W.S. Merwin

These are two important poems by W. S. Merwin:

Native Trees: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43126/native-trees

and Trees: https://merwinconservancy.org/2017/11/trees-by-w-s-merwin/ 

One of the very special things about working with wood is the way it connects us so seamlessly with our natural environment. It provides an interpretive framework for examining the forests that surround us if we're lucky,  or that once surrounded us if we are not. 

Native Trees addresses the child's natural curiosity about the forest in the face of parental ignorance and disinterest. Trees is simply a celebration. 

There's a sycamore tree convenient to our student's path between classes. Its limbs are at the right height for our younger students to "grab aholt of" and hoist themselves up. One of our second grade students, new to the school this year proclaimed, "this is the first time I've climbed a tree!" Can there be any single learning lesson more important than that?

I look out on a foggy morning. The air is perfectly still, with not a single leaf turning or lifting in the still air. You might miss an understanding of the life that lives within.

My thanks to Barbara for sending links to the poems.

Today in the woodshop my students will be working on camp stools and buddy benches and getting to know wood and the story it tells us about ourselves.

Make, fix and create. Assist others in learning lifewise.