An Afternoon Class in the Meadow

                Published in The Christian Science Monitor

              and in Home Educator’s Family Times

            We took care of a ranch in the mountains of northeastern Oregon, April of 1979 through October of 1987. The nearest school was twenty miles down a graveled road along the river. All winter, ice and snow covered the road. Getting to school on the rambling rural bus, being there all day, and then getting home would have taken twelve hours We weren’t willing to commit our daughters, Juniper and Amanda, to that long a day. To make sure our decision was right, when Juniper was old enough to begin first grade, I drove her to school. The third day, she decided public school wouldn’t work for her. We accepted the responsibility for educating our children.

            Our daughters were eager to enter the rich world of books beyond what we could read to them. When Juniper was six and Amanda was four, Laura and I helped them learn to read. They soon read anything they wanted to read, with occasional help from us. Their interest guided them into reading that gave them a large part of their education.

            While I irrigated meadows, repaired fence, cut hay, and fed cattle, Laura and our daughters had school most mornings at the kitchen table to keep them current on subjects they would have studied if they were enrolled in public school.

            Some who heard of our approach to our daughters’ education were concerned. Weren’t they missing opportunities that children in public schools have? I’m sure they were. Amanda wanted singing lessons and dance lessons. Juniper was interested in team sports. She bought a violin, and, though she learned from books, violin lessons would have been helpful. Amanda saved for a piano and lessons. Our daughters’ readiness to learn sometimes preceded our ability to provide tools and instruction. But they also had educational opportunities that few people, children or adults, have.

            After lunch, my daughters and I drove to the sawmill field and parked the pickup by the road, two hundred yards east of the long-abandoned sawmill. I said, “See the cranes down on the field? to the right of the mill? They’re grey, and those grey logs are directly behind them, so they’re hard to see, but they’re there.”

            They eventually both saw the cranes. “Are they sandhill cranes?”

            “Yes.”

            “Are they the same ones that fly right over the house sometimes?”

            “Yes, they are.”

            “How close can we get to them?”

            “We’ll find out, because I have to work on a ditch down there.”

            We crawled under the fence and walked through sage brush to Dry Creek. I left the plastic curtain dam there, and we walked slowly down the ditch toward the old spring house. Amanda said, “They’re already getting nervous about us.”

            We stood, then took slow steps, then stood still again, but our caution didn’t help much. When we were a hundred yards from the tall sandhill cranes, they began to call and to walk away. Though we stood still, they took to wing, running and jumping to get into the air.

            Amanda asked, “Do you ever get closer to them?”

            “I’ve been closer in casual encounters but never by trying to get closer. They’re very wary birds.”

            “Are they rare?”

            “Not as rare as whooping cranes or trumpeter swans. But we usually only have one pair in this valley. Sometimes, the young come back and live here part of the summer.”

            The week before, when we walked to the mill pond, we were overconfident. We didn’t realize there were a dozen whistling swans on the pond, concealed from us by the high bank, until they took to wing. We were so close, we heard their wings creak as they flew.

            This time, we headed for a place where we could see more of the pond from farther away, but six Canada geese honked and took off. I said, “I guess I’m still overconfident. I’m used to them being more used to me. They usually aren’t so nervous.”

            “They’re nervous about us. We aren’t usually with you.”

            We walked south of the pond and then turned and walked toward it. I said, “There still are geese on the pond. I see their heads above the bank. They’re dark heads against a dark background, so they’re hard to see, but you can see the chin straps. Look for the moving white spot just above the bank.” That pair took to wing and flew past close in front of us.

            I opened the ditch with my shovel and started water onto the field south of the pond. Amanda found a tightly curled orange caterpillar floating in the water. We tried to decide if it was dead or just dormant because it was so cold, but we didn’t reach a conclusion. Amanda put it carefully into a willow bush. She said, “If it isn’t dead, it will be all right after it dries out and warms up there.” Then she helped me clean dead grass from the ditch. Juniper walked along the bank of the pond, exploring.

            When the water was running right, we headed back up the ditch. Amanda asked, “Are the cranes shyer than geese?”

            “Yes. You were much closer to those two geese yesterday than we were to the cranes today, weren’t you, Juniper? Do you see those two geese ahead of us? Look. See that tallest willow bush at the edge of the field? They’re in front of that, but closer to us.”

            “Oh. One of them raised its head. Now I see them. There must be something wrong with my eyes. I didn’t see them until one of them moved.”

            “Do you still see them, now that it put its head back down?”

            “Yes.”

            “There’s nothing wrong with your eyes. When they’re down flat like that, they blend well with their background. They don’t want you to see them. Look away from them and then find them again. The more you see animals that hide from you in appearances, the easier it is to do.”

            I set the plastic dam into Dry Creek to divert water down a ditch and out onto the meadow. Juniper and Amanda brought me rocks to hold the dam in place. We watched to see that the water went where I wanted it to go, and then we walked back to the pickup and drove home.

            Juniper and Amanda washed dishes while I cooked supper. Laura was particularly busy that morning, getting ready for company coming for the weekend and getting ready to go to a lecture in Baker in the evening. Our daughters didn’t have their usual morning classes in history, geography, and science.

            But they had a class in wildlife observation and identification, in analytic vision, in behavior in other species’ territory. Our class continued that evening. We talked about scientific names of species. We talked about cranes’ nests. We agreed that we wouldn’t try to see their nests, because the book said they might abandon their nest if they’re disturbed on the nesting ground. We talked about how some birds let us get quite close to them, and others didn’t.

            I said, “Remember the way the cranes ran and kicked away from the ground as they were taking wing? It takes time and distance to get airborne and to get higher than a predator can jump, because they’re big birds. I think they’re very aware of that, and that’s why they start to fly when we’re still a long way from them.”

            Our daughters were our home librarians. They arranged our books and kept track of what we had. They made a list of what we needed, and we shopped the library when we went to town.

            Evening of the spring day we saw the cranes and explored the meadow, Amanda and Juniper searched through our books and found information about wild life, and they shared the information with me while I put dinner on our table.

            Laura and I tried to fill gaps in our daughters’ education. We sang together, and Amanda’s voice improved. Juniper started violin lessons in town once a week. I helped Juniper learn to bat, throw, and catch.

            Our daughters were strongly motivated to learn and to expand their experiences. They learned what they wanted to learn, even if some of it came later than it did for children in public schools. They learned much about the earth and its inhabitants that most students have no opportunity to learn.

            We had no electricity and no television in Whitney Valley. Freedom from television gave us time to read, to learn, and to pursue our creative interests. Juniper wrote many stories, poems, and three novels. Amanda wrote songs, poems, stories, and essays. They drew and painted and experimented with other art forms.

            They saw cranes, ducks, geese, elk, deer, coyotes, badgers, hawks, owls, eagles, ospreys, snakes, frogs, fish, wild flowers, cattle drives, working cowboys and cowgirls. They explored. Their classroom was all around us. Down along the river. Out in the meadow. In the marshes that merge with the meadow. In the forest that surrounds the meadows.