The Rookery

Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones — inkberry, lamb’s quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones — rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and the the silent, beautiful blossoms.

Attention is the beginning of devotion. from “Upstream” by Mary Oliver, 2004

Ten years ago, I brought the Herons outside on a Wednesday morning for the first time (here’s the blog entry about it). We were going to spend the whole morning outside…no matter what. It was cold. It was raining. Our independent reading books got drenched and there were some tears — but we did it.

That year was one of growth and discovery. The key learning for me was the importance of teaching outside. My students that year saw the world in a demonstrably different way. They noticed. They wondered. They connected to their world in a way I had not seen before.

Mary Oliver said it more powerfully than I can. When we go outside to the same space every week rain or shine, warm or cold, we know that place deeply. We connect to it. We notice when there are changes. We attend to it.

“Attend” comes from the Latin – ad-(“to, toward”) +tendere(“to stretch, direct, or pitch”). So literally, to stretch our mind toward something. When we go outside every week to learn, our brains change. The clouds become cirrus, strata, cumulous. The noise in the trees becomes birdsong and then a robin, a waxwing or a jay. The green grass becomes violets (yum), dandelions (yum), plantain (yum), creeping charlie (yum), sorrel (yum) and then grass (not so yum). What was a tree becomes an oak or a maple and, for a few lucky trees, a friend with a name. (The red oak in front of the school is “Pluto.”)

There is other learning, too. The Herons learn to persevere through hard weather and activities. They learn how to plan to have the right clothing and materials. They learn woods craft. But mostly, they learn their place on this magnificent planet. They see how the smallest thing can unfold into a thousand questions. They discover how much there is yet to figure out.

I am not immune to fear for our planet. I am often saddened by the ways humans have changed it and I worry about the changes to come. But — every Wednesday I get to go outside and learn with the Herons. I get to see the world through their eyes. There is so much to learn. So much to wonder about. There is so much to love. It is such an honor to be a part of that and it gives me so much hope. – MMM

Below are some pictures of the Herons clearing brush during our first Forest School – I’ve been remiss in taking pictures!