Energy Hike

A good friend has an amazing ability to connect with all things around her, so we were excited when she invited us to experience the energy of trees with her and her children. At a nearby state park, we first met a giant hollowed out tree. Then Emma was invited to seek out a tree which spoke to her. We concentrated and tried to feel its energy. I won't say that I had a deep conversation with the tree - my skill in this area is evidently underdeveloped.

However, the outing was definitely thought-provoking and there was a deep feeling of peace as we stood in the middle of the forest, fully focused on the life all around us.

I was also reminded of a book we've enjoyed: Meeting Trees by Scott Russell Sanders, where a boy learns about the characteristics of trees as he takes a walk with his father.

Christmas and Winter Books

WE'VE found some lovely Christmas and Winter-themed books at the library. Here are some of our favourites:

Christmas Mouseling

by Dori Chaconas, illustrated by Susan Kathleen Hartung

A mother mouse fears for her freezing newborn mouseling as her nest is blown away. Other animals offer her the use of their homes as they are going to see a King. As one after the other these beds too are blown away by the blustery north wind, the mother mouse runs desperately to a wooden shack, where she is surprised to find all the other animals. Also there are a man, a woman and a baby lying in a manger. The mother mouse snuggles her mouseling under the baby's covers and knows that they are safe.

The Mitten

by Jan Brett

Well known in the US but not so well in the UK, Jan Brett is an award-winning author/illustrator famous for her illustrated borders that give clues to what will happen next. The Mitten is her retelling of an old Ukrainian folktale in which a boy loses a mitten in the snow. It is discovered by more and more woodland creatures who take shelter inside it. The mitten is stuffed to bursting point when the bear sneezes and all the animals fly out. Unaware of all this activity, the boy catches the mitten in the air and runs home, where his grandmother wonders how one mitten got so big.

The Gingerbread Baby

by Jan Brett

As with The Mitten, this book is full of the most incredibly intricate illustrations, but beautiful and not overwhelming. The story is a twist on the Gingerbread Man, in which a little boy opens the oven too soon and instead of a Gingerbread Man, out pops a Gingerbread Baby. He runs away and everyone chases him. But the boy Matty goes back into his kitchen and begins to bake again. The whole procession of people chasing the Gingerbread Baby arrives in the woods to find a pile of crumbs and assumes he has finally met his match. But in fact, the Gingerbread Baby is happily dancing around inside the gingerbread house that Matty baked for him.

A Reindeer Christmas

by Mark Kimball Moulton, illustrated by Karen Hillard Good

While out in the woods to feed the animals in Winter, a family comes across an exhausted and starving deer. They bring him home, feed him and keep him warm by the fire. In the morning he is gone. Under the Christmas tree, an extra present awaits with a note from Father Christmas himself. The deer the children had found was his lead reindeer, and by caring for him, the children had saved Father Christmas' present delivery. A sweet story with wonderful pictures in warm glowing colours.

Happy reading!

Underground, Overground Wombling Free

"Underground, Overground, Wombling Free,

The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.

Making good use of the things that we find,

Things that the everyday folks leave behind.

Wombles are organized, work as a team.

Wombles are tidy and Wombles are clean.

Underground, Overground, wombling free,

The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we!"

For the uninitiated, Wombles are an institution of the 70s. Fictional book and then television characters, they are little fuzzy bear-like creatures that, as their theme song suggests, collect other people's litter. They are the original recyclers.

Last time we went to 'our' swamp, Emma told me it was messy and next time we should bring a bag and pick up rubbish. So we did exactly that this week. (What she actually meant was "you should bring a bag and you should pick up rubbish".) But it seemed like a good lesson in stewardship of the earth, and Winter is undoubtedly the best time for this, when the bare branches expose any objects that do not belong in the wild. The wombling is also a kind of tradition in my family, so I felt it my duty to pass the habit on to the next generation. We did remove several grocery bagfuls of bottles, beer cans and - strangely - plastic flower pots. Needless to say, we didn't transform this bounty into a treasure for our house, as real wombles would have done, but I still feel the recycling container is a better home for it than the woods.

