Principle 2: Fantasy and Imagination

Well I never expected it to take this long to get to the second principle of from David Sobel’s book, Childhood and Nature.  (For more on where this started, visit here and here).  But, life gets crazy and, interestingly enough, it seems that I am revisiting the second principle of this investigation just when it seems to be reaching a heightened relevance to our own lives, so this will provide the opportunity to write a bit about how we are doing this kindergarten at home thing, for those of you that are curious.

So what do Fantasy and Imagination have to do with fostering a love of nature and earnest desire to care for the earth?  Everything!  Sobel opens a discussion of the second principle with a tale of his own family’s voyage to a castle laden land.  He recounts how an agenda of tours and history lessons snuffed the flame of his childrens’ interest, which, fortunately, was re-lit by a magical storyteller and the opportunity for the children to freely explore and create their own magical world amongst the castle walls, independent of historical accuracy .  I bet this scenario is familiar to us all, where interest wanes when teaching begins.  It is perhaps our agenda to teach about the earth and our failure to prioritize fantastic and  imagined interpretations of our surroundings that defeats our most valiant efforts to foster an appreciation of nature.

The power of imagination is central to our  family’s exploration of nature.  Sobel’s ideas resonate strongly with our approach, which derives from intuition and our chosen homeschool philosophy, Enki.  Enki rightly views the world as being unimaginably vast and larger than what can be conceived of through the senses, and while the senses of observation are regarded as invaluable, they are not regarded as the only tools for understanding what is around us.  Enki includes imagination, intuition and insight as other vital senses that help us understand the world.  This may be a tough leap for us traditionally educated adults to make–we learn about the world through science, and science is about observation!  But if we stretch a bit we can see how  these vital senses are the foundation of most spiritual, artistic and scientific advances.  Indeed the sun would likely still be revolving around the earth if Galileo had not employed his senses of imagination, intuition and insight.  It is easy to see how these senses were essential to all great discoveries.*

Now back to our world of little people.  If we can accept imagination as a sense used to understand  what we experience, it is easy to  see how  central it is to the understanding of the natural world, for, hopefully, all of us have experienced the magic of a walk in the woods.  To appreciate the natural world, children must feel an emotional connection to the complex phenomena that define the workings of the natural world.  Children can “see” these phenomena as  the work of living forces.  While King Summer ushers in summer with his demanding presence, calling out for his symphony of bird song,  Duchess Autumn, with a quiet but powerful magic, tosses out gentle breezes turning corn golden,  setting the forests ablaze, and calling the sun down to an early night’s rest. *

As we walk through the forest this fall, we look for the work of Duchess Autumn.  The hunt for her comes alive.  We can feel her in the chilly air, we see where she has painted the forest.  We also notice where King Summer is lingering  longer, where the leaves are still green, where the birds still sing, where the sun still beats strong.  These characters create a far greater presence of nature to our wee folk than a discussion of the ins and outs of why the seasons change .  The time will come to understand how it all works, but the seeds of appreciation must be laid in the fertile bed of imagination.

Sobel succinctly states “our role as storytellers and world creators precedes our role as imparters of knowledge and cultural heritage.” May we all tell many stories and create worlds anew every day.

the cusp

The fields are painted with the palette of summer.  Hidden amongst the wildflowers are glimpses of the goodness to come.  In this time, when the seasons are turning,  I am simultaneously filled up with gratitude for what has been and anticipation of what is to come.  The miracle of life is so evident.

Happy September!

Enki in the wild

Easter was cause to celebrate all the new that is coming our way, including our shared homeschooling journey with the Eamonn family.  We shared a little story and ceremony, along with an Easter egg hunt.

The Eamonn family has been our partner in Forest School.  It is awesome, in the truest sense of the word, to share a love of child-led explorations in wilderness with another family.  It isn’t  easy to find someone who will bundle up and brave snow, 30 mph winds, and outfitting a troupe of  kiddos for a romp in the woods,  but it always makes for golden times.

rivercrossing

When we get into the wild, we  follow the kiddos lead, letting their imaginations carry them wherever they will.  We try not to direct, but we do encourage  exploration which feeds their imagination and their bodies.  Stories are told,  songs are sung,  and the kids reenact favorite plots and craft new tales to fit their environment.

caving

mountain lions on the lookout

sawing just because

It is pure magic.

where the waters run

When we lived on the Western slope of Colorado, we passed or crossed the Eagle River every day.  She cut the valley that was our home and there wasn’t really any way to travel, but beside her.  One didn’t have to travel far in our valley to reach her end, where she married the mighty Colorado, that great river of adventure.  I love both rivers, but oh how I love the Colorado — a from the banks kind of love: running alongside her, camped above her, traveling hundreds of miles while never straying far from her shores, where she carved canyons and ran muddy red.  It is the Colorado that made me so keen on the way a river dances with the land and shapes the earth and us in so many ways.

