it was possible
10 Years of Wilderness Education
It’s been a long time since I wrote. I ask forgiveness of my readers and especially those of you who financially support me and the kids in this forest of life, education, and growth. It has been, and remains, magnificent.
Your care, whether as a reader of Off Grid Kids, a close friend, an acquaintance from Lama, a reader of How to Tell Stories to Children, or simply this Juniper scented path of learning… thank you. Everything that I’ve written or said can be reduced to that one phrase – thank you.
We are near, very near the end of ten years of learning in the wilderness, in the classroom, in our bodies, in our hearts. On my shelf sits a note from my daughter, tucked into the edge of a collage of portraits – she on my lap at age six, she in my arms at age eight, me with a bad haircut, me with a good haircut, she with light in her eyes, both of us smiling.
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“Thank you, Dad,” says the handwritten note, “You have taught me so much throughout my life, math, reading, writing, and kindness, honesty, and vulnerability. Thank you.”
Well heck, dear child (now a curvy, intelligent young woman). It’s nice that you say that. But I hope you know that it’s always been me thanking you, thanking this place, holding this treasure of life like a too-big fish. An earth covered in stromatolites, fossils, and taxes. People who write pretty words, angry words. It’s such a painful and beautiful place we share.
I have struggled to write because my spare time and energy has been occupied with steering this project of learning and growth into a sense of completion. I don’t believe that a perfect completion is necessary, just that this too is a new moment, one in which we have the opportunity to be burned out and halfway out the door, minds lolling on the grass of future memories, or one in which we meet the moment, look it fiercely in the eye, and breathe. There aren’t starts and stops in life. Everything proceeds concurrently and blends one into the other. Whatever happens, however we close this period, this loving journey, I know it will be right.
I can explain why! Something I noticed long ago, at an early age (not mine, but the early age of these kids) is that the essence of life and education is showing up with true presence. With one’s personal magic and integrity in place. Curriculum comes second. What we’re doing is teaching children how to live. We can’t do that with subjects, or not merely. And we can’t fully do that with good videos or books. We have to do it by giving them people. People who live and foster experiences that are vigorously alive and worth emulating for oneself. I’ve had the fortune to know a lot of them.
I’ve spent 10 years honing that skill, showing up on the spot, being present for the moment - amidst rain, conflict, pleasure, and laughter. It’s fair to say that I did well. It’s fair to say that I did poorly. Life is a golden flecked mixture of grace and dirt. There is no doing it right.
But there is consistency. Even now, as our small group faces some of its last challenges and changes, I recognize that the essential piece is for me to merely show up and be there with the kids as we complete… whatever it is we’re completing. Because it’s far more than school. It’s far more than learning and education.
I don’t mean to overemphasize our success. We’re a ragtag group of ping-pong balls too. I am, at least. We’re bonking and laughing and careening off of all kinds of experiences. Happy experiences. Easy experiences. Death experiences. And hatred. Self-hatred. Mooring ourselves to resilience.
We showed up to all of it. We didn’t force things. We allowed them to happen, and we allowed ourselves to shift and notice when shifting and noticing was in order. We created projects and paths of learning for ourselves, and somehow, amidst it all, we remained present as humans. There’s no doubt we made mistakes, forgot some of our lessons, kicked our friends, and went home angry or depressed. How can a person navigate life without encountering these things?
We learned fractions and Civil War history. We studied languages and great novels. We looked at flowers and questioned mineral structures. Just how large is this planet of time, of events, of cellular modules that move electrons across membranes to produce tiny electromagnetic fields that cause energy to arise in life? Excuse me?
And then we forgot it. Because Sarah was upset and acted like everything was fine. And the joke wasn’t funny. And the pretend kick was just a mask to hide the real one. So we stopped. We showed up. Again. Again. What. Who. Where. Why are we learning to this? What are we looking for in ourselves? Fractions? Kindness? The proper way to spell ‘umbrage’?
What doors do we open in childhood? What are we preparing ourselves for? When I look around our communities, neighborhoods, and planets – I think it’s a worthy question. Not because I’m right. I’m appalling wrong at times. But it’s worth asking why we have quality materials and conveyances and such a collection of isolated hearts and bitter attitudes. Cynicism. Fear. Sarcasm that’s hard to recognize as sarcasm anymore.
