Weeks 23 & 24 2024-2025 in Review
We returned to TCC from spring break just in time to witness the break of spring and were greeted by change in various forms. Spring beauties and violets emerged in the grass, May apples and trillium popped up from the forest floor, the redbuds blossomed and revealed their namesake. Amidst all this emergent life, the land also bore some losses. The heavy storm winds took down a number of trees in the forest, including a very large and old oak near the forest's edge, a tree we long referred to as The Witnessing Tree. This tree was dear to us, remains dear to us, and her death brings us both great sorrow and also lessons in emergence, endings as beginnings, and grief as life.
Our arborist friend Tree Dave paid us a call (and later a field ecology visit!) to share in our grief, identify cause of death (root rot likely caused by a fungus), and offer valuable perspective: The Witnessing Tree was glorious, and extremely lucky. In Dave's words, "She won the forest lottery." She stood in just the right spot to get all the sun and nutrients she needed, to extend her roots, and to grow as big and old as she did, a sentinel on the hilltop, ever wise and watchful. And now, in death, she'll offer a home to even more life, become a hub for new types of play and exploration, and her spot in the canopy is clear for another very lucky tree to grow big and old and bear witness. What new and unexpected gifts will emerge following her departure? We have already been invited into relationship with this tree in her new existence, and in many ways already feel even closer and more connected after this shift to a new form of life. As Tree Dave also shared, "This is what forests do, isn't it?" and we can learn so much from that.
We spent a great deal of time playing and discovering change in the forest these two weeks. We played on the fallen tree, we explored along the creek, and spent time at a beautiful spot that was brand new to us: a peninsula shaped by a sharp bend in the creek, that has been cutely and funnily named the Pelinsula. The Pelinsula inspired forest picnicking, rock skipping, wading in the deeper water of the bend, honeysuckle clearing, and deep conversation. Other forest activity included much play at the "Rock Climber," a gentle hillside formation of limestone bluffs, and harvesting of redbuds from Redbud Grove for our annual Redbud Lemon Cornmeal Loaf Cake (a mouthful to say and to eat!).
Outside the forest we enjoyed a diversity of offerings and free play, new and familiar, and ideated so many more in an exciting and enthusiastic Set-the-Cycle meeting. The board is abundant with wide-ranging offerings in the queue, too many to list, but includes homemade horchata, weaving on branch looms, "Sit Spots" with A (have you heard of this practice?), and a mysterious forthcoming culinary feat titled, "Incredible Stupendous Magnificent Food Offering" with H and E... R continued his drawing series. E introduced a new series for reading and working on monologues. Also in the theatre vein, "Singing and Dancing" moved on from "A Dancer's Heart" and chose a new song to start practicing. We eagerly returned to our Sapling Cage book club which is in its final pages and stages. Much of the group played a lot of soccer - so much soccer. We continued working in the garden, clearing beds and planting peas. And we enjoyed a lovely and meaningful visit from Jess Jones, who offered us a lesson on advocacy, and toured the land with us. Connecting with Jess was such a gift, and they left us with a mutual desire for them to visit here again, with the intention of spending time at the Pelinsula together.
These weeks full of spring have felt bursting with life and change, and have also held a slowness, a beautiful suspension of time, as we grieved, embraced change, and leaned into all the myriad ways of learning and knowing and being we have the immense privilege of exploring here. One young person, in her time at the Pelinsula, learned how to skip rocks. She watched others for a bit, and then asked them to show her their technique. She selected the perfect stone, and threw: her first successful skip across the clear, deep pool at the bend in the creek, a thousand droplets rising in the sunlight. Other young people nearby threw rocks again and again, watching the water rise, noting their own power.
Each week, we share a recount of all that we've done and the "learning" that's taken place in these writings, and really, with humility, we must acknowledge that we actually do not and cannot know the knowing that's unfolding here. We can document and observe (always pressing against the evaluative gaze with which adults persistently look upon children), and, we miss so much. And how wonderful, in spite of the lists of offerings and transcripts we compile. Because there is a sacredness in the skipping of rocks that we'd rather leave untouched, a magic in the noticing of the spring ephemerals emerging, pea sprouts shooting up from the soil, and in the listening to birdsong. As Teacher Tom observes in his recent piece, "Connected, Reflected, Experiencing Lightness and Sweetness, Knowing":
"Western science, that effort to overcome mere instinct, is, as [Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass] writes, 'rigorous in separating the observer from the observed, and the observed from the observer.' It is an active, overt attempt to disconnect ourselves, to seek some sort of objective, third-person perspective that holds true for all things for all times. But as the catfish know, as the jumping spiders know, as the plants and babies know, nothing exists outside of its relationship with the rest of the world."
It's enough to know that relationship is at the center here, of this work. With one another, with the land, and among elements we cannot and will not and should not know. Notice what's emerging from the forest floor, watch the clouds move across the sky as the call of a Pileated Woodpecker rings out from the trees.
Be with one another.
Lay in the grass.
Skip the rocks.
Be with what is real.
With gratitude and care,
Emily, Sarah, and Zoey
A reminder from the playworkers at Rooted in Play: "Play doesn't need to teach anything to be worthy. A child spinning in circles, digging a hole for no reason, or talking to a stick isn't wasting time - they're claiming space in a world obsessed with outcomes. Play is not preparation for life. It is life."
Go "do nothing" - go play!