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Lost and Found
In our professional development work we are often talking about the importance of being prepared to 'get lost'; ready for the unexpected, the new view, puzzle, and encounter.
A Sightlines' Community member has sent us this poem, following a discussion about the value of getting off the path, immersed in the experience of deep woods (we were investigating a possible woodland to use for a Learning in Nature course next year.)
A most wonderful reminder, I thought: here's to us all taking those steps: adults and children, adventuring.
I hope you enjoy it too:
In our professional development work we are often talking about the importance of being prepared to 'get lost'; ready for the unexpected, the new view, puzzle, and encounter.
A Sightlines' Community member has sent us this poem, following a discussion about the value of getting off the path, immersed in the experience of deep woods (we were investigating a possible woodland to use for a Learning in Nature course next year.)
A most wonderful reminder, I thought: here's to us all taking those steps: adults and children, adventuring.
I hope you enjoy it too:
The Day Millicent Found the World
Every morning Millicent ventured farther
into the woods. At first she stayed
near light, the edge where bushes grew, where
her way back appeared in glimpses among
dark trunks behind her. Then by farther paths
or openings where giant pines had fallen
she explored ever deeper into
the interior, till one day she stood under a great
dome among columns, the heart of the forest, and knew:
Lost. She had achieved a mysterious world
where any direction would yield only surprise.
And now not only the giant trees were strange
but the ground at her feet had a velvet nearness;
intricate lines on bark wove messages all
around her. Long strokes of golden sunlight
shifted over her feet and hands. She felt
caught up and breathing in a great powerful embrace.
A birdcall wandered forth at leisurely intervals
from an opening on her right: "Come away, Come away."
Never before had she let herself realize
that she was part of the world and that it would follow
Wherever she went. She was part of its breath.
Aunt Dolbee called her back that time, a high
voice tapering faintly among the farthest trees,
Milli-cent! Milli-cent! And that time she returned,
but slowly, her dress fluttering along pressing
back branches, her feet stirring up the dark smell
of moss, and her face floating forward, a stranger's
face now, with a new depth in it, into the light.
William Stafford
William Stafford reflected in an interview: "When I began to write [this poem] I didn't know anything, not even the name Millicent. I guess the syllables of that name made me feel I as talking about an old-fashioned kind of girl. I just began to write without knowing what was coming. There's no Millicent in my life; there was just this kind of person who went farther and farther into the surroundings, a person who found her way from the structured life that she had been living, into the realization that there is a wilderness, that life is richer and greater than those formulas, formulations, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and advanced degrees, that there is something swirling, and generous and maybe dangerous – but maybe not."
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