2nd Nature Hike

Unseasonably warm, party cloudy and comfortable. Seven children climbed all over a HUGE red oak windfall in the part of the woods called forest cathedral. The trunk was as wide as a horse and spanned ravine top to stream bottom, at times 15' off the ground. Everyone was drawn to the challenge of shimmying up the 30 degree slope of the giant trunk. They each manufactured heaps of pride in their daring do. We did learn along with the climbing--how Quercus rubra is distinguished from Q. falcata and Q. alba by the leaves and drew diagrams of individualized quadrats. The moms and I reflected on what makes this such a powerful learning place. We settled on the absence of the dullness. Their adrenaline was rushing, the muscles working, the senses open. The forest ceiling in the cathedral is 100 feet high. The walls are ravines. The sanctum is a wide bowl of a floodplain but not wet.

Everybody loved it. School.