Rivers and Reflections: The need for eddies in education

I've just returned from a writing retreat at the Environmental Learning Center in the North Cascades. A beautiful setting, amazing weather, and three very different, but equally talented writers/instructors.

I have many thoughts about the retreat, which I'm certain I will write about over the course of the next few weeks, but today I find the rain particularly pleasant after a week of sunshine and mountains, lakes and fall colors.

When I woke last night to the sound of rain on our new roof, I was thankful for Ann lying next to me. Her rhythmic breathing provided a gentle back-beat to the softness of the rain and I curled up in my pillows relishing restful sleep.

The writing retreat was a mixture of awkwardness and reflection for me. I always have a hard time trying to fit into these events, searching for people with whom I can find alliance in political as well as emotional perspectives. Of course, at a nature writing retreat environmentalists are in abundance and I doubt there was a Republican among us. If there was, s/he was probably feeling more awkward than I was throughout the week.

My awkwardness stems from many things: Lack of confidence in my writing, in who I am as a person, in an inability to feel comfortable in social situations, and the need to know that I am liked and accepted by those around me. I battle it wherever I go, but this week it took me longer to figure out my place in this world of nature writers.

I don't see myself as a nature writer per se. Yes, I write of human nature and being in a wilderness setting makes me far more reflective than I am in the city, and preserving nature IS extremely important to me, but I don't see myself learning the names of plants and trees so that I might incorporate it into my writing. Still, it was exactly what I needed this week -- clean air, blue skies, water and mountains.

It is, perhaps, a need for reflection that nature provides me. My life is busy with teaching and all the whirlwinds that surround my work. We were asked, before I left, to call all of our students' families, to check in and see how they were feeling about the school and their daughters' experiences. I resisted making those phone calls for many reasons, and in the end, I didn't get around to it. During the week, the Dean of Faculty was going to call me and ask me to make the phone calls from my writing retreat. Luckily, my teaching partner stepped in and not only prevented the Dean from calling me, but took it upon herself to make the calls.

Finding this out made me realize how often my time for reflection is interrupted by obligation and soon I am caught up in completing this task and that, filling my time with a long list of jobs I must complete before I permit myself to just sit and reflect. Often that permission never comes.

And then I think about what lessons we are teaching the girls. When they see us run around and frazzle our way through a day, what message are we sending them? To do is more important than to rest? A full plate makes your life more meaningful than one filled with select and thoughtful choices?

Often I hear students claim that they are bored. More and more I'm thinking it isn't about boredom, it's about not being comfortable with reflection, with one's own thoughts, with the fullness of our own presence in the world. Perhaps that is what I was feeling at the beginning of this week -- an uncomfortableness with myself not being busy, not having a task to complete, not having an obligation other than the ones I made for myself.

I was never bored. I've learned over the years that boredom is an excuse more than a state of mind, but I often found myself stymied by what to do next. Write? Read? Hike? Nap? Find someone to talk with? I moved sporadically through the empty times when we were not required to be in a workshop or a lecture. I found it difficult to ground myself within the time where I was without obligation.

Eventually, a rhythm developed and I often chose to be alone, on a hike or by the lake reflecting or writing, reading or unintentionally meditating with my eyes closed to the October sun. When I got back home yesterday, Ann was out with our friends. She left a note telling me when she'd return and while I was disappointed she wasn't here to greet me, I was thankful that my re-entry into the city didn't require too many expectations.

I made the mistake, though, of checking my school email where about 70 messages slapped me with the reality of my work. There were meetings and parent communications, there were announcements about workshops and contacts from community partners with questions about upcoming field trips. I couldn't read them all. I scanned, only stopping at the ones I thought might be of interest.

During the writer's retreat, we sat by (and in) a creek during one workshop. We were asked to sit quietly with our eyes closed and just listen. The water was icy on my feet, the filtered sun made patterns on my closed eyelids, and the wind moved the trees where chattering squirrels scolded us. I loved the sound of the water and soon found myself opening my eyes to watch the creek carry the water along channels of moss-covered rocks, over submerged logs, and down into swirling eddies lined with yellow and brown leaves.

Water in a creek moves constantly, but unlike my work, it rests along the way. It pools behind boulders, it moves upstream and then back down slowly into an eddy until finally the pull of the creek gathers it back into a push downstream. This is what I wish for in my work life. I am not afraid to move downstream. I am not afraid to push and roar and even thunder, but I need the eddies, too. I need the time to swirl and turn, to be caught in relaxing -- where the sun can catch me, where detritus can collect, where I can wait for the stream to pull me back in and push me on over the next rocky length.

This then is my charge. To carve out my eddies of reflection. To model such rest and contemplation for my students. To help them see that boredom is an invitation to feel one's presence in the flow of the world. In it's light. In it's reflection. It is, at times, dark and twisting, but more than anything, it is necessary. The eddy is as important to the creek as the rapid water over smooth, time-worn rocks.