BY HARRY WEEKES
In the middle of February, all our students decamp to the Sawtooth Valley for our Winter Field Study—three days in the nivean wonderland in and around Alturas.
This year, we arrived on the tail end of three feet of snow and into a world that was white, green, and cobalt blue.
My first charge was to lead a small group of sixth- and seventh-grade students on a “Discovery Snowshoe” into the forest. Of various options presented (e.g., “Sit by the creek and see what happens,” “Use your various senses to map out a specific place,” “Look for a specific animal”), they chose, “Follow the tracks… whenever we find them and wherever they go.”
And so we set off. Two hours of meandering across meadows quilted with snow, into sparse stands of conifers, and along a streamside of blanketed willows.
All of this was punctuated in the usual and wonderful way of students; at one point, our group ate an entire bag of cheese puffs both as though they were the last food on earth and also that there would always be more of them; we moved like a slow and exploratory inch worm, the front edge investigating territory while the back end stayed in one place; and at one point, seemingly driven by a primal urge to touch dirt, one of our members wanted to see if she could dig to the ground (she could) and then wondered if she could catch a squirrel (she couldn’t).
Like the winter landscape, the students’ observations were simplifications. As we passed over the lone rabbit tracks literally bounding across the expanse of a field: “These are faint.” Where the first trees emerged as singletons and small clumps: “The tracks move from tree to tree.” And in the denser woods: “It looks like the animal is searching every tree.”
Our path was a scribbled loop that began and ended in our own well-worn tracks. In that loop, we aggregated our collective observations, accumulating a story of the land and its various inhabitants, from the furry to the firs (OK, they weren’t firs but rather lodgepole pines). Few things traveled in or on the snowy meadows. Where trees showed up, so did critters. When lone pines became a forest, we found squirrels, fresh marten tracks, snowshoe hare prints, the remnant piles of snacked-upon pinecones, and the remnant pile of fur of a snacked-upon mammal.
In two hours, a half a mile, and one bag of puffs, we put together the foundational tale of this nook in the Sawtooths. This was neither an arduous task nor a complex one. For my students, though, I am almost certain they would exaggerate the afternoon: “This was a forced march.” A slog. A wallow.
We can think of a thousand reasons not to walk out the door. What we tend to forget is that listening to these urges also quiets the questioning machine that is our mind, that miraculous observational tool that simply cannot stop interrogating our world.
In a recent seminar, the guest speaker had this phrase on a slide: “You can’t change the world, but you can change whatever is within three feet or so.”
Here, then, is my challenge. At some point in the near future, walk outside into the world to the very first sign of a living thing or an actual living thing. Take at least three deep breaths. Now, follow your mind. I am almost certain it will bound, explore, sit still, or otherwise meander. These meanderings, however simple they begin, will ultimately open an infinite world. If you don’t see it immediately, be patient. Time helps. And so do cheese puffs.
Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 53rd year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and two mini-Dachshunds. The baby members of their flock have now become adults—Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope is fledging in Vermont.
