What can educators do to foster real intelligence?... We can attempt to teach the things that one might imagine the earth would teach us: silence, humility, holiness, connectedness, courtesy, beauty, celebration, giving, restoration, obligations, and wildness.

~ David Orr

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question "Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

~ Robert Frost

to Julia

The Otter found the outlet of String Lake, traversed another lake and came to the outlet of it. The deep drift in the lakes was slight. No senses could perceive it. He swam, however, with so little willfulness that the flow could give his movements a direction. The guidance of instinct is like that flow, is like a trail in the water that can be followed, although it cannot be consciously scented, seen, or felt.

~ One Day at Teton Marsh, by Sally Carrighar (1979)