Nature-Inspired Writing

Will and the Great Blue Heron by Will, Student, Highcroft Elementary School, Cary, NC

Autumn Leaves by Charlie, Student, Weddington High School, Matthews, NC

A Field Trip to Carrot Island by Amy Barsanti, Teacher, Pines Elementary School, Plymouth, NC

June by John Thomas York, Teacher, Penn Griffin School of the Arts, High Point, NC

On Black Rock Mountain Trail by Kathryn Stripling Byer, NC Poet Laureate, Cullowhee, NC

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Will and the Great Blue Heron
By Will, Student, Highcroft Elementary School, Cary, NC

When I was a little boy I went to my Gramma’s house. I went every week. When I went to Gramma’s house we walked around the lake. We saw turtles and swans and ducks and geese and the Great Blue Heron.

I liked to walk around the lake because I liked to see my best friend, the Great Blue Heron. He was my favorite bird! I was too little to say Blue Heron so I called him “Bue Her” (sounds like Boo Hair).

Now I go to kindergarten and I don’t see Gramma and the Great Blue Heron every week anymore. I miss Bue Her.

On special days I get to go to my Gramma’s house to make a craft. Then I take it home.

Last time I went to Gramma’s house, after we finished our craft we walked around the lake and I saw the Great Blue Heron.

He must have remembered me! He flew over to see me and that’s how I knew he remembered me. I missed Bur Her. He missed me too.

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Autumn Leaves
by Charlie, Student, Weddington High School, Matthews, NC

The light is dim. A cool autumn breeze rustles through heaps of leaves lying on the ground as well as those still clinging to their branches. The tree-tops are now only sparsely populated by leaves, and those leaves that do remain are no longer verdant. The survivors are yellow, red, orange, and brown.

The levels of phosphate in the trees have dropped; the phosphates have concentrated themselves in the stems. The tiny veins of the leaves have been sealed off by buildups of cork, becoming so hopelessly clogged that they can no longer take in the water and minerals that are vital to the green coloration. The processes that break down the sugar change as well, and the green pigment chlorophyll begins to be used much more quickly than it can be replenished. The leaf can no longer sustain its vibrant green hue. Anthocyanin and carotenoids become more plentiful than chlorophyll; and for a period of time, the leaves have a vibrant hue. But then, after the spectacular show of colors is finished, the leaves lose their moisture and fall to the earth. Another breeze comes by, and a small, dry, brown leaf floats to the ground. It swirls around as it travels with the gust of wind before landing on top of the others that have fallen already.

The tree becomes void of leaves; it is just a brown or gray trunk, forlornly emerging from the ground. Yet within this tree, preparations are already beginning for the next year. It will exit its period of hibernation and emerge full of life and beauty; it will be covered by a thick blanket of beautiful green leaves.

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A Field Trip to Carrot Island
by Amy Barsanti, Teacher, Pines Elementary School, Plymouth, NC

It is the faces of the children I most remember from the visit to Carrot Island. I had visited for a teacher workshop on Estuary Live just months before, leaving with inspiration sufficient to compel me to bring this diverse class of 3rd graders, many with exceptionalities, and few with any access to travel and other enrichment opportunities. The ride on the taxi boat would have been enough to justify the epic bus journey, be the rapture radiating from my students as they crested the dune will remain with me always. Diamond sparkling ocean and horses on the beach, watching us even as we watched them, nostrils flaring, manes and tails breezily lifting, took our breath. Feral rather than wild, they have adapted to a limited fresh water supply by needing less than other horses. Their grace and majesty curbed our usual exuberant inclination to thunder down to the surf as if shot from a cannon. We made our way carefully as the herd ambled further down the beach.

I remember one child’s pinched expression, brow furrowed and lips pursed before her smile stretched around a stalk of pickleweed. A boy leapt in the tidal pool for an exultant high five with a friend, as each found a perfect opalescent pen shell. Later, in a marshy area, a child’s chin quivered and eyes brimmed with tears when he realized that the crunching as he waded through the reeds and muck was actually tiny fiddler crabs so densely teeming that crushing them was unavoidable.

Then there was the boat ride back. The children’s sunburned noses were upturned like the horses’ had been, capturing the last salty breaths before reentering our hectic, tarnished world. In their eyes I thought I could see the emerging consciousness of just how fragile is our connection with nature and unspoiled beauty. Finally, on the charter bus, I watched all lines smooth and vanish, in the innocence of exhausted childhood sleep, feral horses prancing in their dreams.

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June
by John Thomas York, Teacher, Penn Griffin School of the Arts, High Point, NC

One morning, I walked down
the ditch between young corn and shining gravel,
cool white sand

lovely to my uncallused feet.
I shuffled toward the giant trees hanging
over the road,

walked right into a shower of music,
as strange as the melodies picked up by radio
telescopes--music from the stars.

I couldn’t see any aliens,
but I knew their hymn: How wide the sky!
was my rough translation,

or maybe the visitors
were merely chirping, laughing at a dirty
blond boy, "a wingless creature,

how slowly and quietly he moves."
I could tell they were the true rulers of the universe,
making radiant the worm,

the grasshopper, the morning glory--
the singers’ babel a blessing,
telling everything to grow.