So that is how it began.  And now I live and love somewhere new, where I don’t know the creeks and rivers so well.  It takes time to walk the land and create that soul map of how  the soil and the rocks and the water fit together.  I’ll get there.  I will.  But just recently, on our trip home from the Midwest, I realized I may not be as far as I thought.

You see if I walk down the road a ways from our home, I’ll hit a drainage that  pours right into the Big Thompson River.  That big river travels east, through majestic canyons flanked by  big-horn sheep and summer tourist territory and,  where the land gets flat, she merges with the  South Platte River.  The South Platte moves north to the far northeast corner of the state, where flat is really flat,  before joining the North Platte River.  Together, as the Platte River, they flow across  the entire length of Nebraska,  snaking their way through cottonwood forests that are flanked for miles and miles by grasslands and cornfields in all directions.  The Platte keeps flowing eastward until she meets that rough state boundary Nebraska shares with state of Missouri.  There the Missouri river, the longest river in the country having journeyed far  from the  foothills of Montana, swallows the Platte’s waters and carriers them right across the state of Missouri  to St. Louis, where,  finally, those waters, those waters that I walked to from my front door, join the Mississippi.

Now this is grand!  The watershed of my home in Colorado and the watershed of my Midwestern roots are one and the same.  I have leaped over the headwaters of the Mississippi, crossed her bridges too many times to count, and listened to tales of her floods.  I love that river deep, deep down.   As I wander our mountain streams, I’ll always be thinking, a little bit, of the green hills and the muddy river that are just down stream.

“I am haunted by waters.”

- Norman Maclean in A River Runs Through It

spring’s other face

With a foot of snow on the ground and more falling it seems the perfect time to remember spring’s other face.  Not too long ago we were splashing in the Big Thompson River.  These earlier-than-they-should-be days of spring, the kind that get us all giddy, thinking that maybe, just maybe, spring’s gentler side will stick around, can’t be missed.  In no time, the creeks and rivers of the valley will be raging.  Rubber-boot wandering will be too dangerous for little folks.  So we wandered and we reveled!

On a trip to the Midwest, we glimpsed some of the earliest signs of spring,  bits of green, flowers, leaf buds.  All things that we’ll be waiting on for quite a bit longer here in the mountains.  The Midwest’s version of spring was wholly hers: gray skies, rain (not snow!), green, magnolia blossoms, singing frogs, thunder, forsythia, puddles, the swiftly moving Mississippi, daffodils, muddy water, busy birds, all taken in along side family.

Two very different springs.   Both equally fickle.

We’re letting those thoughts carry us through the snow storms.  Greatful for a few more chances to play in our snow clothes and so very happy for the flora that will drink up these spring snows and give us fields of rainbows this summer.

And last, a little of nature’s whimsy!

the characters of our days

G-man has brought a love of costume to our life.  He dons a costume every day.  Presently, we are fixed in a sometimes-medieval, sometimes-mythological world with a particular fondness for dragons and those who love them or hunt them.  (It all depends on one’s mood: sword-bearing or cuddly.)  But for the last couple of days, everywhere we go,  we are  accompanied by two peculiar forest creatures.  They are good company.  Let me introduce them:

The gnome:  a mischievous little fellow with a voice so sweet he can sing life back into fallen trees.  On any given day, he can be found wandering in the forest in search of berries.  There has never lived a creature that loves berries as much as the little gnome

The ogre: a giant beast, green from head to toe.  You might think he is a grumpy sort of fellow, as many ogres are known to be curmudgeons.  But this ogre, he is a gentle giant.  Strong, sturdy and slow about everything he does, except for climbing trees.  He can climb to the top of a Ponderosa pine faster than you can say PON-DER-O-SA.  Really, he can.

These creatures were a collaborative effort, created by E-man and me for a dear friend’s birthday a while back.  I knitted the hats and E-man developed the characters along with an associated story to bring the creatures and our natural environment to life.  The ogre and the gnome have lived on in our minds.  It seemed absolutely necessary to invite them to settle right here, in the Ponderosa pines of our backyard.  So glad we did.

If you’re interested in bringing an ogre and gnome to life in your own backyard, you can find the patterns here: Ogre :::: Gnome.

And if you want help crafting a story, here’s ours.  Use your own flora to make the forest critters comfortable in your own corner of the earth.

