In the
year 2000, Suquamish Elementary students and staff turned an abandoned lot into
a beautiful pond, filled with foliage native to the Pacific Northwest. The pond
was maintained by a club of third, fourth, and fifth grade students; members of
the club appropriately named “Pond Kids”. From 2006 to 2009, I was a ‘pond
kid’. In my pond journal, I recorded the species of plants and animals, and
learned about their interactions with the ecosystem. I labored away in the hot
summers and cold winters- which included weeding, composting, and repairing
structures at the pond, like bird blinds and tool sheds. After each weekly
meeting I would come home with dirty hands, tired feet, and a smile that would
last until the next gathering.
The club integrated art, as well as Native American culture
into our learning. We were taught how to weave with western red cedar and
cattails, and we learned about the importance of salmon habitats. We learned
many Lushootseed words for animals and plants (which I have forgotten over the
years), and read Salish fables. The woods and waters of Washington became a
dream-world to us children. I still feel that it is one.
Pond Kids allowed me to explore
nature in all of its breadth, from a caterpillar on a leaf, to the gentle waves
of the Puget Sound shores. Pond Kids taught me how to view the natural world;
with a curious and observing mind. Even today, I enter the woods and step on
the shores of the Salish Sea with a strange view of space, where I simultaneously
feel like Horton the Elephant and a Whovillite. An inch of lichen or a cluster
of barnacles seems to be a universe that I can gaze down upon, while the woods
and the sea seem to swallow me up in their density and vastness.
We explored outside of the pond as well. I was
invited to attend Islandwood; one of many nature preserves in the Pacific
Northwest. Islandwood focuses on teaching children the wonder and importance of
the natural world. The campus was my context for learning, where I was taught ecology
within the boundaries of a 225 acre old-growth forest. The knowledge I gained
from pond kids was enhanced by my visits to Islandwood.
In some ways, I feel that I was a naturalist from the start.
I went to Islandwood three times in three years, because I loved it so much.
Each time I went, I would always bring a spare journal. I was afraid of
forgetting what I’d learned or seen that day, so I would continually sketch and
jot down information about anything that happened- birds I’d heard crying out
in the brush, or plants I’d found along
hikes. Each night, I would sit up in my bunk bed and write down every small
detail from the day- starting with the breakfast menu, and ending with the
climb up to the top bunk.
Sometimes I become a cynic, where I think to a quote that I
found on the stairs in the International district bus station: “Thus can be
understood the eagerness to open roads, tunnels, and highways, build bridges,
ships, and railroads. And as if the earth is too small for so much activity,
even the air is being invaded hitherto the exclusive kingdom of birds and
clouds”. Moving to a city has been hard for me, because I’m so used to the
sounds of bird calls, not cars, and the sight of pine trees, not people on the
sidewalk. However, my time in Pond Kids taught me to absorb every bit of nature
that I can-and to savor it. But even in the concrete jungle, I can find
snippets of natural beauty. As I run along the Burke-Gilman, I cherish the Red
Alders, Salal, and Big Leaf Maples. I guess I’ll always be a Pond Kid.
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