How do we meet this in one another, in ourselves? I don’t know how except by noticing it. Listening. Offering the kids a chance to, once again, listen and respect one another, not with rules and regulations but with our own internal thermometer of what was right. Disbelieving the hierarchical notion that it’s adults teaching kids. Yeah right. We don’t have the game plan, guys. I think it’s pretty obvious at this point. But we do possess something important – the courage to pivot when it becomes obvious that that’s what we need to do.
Whether I and this band of no-longer-kids have accomplished that remains to be seen. I make no real claim that I’ve accomplished much of anything other than a solid attempt. But spend time with us. Cross fields of grass. Eat lunch and listen to the meadowlarks. Watch how these kids tussle and grow and play. I haven’t met an adult who hasn’t walked away with something new in their heart.
Of course this is in everyone else too. There’s nothing especially unique about us. That is the very point! What we’ve been doing all these years is just witnessing the sweetness of being ourselves. This is what everyone wants. It’s possible. It’s very, very possible.
Stop teaching fear. Teach wonder and kindness. Show kids what community looks like, so they know how to build it for themselves. Help them see that you notice the situation and that your lecture wasn’t as important as the bluebirds suddenly flocking outside your window.
The bluebirds aren’t birds. They are, but they are also our thoughts and sensations. The feeling tone of everything we breathe and do. How many of us have sat in offices or chairs pushing ourselves through work tasks with bitter and aching hearts? How many of us have sat in classrooms like this? Is this what we want? Does anybody actually want this? Why should we be doing this? What are we teaching ourselves to become? Where are we forcing ourselves to go? There’s dew on the grass, and if that lovely woman smiles at me I might smile too. Then trip.
It’s possible to interpret what I’m saying as laziness. In my opinion it’s a far more rigorous path than what most of us were presented with. I’m not suggesting forgoing subjects for idleness and pleasure. Rather, I’m hungry to know what society could look like if we hone our attention and focus while simultaneously giving awareness to how we feel and speak to one another. Kindness. Humility. Perfect math scores. Tuba solos.
I’m writing today not because I’m trying to encapsulate all this. I can’t. I know that. I haven’t written in weeks because I struggle to say what is in my heart after all these years. It’s so rich and complex. I’m wrong about so much. I made errors and chipped a tooth. But I saw dragons too. I heard the twinkle of creeks. I saw children growing into humans, and I felt wet with tears. I feel the joy of having done something so meaningful. It was my own education I was after all this time. I perceive this as selfish, delightfully so, and I have no regrets.
The reason I’m writing, after that far too lengthy introduction, is to announce a direction, a question, a path that may be opening for me. Many people have asked, “Now that you’re done, what comes next?” I’ve never known. I haven’t been trying to know. Sure, I hem and haw and consider. But I’ve been putting my energy into finishing what’s in front of me.
But certain ideas have been brewing, ones far too early to state with meaningful clarity. I believe my life will have space for mentoring youth. I’m done with teaching, at least in a formal capacity. This I know (I knew it ten years ago when I started). For me, this was a once in a lifetime thing. It’s a way of honoring it. I can’t repeat something of this majesty but once.
However, in the future I will likely have time and space to work with youth, teens, and young adults. Not so much as an instructor, but a mentor or one who inquires. Why? Who are you? Have you met the chambers of life and seen your soul spit and howl? Have you learned calm and rage?
But suddenly I am sensing other tea leaves touching the warm vapor steaming off this hot water in my soul. Death. That’s the brew. I caught a whiff of it on that hillside, the broad fragrance of earth spanning my periphery. I don’t know. There’s so little I know. Isn’t that a bird? I don’t think our task in life is to know. I think it’s to live fully, to cry, and grow into death. To be alive with the aging and elder. The curriculum of dying.
I have small ideas about how I might get there. I have large ideas too, like that too-big-fish I was… whoops, there it goes. All the best things I’ve done or witnessed in life occurred because I didn’t know how to do them. They were too big for me and I just started walking in a direction. I think I’m going to start walking in this direction. I think there’s meaningful work for me to do with the aging and dying.
In teaching, I managed to create a rich community of families, readers, farmers, grandparents, places, stories and curricula over ten years (more really), and that is what inspires me now. Let me restate this, because it has been a privilege to earn the respect and participation of all these people and places. Nothing has been due to my efforts alone. That’s always nonsense. What we’ve done has been small, so simple, yet everyone who touches it feels the fecundity and living breath inside of us.
