. I am using the plural form here, because as one starts to travel on this beautiful, at time treacherous road, one encounters quite a few different micro climates which change every few miles and give distinct character to the landscape and vegitation. From open meadows and pine forest in the front it leads into mixed and finally redwood forest.Where ever a spur- or timber road brings you up to the peaks with stunning views of forest and  the Pacific ocean,it will also bring you into a desert like chaperel environment above the fog and the majestic redwood trees. And finally Last Chance describes or is at times synonymous with the community of people who live here. It started here in the 60’s with people, who were opposed to the Vietnam war, consumerism and the disregard of the natural environment, moved here to start an alternative community. With the exception of a few ancient trees the great redwood forest had been clear cut and was left in a state of utter destruction. For a personal account of the time and circumstances view the CTV’s (local TV station)recording of: ” Davenport Oral History #39, Last Chance Residents”

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