Happy forest wandering to all!

winter colors

 We hunted for colors in winter and found a lot more:

lichen cloaked rocks in orange, chartreuse, and gray

soft moss

old rose hips tenaciously clinging to thorny branches

two aspen that have twisted around each other as if they have mated for life

an abandoned wasp nest

aspen trees that have been somebody’s lunch–Eman wonders: caterpillars? and requests that I look for caterpillar scat!

shadows

rocks to climb

Winter’s  wonders are clear to see amongst the bare earth and trees.

Winter Wednesday

forest school: ephemeral building

Our journey to the forest took on a different tone today. With some of the “big” kids missing, we put our construction efforts on hold for a bit to do some exploring. Although with E-man as company, building is a reoccurring theme. We can’t ever really put construction on hold. As we left our forest school space, we traveled with the river, through a narrow valley. It was a magical place that invited exploration. The forest floor, upon close inspection, was covered in moss and pine cones from the spruce, firs and pines–amazingly all present in this small valley

In a little grove of Aspen we paused for a bit to just be in the forest. Industrious E-man was quick to develop a wall-building project (I think he must be kindred spirits with beavers), which, he explained, was to protect the trees from hikers. The wall, however, was in the middle of the trail, not a place to leave a wall. Equally engrossed in the idea of the outcome as the process, I was unsure how I would convince him to dismantle the wall before our departure. While navigating this touchy issue I called upon the work of Andrew Goldsworthy . The result: “ephemeral building”. Build it, capture it, dismantle it. And that is what we did. Here is the capture phase, just before the dismantling phase.

This type of construction is well suited to our environs. Leave No Trace is serious business in the National Park, where we do most of our wandering.

The camera captured E-man’s desire to capture the forest. On our way up the trail we came across a little chickaree busy at work doing what chicakrees do so well. Below, his stash of pine cones as well as the aftermath of his work.

The other joy of exploring outside the National Park: we came home with pockets full of forest tidbits to investigate this week.

I hope you will find some time to wander in the forest this week, too.

labeling

Mother, Artist, Vegetarian and Chocoholic. That isn’t me. But that tagline, which I read on someone eles’s blog, struck me as interesting. I am a mother. I am also inclined towards vegetariansim, and I like chocolate. But I am not an artist. Or am I? Aren’t we all? I mean isn’t the act of living artistry? And aren’t we all mothers (even the men)? And singers? And teachers?  Aren’t we all just bits and pieces of the same stuff?

I am struck by how driven we are to categorize. Not only driven, we are good at it! No one taught my sons how to identify a girl from a boy or a plant from an animal. We are born with this skill. It is both innate and primitive.

We have a tendency to interface with the natural world using the same framework: identify, name, categorize, analyze. Inherent to this process is the creation of boundaries and of separateness. When we isolate the individual (the species, the element, the season) we miss the wholeness, the interconnectedness of everything in the cosmos. But, nothing exists outside of a context, an intimate relationship with its surrounding environment.

In an essay on the philosophical underpinnings of a holistic approach to education, Ron Miller describes a holistic perspective as emphasizing “the complementarity of all phenomena; in place of division and opposition, it sees the world as a dynamic balance of forces. Wholeness includes light and shadow, joy and suffering, feminine and masculine, mind and matter, human and nonhuman, and so on. In this view, the world is not divided into exclusive categories or unsolvable contradictions. This worldview is comfortable with paradox, mystery and emergence. A holistic epistemology seeks synthesis and integration rather than analysis and dissection.” Yes, that seems so right! But I am (we are) stuck with a cultural upbringing based on categories and analysis and our language has evolved to express these same ways of thinking.

Where are the words to explore this holistic view of life? The words are there, for some, but not for most. But the ideas exist even if the words fail us. This is why our children need to be in the natural world without agenda, so that the limitations of our language do not limit their perception of the world. And this is also why we need to tell stories…more on that next time.  Now, I need to go categorize this post.

first day in the forest

A group of families here in Estes Park has come together with the intention of exploring the Waldkindergarten idea and, perhaps, to extend the experience beyond the very young. We are blessed to live in a community that is surrounded by wilderness and is rich with people that value wilderness as integral to their lives. It is lovely to come together with other families around the theme of connecting with nature and to think about how this experience will shape our future.

We ventured out this week to establish our “magical place”. The big’ns lead us all in a very focused and enthusiastic gathering of timber for our future building projects. It was remarkable to see how easily even the tiniest people in our group, only 2 years old, eagerly and purposefully joined in. It is clear that this collective forest schooling experience will not only nurture each child’s individual relationship with nature, but will also provide a meaningful context for our children to explore how each individual’s contributions, the group’s cooperative efforts and an ethic of thinking for the whole group will shape an authentic community experience.