GETTING TO KNOW THE WOODS

The following account is from the book, Stories in the Land, which you can download by going to the Resources page at the top of this post.  The teachers who took their students to the woods had arranged for older 9th graders to lead the first graders through this experience.  Here's their introduction:

When we took our students to Peddie Woods and to its 

surrounding lake,we saw awe in the 

eyes of the first graders.  Our students were showing them 

ducks, fiddleheads, lily pads, red maple trees, and crab-apple 

blossoms.They pointed out poison ivy and explained its dan- 

gers.They swung from Virginia creeper vines and made leaf 

rubbings of oak, maple, and birch trees.  With the use of home- 

made puzzle pieces, they learned about food webs and the 

interdependence of living organisms.We were amazed by all 

that our students taught their younger buddies.  Everyone was 

engaged and extremely excited about sharing the natural 

world.  We were rendered speechless.  As the day progressed,we 

watched our students embody the meaning of stewardship. 

They had instilled the wonder of the landscape they had come 

to know so well into the minds of these first graders.

Here is a response from one first-grader after this experience.

I have never been alone in the woods with my 

friends able to do whatever I want....You cannot 

know this feeling until you have seen the vast 

acres of pine. When I looked to the ground,I did 

not see trash, instead I sawpine needles and 

maple leaves covering the rich soil. Even though 

the leaves were dead, I could still see a spark of 

life in them, a spark that cannot be found in a 

city or a town, but only in a forest. It was the 

effects of the silence, the way you could see tree 

after tree, it seemed as if the scenery would never 

end. All I could smell was the pine and no pollu- 

tion. Now, I don’t just think of the outdoors as 

bugs and mud, I think of the beauty and the 

freedom of the landscape. 

(early morning hike in late March, Great Smoky Mountains)

If more and more teachers and parents took their children to the woods to see, smell, touch, and hear the life there, we could look to the future knowing that the places we--and they--love will be in good hands.

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PS, here's one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver

Sleeping in the Forest 


I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.



from Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver

© Mary Oliver