”
It moved!
”
My exclamation echoed through the house.
“It moved!” My exclamation echoed through the house. “What moved?” snarled Anne. She’s always grumpy on Tuesdays, especially when she must do algebra and history, and a Latin test, and an essay contrasting the characters of Tom and Huck. Perhaps she feared that something in the backpacking gear littering her floor had come alive.
“Your frog eggs — or whatever they are!” In a flash, she was at my elbow, peering interestedly into the mason jar, where a jelly-like blob, about an inch in diameter, clung to a stick. She had found two such sacs in Uvas Creek six days before, along with various gelatinous lumps, all of which we hoped were amphibian eggs. I am teaching amphibians to Anne’s nature co-op this month.
When found, the egg sac contained about a dozen round creamy eggs, visible through the translucent yellowish gel. Over the next few days, the eggs elongated, and became decidedly pointed at one end. One flexed again as we watched. Anne took out her nature journal, drew her daily drawing of the critter, and added the words, “It moved!”
Anne’s Tuesday is busy because her Thursday is so good: in the morning, she tacks up and rides Micara’s horse while Micara and I do trig; in the afternoon, we have nature co-op. Nature co-op is six women and 18 children, ages 4 to 16, plus two babies. The women and teens take turns teaching: plants, weeds, bats, woodland creatures.
This is our second year as a co-op. We’ve been in many a wonderful co-op before, but this one is spectacular, because we meet in a cabin in a grove of redwood, buckeye, and bay laurel. A creeklet runs through.
We teach and learn, we explore and draw, we do crafts and games, we eat snacks. When we run out of stuff to teach, we turn the kids loose. They hike and build shelters and play capture the flag and make swings, and return covered with glory and poison oak.
Once a month, we measure the creeklet and the nearby spring. We hike to “our Interval spot,” where we draw and paint or color. Some of us draw the landscape. Some of us draw a single plant. (It’s positively eerie how 18 children will sit and draw quietly, intently, for upwards of 30 minutes.)
Last week, Chris caught two lizards for us to draw: a 14-inch-long southern alligator, Gerrhonotus multicarinatus, and a 2 1/2-inch-long juvenile western skink with a bright blue tail, Eumeces skiltonianus. Since we were nominally studying amphibians, I took the opportunity to ask the kids how reptiles, like the lizards, differed from amphibians, like salamanders and newts. We noted the scales and claws on the lizards, talked about how fast they move, talked about how the new hatchlings look like miniature adults.
After snack, the kids began to find and bring us California newts, dark reddish brown above and orange beneath. The newts are migrating down to the water now, to mate and lay their eggs.
One of our co-op families lives up Croy Ridge Road. Even before the fire was out last fall, I said shamefacedly to that mom, “This is probably not the time or place, but we have got to add fire study to our nature co-op.” And Jane to me, “That is exactly what I was thinking.”
So every fifth week, we pile the kids into my pick-up and Jane’s suburban, which are the only vehicles that can negotiate the slope and ruts of the road, and we lurch and bump up to the top, then we hike to our Croy spot to draw.
The first week, the ground was still hot, and we forbade the kids to go cross country lest they fall into some hidden pit of burning tree-roots. The next month, we brought bay berries and acorns and buckeyes and redwood cones, all harvested near the cabin, and shot them up the ash blackened slopes with slingshots.
The next month, we rejoiced in the first fragile green appearing at the bases of blackened sticks. Last month we identified flowers and bushes making the come-back. Soon we hope to see poppies, which we hear bloom crimson, not orange, post conflagration.
Cynthia Anne Walker is a homeschooling mother of three and a former engineer. She is a published independent author. Her column is published in The Dispatch every Friday.
