This week we visited the Veridian site (south of County Farm Park on Platt Road) to survey the current landscape. Again, we worked with Shawn Severance, a naturalist from County Farm Park, to create a natural features inventory of the land. As with our other hikes, the theme of this walk was to read how the landscape tells a story.
Before we began, we read the poem Hamatreya by Ralph Waldo Emerson. We paused at the line: “Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys, Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs.” Students shared their thinking on what they thought this meant--that the earth is shared by all living things, that humans think they own nature but do not, and that the earth has a language of its own; we just have to listen. What are the ways the land is speaking to us today, and how does the land show us (or tell us) what it wants? We looked at aerial images of the site from the 1940s, when it was rows of corn, the 1960s when the first building and driveway were built on the property, the 1970s, when parking lots were expanded and a juvenile detention center moved in, and currently, after the building was demolished. We walked the property in search of remnants from these periods and before. Students found tile pieces and bricks, fossils of coral, and leaves from 60 year old oak trees. We collected thorns from the honeysuckle (which used to protect against wooly mammoths!) , learned how to read winter twigs, and found blue/green algae (Gnostok) growing where the buildings once stood, healing the land. Students returned to school inspired by this walk and excited to look at and label all of our new artifacts. We spent time drawing detailed sketches of these items as well. As we reflected on the natural features of the landscape, we reflected on the question: how can we build our homes while allowing all of the life on this site to keep theirs?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
March 2020
Categories |