Owl Prowl

ON a cool, clear evening this week we set out to our favourite nature centre to take part in their Owl Prowl. With red filters on our torches, we walked quietly through the forest, the group leader playing the call of a screech owl as a lure. We did not see any owls in the dark night sky; however we heard the very distinctive call of a barred owl, which made Alexander's eyes pop open in amazement as he looked around to find the source of the strange noise.

This concluded a great day of animal discoveries. Earlier in the day we had been privileged to catch a rare daytime sight of a great horned owl, peering down at us from the trees. We had been alerted to its presence by a great ruckus caused by a rowdy bunch of crows. Apparently the owl was infringing on their feeding turf and had to be annoyed away. What a racket! After a few minutes the poor owl got the message and glided silently away to another part of the forest. Emma wanted to know where Sarah, Percy and Bill were. These are the names of three baby owls in the lovely book Owl Babies by Martin Waddell.

The same walk also revealed a red-headed woodpecker, tap tap tapping for grubs high in a dead pine tree, a heron flying in from the adjacent lake, a vulture scouring the forest floor for tasty titbits and a red-backed salamander skulking under a log.

The Never-Ending Storybook

EMMA and Alexander together received around ten books for Christmas. Emma's favourite? The one I bought as a Christmas present to myself: Nick Baker's British Wildlife: A Month By Month Guide. It's a large hardback book, described by the author as (paraphrased) a coffee table book that's intended to be used. Not even half way through January, it's already seen its fair share of use in our household! Naturally it doesn't correspond exactly to what we see here in the southern US, but for me, it satisfies a nostalgia for distant pleasures and answers some questions I'd never even thought to ask. As a children's wildlife programme presenter, Nick Baker's chatty style make the subject matter highly accessible to even the most amateur of nature enthusiasts.

It's the colourful photos and lifelike sketches Emma likes of course. So while I take in all the fine print before swiching off the light late at night, several times a day at nursing time you'll find the children and I sitting on the bed with the badgers, bluebells and sticklebacks. And not just talking... There is no doubt that Nick Baker knows a whole lot more about wildlife than I do, but I wonder if he gets as much practice telling stories about every picture on the page? If he only knew what adventures the badgers and the sticklebacks have in the bluebells in our version, he would be quite astonished.

Photo taken from the website of Coton Manor in Northamptonshire, of their 5-acre bluebell wood

Bailey the Bear Cub

AS October was all about squirrels in our house, so November is about bears. Our nature table now features a snuggly bear cave, the story of the month is Goldilocks and song of the month is The Teddy Bears Picnic.

While at the library scouting out bear books, I came across this gem just by chance. Bailey the Bear Cub is written by Nannie Kuiper and illustrated in beautiful watercolor by Jeska Verstegen. The story tells of a little bear cub who wishes to grow all the way up to the stars so that he can find the most beautiful one and bring it home as a gift to his mother. To do that he first has to learn to hunt for food by himself. Cautiously he tries to gather berries, collect honey and hunt for fish. After a few false tries finally succeeds in both filling his tummy and bringing home a twinkling gift to his mother.

A Pocketful of Pinecones

I got hold of Karen Andreola's 'A Pocketful of Pinecones' and read it nonstop for a couple of days. It's an account of a mother's journey into homeschooling using Charlotte Mason's methods, written in the form of a diary and set in the 1930s. Though the family has their share of problems, it does sound like quite an idyllic world they live in, and such a peaceful yet exciting environment for the children. I can highly recommend this book to anyone looking into such methods or anyone just looking for a good wholesome read!

The mother in the book swears by Anna Botsford Comstock's 'Handbook of Nature Study'. This is a real book, published in 1911. Ms Comstock was a US artist, educator, conservationist and a leader of the nature study movement. I was delighted to find a copy in the library, and though some pieces are a little outdated, the nature of nature does not really change all that much. It's a big fat tome, more a reference book than one you can read from cover to cover, though I'm doing my best before it's due back. It's already noted on my Christmas wishlist :-)