connect and disconnect

Fein features the immersion in nature of the students from Santo Domingo Pueblo with the guidance of Ian Sanderson. Sanderson knows that most are disconnected from the natural world as other 21st-century American teens, so together with his colleagues at the Santa Fe Mountain Center, an educational nonprofit, think it's important to lead these students to places such as the nearby mountain stream, that never fell under the spell of the iPod and Xbox. Sanderson's goal, and that of the center's Native American "emergence" program, is to encourage young people to listen to the gurgle of streams, whiff the aroma of bark, taste native plants--and then help them understand how fully these sensations informed the lives of their predecessors.