It is appropriate to humble myself before this community and speak gratitude. It is also appropriate to acknowledge that I did in fact lead the effort. I did not do it single handedly, but it has taken my leadership and without that none of these photos and memories would exist. I don’t need to put that away. I kicked ass. There’s much that I am proud of here. What’s more, these skills – these community building skills – have ripened in my soul. It’s evident that I’m good at this. And it warms my heart. It’s a great privilege to be here with all of you.
Today, my kids are fledging. Some are attending high school next year. Others have successfully transitioned to a public charter school, one or two will remain homeschooling on their own, and so forth. There’s much to do, but the transition has been easy. A few parents have already shared report cards or test scores - things we avoided with purpose in these young years. The kids are flourishing, elsewhere just like they have here. The fear we sometimes bring to decisions like this is itself a teacher. Of course you flourish, you glorious bird. I will always celebrate that in you. When you bring this energy into what you undertake, your true presence will always give you wings.
I’d like to take this body of work into the arena of dying gracefully. It’s a big fish. Honestly, I think I can do it – not because I’ve been trained for it, but because I’m alive. Living into death. There have been a great many who have walked this path before me, many who are more skilled. But that isn’t a good reason to not do something.
The beauty of what I do, when I do it well, is to be boring and simple and joyfully alive. This, in my opinion, goes for everyone. But it is hard to contain that innocence. Somehow, it’s wedded to the core of my being. Everyone sees it. It gets covered up, sure. It gets chalky, sooty, and tired. But within me, for whatever reason, I have a tenacious ability to bite and love and hang on to the simple aching beauty of this life. In its comings, yes, and in its goings.
Hello. Goodbye. These are such powerful terms.
Whether I’m right or not is unimportant. That’s not the message I hope to share. What I’m speaking into the wind, into the fragrance of memory, is that I’m willing. If this effort has merit, if there is an organization, a community, a gathering of resources and grit – I’m here for it. I’ve messed a lot of things up, but I brought a lot of fun and learning into it. I have a bad haircut. I have a good haircut. And I’d like to try again.
I don’t know what death is, what lies before or beyond. To be honest, these aren’t crucial questions for me. I dislike the safety and temperance of pretending to know. Look at this place. It isn’t about knowing it. It’s graceful, it’s rude. And there is redemption. Forgiveness lives inside of us if we carry it for each other. It’s a choice that we bring into our days. It can come stealing softly in the night with padded footsteps. But you can bite forgiveness in the face too. Then earn silence.
What makes life beautiful, its essential quality, is that it eats and poops. It changes to be alive. It has to. That is why everything is reproducing. Life can’t sustain itself as a single entity. No cell, no tree, no leopard or fungus. We, all of us, are only alive because we’re dying. We’re dying into one another. It is possible to lament the loss of the individual. For the human, it is likely a must. Grief is a blessing to us.
There is a certain aching beauty, an elixir or magic, when we understand that life, any individual life, is something present. It’s real. The loss of that something should never fully occlude the gain of what did occur. An exploding star isn’t defined by its death. A stillborn or deformed child, a man cut down in the prime of life - they are never merely stillborn, deformed, or lost. Life is what it is, not what it didn’t continue to be or what it didn’t match up to. It is the expression of something in time. That expression, like a star, truly does begin, shine, and end. What makes the shine so precious is the awareness that we only have the opportunity to see it right now, to look at it, to listen and touch. Right now.
Some of these words are a little pompous or overwrought. Good writing, like good presence, requires change. The stupidity of words. The accident of an excellent phrase. The true success of the last ten years with the kids was that we were present for it. Sure, I provided lessons and experiences, but more important than any of these was the simple regularity of my presence, saying, “Yes, this.”
I’d like to bring this gravity, the lightness and whimsy, the sour pickle nonsense of my being to support the living as they’re dying. With humility, with grace. With listening. With a cat that’s angry about its dinner choices. It’s the courage to move beyond certainty or disbelief, the poetry of life, that often reveals its best vistas. Good views exist in landscapes that change. Weather in the soul.
I’d like to be part of learning, of teaching myself anew, how to live life fully – so that in letting go of it more of us might feel the gift of saying goodbye; a once in a lifetime chance, awkwardly, with stage fright and fingers uncertain, to do it wrong and so beautifully right.
But first, I’m taking the kids to Bone Canyon.
