The students had just begun walking on the leaf-covered trail when 9-year-old Austin Driver spoke up.
"I found something! I found a track," he said, the excitement in his voice encouraging the eight other children to huddle around. He pointed to the outline of a deer hoof in the mud.
As they spent Wednesday morning slowly walking a trail at The Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World, the students from Sedalia Elementary School pointed out spider webs and smelled the rich, black soil made by a decomposed tree. They played with mussel shells scooped out of a pond and silently appreciated the reflection of autumn leaves on the surface of a lake.
Their adventure was the last field trip in a three-year grant that allowed Sedalia students in grades two through five to visit the center. Frank Phoenix gave the grant through his Fenwick Foundation.
The center is on Timberlake Farm, a 165-acre earth sanctuary surrounded by Lake Macintosh on three sides. Its mission "is to bring to life a new vision of the relationship between the inner life of the child and the beauty, wonder and intimacy of the universe." The center also trains teachers to bring nature awareness to the classroom and offers programs for young adults and college students.
On Wednesday, Herschelle Watkins' fourth-grade class began the day gathered in a circle around a fire. They quietly listened as educator Sandy Bisdee explained the purpose of the earth sanctuary, telling the students that every creature on the grounds -- "every daddy long-legs ... every insect hiding under the bark ... every bird" -- was welcome and safe.
Bisdee played a song of thanks on her cedar American Indian flute and spoke about the value of having "an attitude of gratitude" in life.
"My hope is that you will fall in love with the earth, maybe for the first time, maybe for the hundredth time," she said.
Bisdee answered students' questions, including whether any woods creatures could harm them. She told them about a few poisonous but hibernating creatures such as the black-widow spider and copperhead snake and explained the importance of respecting living things and giving them space, if necessary.
Watkins said the walk through the woods usually makes children less afraid of creatures living there. "The fear is gone, the fear of the unknown," she said. Watkins saw changes in students after bringing a class to the center last year.
"I think one of the things they get out of it is a deeper appreciation and awareness of nature," Watkins said. "I don't think they realize before they come here that there's so much to learn ... by sometimes being quiet and listening," she said. After the trip, students want to be outside more, which is a wonderful shift, given the lure of video games and the computer, Watkins said.
On Wednesday, the class divided into three groups to explore different parts of the earth sanctuary.
Bisdee's group practiced using all of their senses to observe the happenings in the forest.
They put on their "deer ears," cupping their hands behind their ears and listening to the bird calls and the rain drizzle hitting the leaves. They curled their hands into loose fists, holding them as "binoculars" against their eyes. They spotted a hawk's nest in the upper branches of a pine tree and wood spiders darting across the forest floor.
Kaylee Smith, 9, gasped when Bisdee allowed a wood spider to crawl onto her hand. A moment later, Kaylee spotted another one and crouched down to protect it from being trampled. "Watch out, there's a spider," she said.
And the students used their imaginations, an important part of the experience.
Austin pointed out some lichens growing on a tree trunk, saying they looked like stairs.
"Oh, my goodness, it must be a stairway for the mice," Bisdee said. At the end of the trail, Bisdee encouraged the students to "draw a circle around this moment," and the students followed her in arching their index fingers across the sky.
At any time in the future, maybe even before a school exam, "we can pull out a piece of today, this moment, and remember today," Bisdee told them.
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