This former dumping ground in Nederland is being turned into an eco-friendly nature center

NEDERLAND — The stillness that draws many people out into the tree-lined hideaways of nature is also what repels others from stepping foot into the forested unknown.

Where some find calm, others confront fear.

A Nederland nature center that’s nearly 20 years old is creating a new space — part gateway to the outdoors, part refuge from Denver’s dizzying pace — in the hope of giving people a place to forge a relationship with nature.

And “rewild” themselves.

“When you tune into the sound of insects and the wind rushing through the leaves of the trees, it’s much more calming than honking horns and vibrating phones,” said Justin Gold, founder of Boulder-based company Justin’s Nut Butter and a major donor behind the new Wild Bear Nature Center. “And so I just think that just coming up here is almost just a portal that transports your body and mind into a more peaceful realm.”

The new center, which broke ground in May 2023 and will likely open by fall next year, will sit on 5 acres of Wild Bear-owned land on the edge of almost 3,000 acres of land encompassing both Mud Lake open space and Caribou Ranch open space. The peaks of the Continental Divide trace the horizon to the west, stretches of the mountains visible beyond a thicket of ponderosas, lodgepoles and aspens. The building under construction will offer more than a landing spot for visitors acquainting themselves with nature; it will also remind them of the importance of protecting the environment while exploring it, its developers hope. That’s why they have designed the building to produce more energy than it consumes, with 50 kilowatts of solar panels on the roof as well as south facing windows that will also create passive solar energy.

“Mostly, we’re giving back to nature,” said Jill Dreves, founder and chief vision officer of Wild Bear Nature Center. “We’re not taking from nature.”

The new center will also give back to the community, growing the nonprofit’s nature programming for students and adults and becoming home to a forest preschool, where kids will learn by trekking through the outdoors.

Dreves, a former elementary school teacher, has been the steady hand nudging the new nature center along since 2000, when voters approved construction of the center at its new site. Five years before that, she formed the nonprofit as a way to help kids and community members branch out of their day-to-day surroundings and ease their way into nature.

Frustrated by the rules and regulations of teaching in a public school — “restricted to a spelling test” rather than free to roam outside — Dreves wanted to give students a fragment of her own childhood. She grew up in the mountains of northern Colorado, where she remembers her days unfolding outside, riding her Appaloosa-Welsh pony, Blue Bonnet, for nine hours and sleeping in the barn with her at night. Her parents rarely knew where she and her sister were. Oftentimes, they snuck deep into the forest where they learned about insects and plants from an entomologist they met there.

“I really wanted to create a wild experience for kids where we would just go out in the wild and not be afraid and play in the river and pick up rocks,” said Dreves, who began her nature-based programming with eight students.

The Wild Bear students studied beedles they found under rocks. They painted with mud. They observed birds. All the while “noticing the patterns and the mystery in nature,” she said.

Those moments of slowing down while surrounded by nature have become all the more necessary now, Dreves said, as electronics confine people’s worlds to screens and as widespread fears of nature collide with a groundswell of isolation coming out of the pandemic.

Wild Bear Nature Center, she said, offers “an entry-level experience for people that just haven’t been in nature much.”

The organization, which has operated out of a downtown Nederland shopping center for the past 14 years, brings about 50 kids to the outdoors each day in the summer. The nonprofit also has school-year programs geared toward students in homeschooling and runs “a snow school” through which classes can learn about snow pack and winter ecology.

Additionally, Wild Bear regularly hosts nature events for families. Last year, about 25,000 visitors stopped by the current nature center to both check out exhibits and wander down area trails, Dreves said.

Jessica and David McElvain have “rewilded” their entire family through Wild Bear, including by sending their two young sons to summer camp and enrichment programs which have acclimated them to the wilderness and helped them better understand animal behavior.

The parents, who recently moved their family to Granby after living in Nederland for seven years, both turn to nature to exhale and clear their “mental clutter” — something they hope to pass onto their boys.

They’ve also noticed how quickly their sons absorb lessons out under the trees.