This is the last night of "summer." School starts here tomorrow morning. I think I'm ready. My room is set up, the papers are copied, the class lists are typed up. The name tags are ready to be applied. I tried on my "first day of school" outfit today after church, to make sure it looked professional, and yet I'd be comfortable. There will be no rest tomorrow. I'll be on my feet all day. I'll be "on" all day. CoolGuy will have the hot tub ready for me when I get home tomorrow evening. I'll be ready for it.
I went outside about 6:00 P.M. and got in the pool. It's still hot here in the desert. The high today was about 103, so the pool is still a wonderful place to be. I swam for a while, I sat on the edge and read the Sunday papers, then swam some more. It got dark. I'd turned on the spa before I swam the second time, so I crawled into the warm bubbling water, and laid back to stare at the darkening sky. Stars were beginning to appear. The moon is about 2/3 full, so I thought about Neil Armstrong for a while. I thought about how familiar the night sky is to me because of my childhood spent outdoors. I thought of all the things I'd learned just because I spent so much time outside. Then I thought of our downed tree at the school.
Wouldn't that have been great if we could have just left that big old tree lying there? It wasn't blocking the walkways, so it wasn't a hazard in that way. We adults were all just fascinated by it. Imagine how the kids would have reacted? We could have gone out there and examined the root system and seen how this desert tree didn't have a big deep main root. It was fed by a web-like system of shallow roots that spread out in a big pattern all around the trunk, so that any little bit of rain that came could be eagerly soaked up.
We could have made rubbings of the bark, and then peeled off a few chunks to see how thick it was, or if bugs lived under it, or if that was where the resinous scent came from when it was wet. We could have explored the branches and looked to see if there were birds' nests. Hummingbird nests are so small that you couldn't have seen them from the ground in that tall tree. But, we have quite a few hummingbirds in our school yard because we also have flowering plants, and every year we see the tiny fliers getting the nectar.
If the tree could have just been left there, we would have watched it start to decay. The leaves and small branches would have gone first, and then insects would have started living under the heavy trunk as they worked at turning that huge dead plant into their food. It would have been an interesting thing to chart each year, especially for first grade, who would have walked past it each day this year as they entered the door near their classrooms. And, as they progressed through the grades, they could have kept track of the tree, as it progressed toward it's final state of decaying matter.
But, nope. It was cut up and hauled away. A big tractor came in and smoothed over the hole that it left behind. There is just a big empty spot, that is scorching hot now as the sun bakes the bricks that form that wall. It used to be a pleasant shady place, with birds and insects. It could have been a fantastic science lab. But, no...is it the lawyers? Or someone's obsession with "neatness?" I don't know. But wouldn't it be cool if we could have used it for Science?
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Not everyone thinks like a scientist (like you); I was in a college physical geography class where the teacher droned on about plate tectonics while outside there was a fabulous thunder storm happening! So rare for San Diego, why didn't he change subjects and use the teaching moment of an actual storm? Carpe Diem! Students of all ages learn so much better from seeing and experiencing than from listening to a lecture or reading from a book. Someday? Maybe the schools and teachers will get it right. Keep up the good work.
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