ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the pedagogy in the Paluma rainforest, a place between heaven and earth; a place that engages students in experiences of science as well as a sense of the sacredness of the forest. The material affordances of the cloud rainforest at Paluma lead students to consider sacredness and the inherent value of the more-than-human world. The educators at Paluma accept students' responses without privileging a particular notion of the sacred. The ancient sense of time conveyed by the rainforest is central to the feeling of sacredness that arises for students at Paluma. Paluma's almost constant shroud of cloud and filtered sunlight gives the rainforest a mystical, ageless quality. It is not hard to imagine Indigenous people from generations past emerging from the mist as apparitions. Teachers and parents who came to Paluma themselves as children remark that their excursion to Paluma was the highlight of their whole schooling.