Creating Spaces

Continuing our look back as we look forward series…

I’ve been creating spaces my entire life. As a pretty lonely kid, who grew up in a very small town, I had lots of imaginary friends. Together we would turn my bedroom into a hotel, library, school house, concert hall, college, shopping mall, and what I now realize was the very first Bird & Bear Collective. A space imagined and nurtured in curiosity and wonder.

I had 2 younger brothers and together we imagined lots of spaces in the basement and backyard. One of my favorites was when we believed the gigantic rocks in our backyard was the Starship Enterprise, as we traveled the galaxies. Today my husband thinks my Star Trek days are why I still believe I can teleport everywhere, due to my unrealistic expectations of how long it takes to get anywhere.

I grew up on a dairy farm for a good part of my early years. The cows were some of my best of friends and getting lost in the fields was where I first learned to brave the wilderness.

My best friend’s family owned the local country store and restaurant, a space always alive with conversation and connection over coffee, scrambled eggs and the best cheeseburger there ever was. I think of Reed’s Country Store so often at the Bird & Bear. I know this is where I learned how to be so good at remembering names, faces and your stories too.

My other best friend’s family ran the Summer Camp that was in our hometown. My teenage years as a Village 4 Camp Counselor at Camp Putnam is where I learned the about friendship, belonging, safety and loving better, as we welcomed kids from the inner-city to overnight camp in a wilderness that was very different from the spaces they came from.

Creating spaces defined my career and nearly 20 years in this community too ~ but we’ll talk more about that in a future post.

For now, flash forward to 12 years ago, months after the birth of our 3rd, when we moved to our current home with a barn in the backyard. This dreamer got a space of her own, with big ol’ doors and endless opportunities to nurture curiosity and wonder. This is the space, along with all the others, that was the hypothesis and hope of today’s Bird & Bear Collective.