The Song Of The Earth

In just a little time, the schoolchildren had become hooked on Nature. They had become studious, and curious. Each child tried to find out something about his own bird's feeding habits, and whether they were not, as most birds were, an asset to the farmer and the orchard grower. There was an ancient orchard next to the school. This became our field laboratory. We noted twenty species nesting there that year, and learned that some twenty more sometimes nested in orchards. This particular orchard was not a modern, scientifically pruned one, but had old, big trees, with lovely low crotches for children to climb, and cavities and hollow limbs for hole-nesting birds. It had been prime in my father's boyhood, when some eight varieties of apple were shipped to Queen Victoria!

Thus the children were learning something of the balance of wildlife. And so, in that long ago year, a new world was opened to all of us, and I think the teacher learned much with the children. In the beginning she, too, had been a novice, but they learned together, some of it by the trial and error method. Sometimes the children found out something before she did, and it gave them great self-confidence. Why, they, too, could find out things for themselves! Together they were learning the song of the earth, and that it was a good one to know; a song with a great tune.

As Mrs. Comstock, The Mother of the Nature Movement, expressed it long ago in her classes—which the writer later was privileged to attend—"Nature-study cultivates in the child a love of the beautiful; it brings to him early a perception of form, of color, of music. He sees whatever there is in his environment, whether it is the thunderhead piled up in the western sky, or the golden flash of the oriole in the elm; whether it be the purple shadows on the snow; or the azure glint on the wing of a little butterfly. Also, what there is of sound he hears; he reads the music score of the bird orchestra, separating each and knowing which bird sings it. And the patter of the rain, the gurgle of the brook, the sighing of the wind in the pines, he knows and loves and becomes enriched thereby."

In these trying times, more than ever before, today's children—as well as adults—need to know this song of the earth. They need it as something actual and real to counteract too much of the vicarious partaking of the adventures of Superman and the Gang Busters. They need—how we all need—the peace and understanding that comes with a realization of this oneness with the earth, with the song of its hills and valleys, its streams and waterfalls, with its pictures of lazy white clouds billowing against a backdrop of deep blue sky.

By: davidbunch

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