I started out calling it my square of sky, changed it to circle, and now have changed it again -- to hexagon -- my six-sided figure of sky. This is not a perfect geometry. What matters is that my view is from the edge of the patio in my backyard. It is framed by the pear tree on the left, by the birch tree on the right, by the maple briefly, and by the neighbor's flowering plum at the bottom.
I am starting this blog as part of a two-school, six-class project. We have variously called it The Observation Project, The Nature Project, Art Colliding with Knowledge, perhaps others, and I'm still not sure we've settled on a single title. But the idea has to do with observation, close observation, with paying attention, with detail, with discipline, with discovery. Early in our thinking about this thing, Lori, my partner in crime, said something like, "In order to write well on a particular subject, the writer must know that subject well." So we decided to give our students such an opportunity, to come to know through observation and repetition and curiosity and research something worth knowing and saying. And since we are asking our students to select a subject and observe it closely over time and write about it in daily, weekly, and cumulative formats, it seems only fair that we participate as well.
As example and preparation, we have read "Owls" by Mary Oliver, "Living Like Weasels" by Annie Dillard, and "A List of Nothing in Particular" by William Least Heat-Moon, all close observers and accomplished, curious writers. I'm not sure any of us can hope to be as accomplished (though my students constantly surprise me), but we can certainly endeavor to look and to listen and to wonder.
As for my project, I will be observing my geometry of sky for a few moments each morning, on school days in the dark, on other days in the early light. Already I've seen the moon, Orion the Hunter, a meteor, smoke, clouds, birds, planes, sun, rain, and a bright star low and left from Orion that I've just discovered is Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major, the brightest stellar object in our sky. How did I not know this? I will be watching and listening, breathing and sniffing, inhabiting that space and recording what I learn. Here goes.
