I remember several years ago when my dear friend, Jeanne Goldhaber, asked me, “Do you know the book, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate-Discoveries from a Secret World ? It has all my attention these days. Please read it!”

This book, by Peter Wohlleben, was the impetus for Jeanne and her colleagues at the Reggio Inspired Vermont Early Education Team (RIVET) to consider the perspective of trees as “active social life forms” in their observations of children’s interactions with trees, and also to invite other colleagues to share their work and insights about children and trees in the Spring 2000 issue of the quarterly periodical, Innovations. In this book, Peter Wohlleben, a German forester, takes the perspective of the trees much as Jacques Cousteau took the perspective of the creatures of the oceans in his writing. In The Hidden Life of Trees, we hear many stories and case studies that reveal the “wood wide web,” the biological structures that allows trees to exchange signals of danger, share nutrition, and work together in many ways.

Jeanne asked me to share reflections and thoughts in response to the Innovations article and the work focused on children and trees that was collected from many schools, teachers, and children including Taos, New Mexico; Boulder, Colorado; Winnetka Illinois; Belingham, Washington; Casper, Wyoming; Washington D.C.; and Baisha, China. The reflections in this blog post will be shared in the Winter 202 issue of Innovations.

Let me start by acknowledging the big world picture of where we are right now. What strikes me today, as we live into our 7th month of a global pandemic, that was not foreseen as the spring issue of Innovations went to press, is what a different world we are living in, all of us, perhaps most especially teachers and children. As Cadwell Collaborative, we work with a school in St. Louis, Missouri where teachers have been mandated to spend 80-90% of their time in school out-of-doors. Learning outside is recognized as one of the safest ways to be in school right now, not only in North America, but worldwide.

What happens when we, teachers and children, move our learning outside? What happens when we are almost always surrounded by trees and plants, sky and clouds, weather and wind? In many schools, being in relationship with the natural world is no longer taking place only during recess or on special expeditions, but as the norm, as the everyday way of being in school.

Many of us have been fascinated with the Forest School Movement where small children in Germany and Scandinavia spend all their time outdoors, even in the winter. Now, there is a resurgence of interest because, out of necessity, many students and teachers are going outside to learn.

In many ways, this is a big silver lining to the pandemic. There is ample research on the benefits of being outside and spending time in the natural world for all of us and especially children. Learning outside reduces stress and anxiety, increases attention, engagement, motivation, and increases memory and retention.

Sharon Danks, author of From Asphalt to Ecosystems and CEO of Green Schoolyards America, and co-founder of the National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative, is helping schools and districts across the country use outdoor spaces as essential assets as they reopen with physical distancing measures in place.

Children’s tree portraits, The University School, Milwaukee, WI

Returning to the Innovations article, how do projects that focus on children and trees fit into this new picture? I was touched by all of the children’s words that were quoted in the Innovations article…words of noticing, in metaphors, and full of tenderness toward the trees that surround their schools.

Consider these ideas and theories of the children quoted:

There are baby trees, and momma trees.

Roots go to the center of the world and drink together.

She is cold because she’s outside and the snow lands on her branches.

I am struck that children most naturally identify with trees as themselves…a tree’s parts as body parts, the trees’ processes as cycles, the trees’ lives as close to their lives.

Since I lived in Reggio Emilia and worked at the Diana School 30 years ago, I have learned that this is true of Italian children, North American children, Chinese children, all children. It is a universal response of children to the trees, if we ask, and notice, and listen.

One of my favorite books is The Goodness of Rain, by Ann Pelo. Ann chronicles a year when she was asked to care for a toddler of a friend of hers. She dedicates herself to nurturing her companion’s and her own ecological identity and kinship with the natural world. I recommend this book far and wide for it is the record of an intimate journey of an adult’s and a child’s growing love of and strong sense of place in the natural world.

Another favorite is The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places, where authors and naturalists, Gary Nabhan and Stephen Trimble investigate how children come to care deeply about and identify with the natural world and how human growth remains rooted, as it always has, both in childhood and in wild landscapes.

Both of the books, beautifully written, tell story after story of children in the natural world, of children and stones, gardens, rain, mountains, ponds, creatures, and trees. The authors tell us stories that are compelling and convincing…that we are all a part of this magnificent natural world. That we are nature. That we belong to the trees and they belong to us. That we are intimately, really and truly, connected and in a symbiotic relationship. True also of the air, water, earth, plants, insects, sky, wind, and sun.

As I write today, I am looking out on a sparkling, crisp October day, where the leaves of the birches and the crowns of the white pines are waving and shimmering in the morning light. These trees that circle our property are our constant companions in all weather and through all the seasons. This natural world that we inhabit, it is calling us. We have an opportunity to make it our classroom now and to learn close at hand what it has to teach us. May we all find time to listen to the trees, the sky, the stars, and to the children. May we listen and learn together.

When I Am Among the Trees

Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”