Great Stick
The first
Great Stick I brought to our outdoor children’s program was a many-branched
staff I’d cut from a dying cedar hedge. It was rough and twiggy and almost as
tall as me, and the only remarkable thing about it was the fact I’d hauled it along.
“Why?” the circle of children asked me, quizzically.
“Because,”
I exclaimed emphatically, ‘it’s… Great
Stick!”
At that
point, I barely understood myself why I insisted on ferrying the cumbersome
thing to and from our woodland preschool. I simply recalled how much I’d
enjoyed carving and decorating my own walking stick during camping and hiking
trips as a kid, and figured Outdoor School needed a mascot. We needed a Great
Stick.
I had been
recruited by the new North Shore program, largely because I am, by trade, a
gardener, and have an affinity for plants, mud, being outdoors, and, as it
happens, children. I took the opportunity to heart, excited to be part of the
West Coast renaissance of the Forest School philosophy that has come out of the
UK and Scandinavia. Our program also incorporates the Reggio Emilia concept of
child-led free play. For anyone who has read Richard Louv’s Last Child in
the Woods, the idea of getting kids (especially city kids) to play outside
in nature is an increasing priority in our over-protected tech age.
Almost
immediately, it became apparent that Great Stick was going to play a
significant role with our troop of 3-6 year olds.
As any
parent will tell you, when (or if!) you send a kid out into the woods, the
first thing they’ll pick up is a stick. And unlike a standard I-phone or
digital doo-hickey, a stick is much more likely to take out an eye. In play
groups of up to ten children, stick-related injury can be one of the main
concerns. The next concern in line is the often closest association children
can make when playing with sticks: weapons and guns. Nothing like an idealistic
nature program turning into the infant-edition of Hamburger Hill!
We already
had a stick rule with the children, made easy to remember with the phrase, “Big
Sticks need Big Spaces!” They were allowed to play with any stick they liked,
so long as they had enough space. No matter what, this kind of rule still
requires constant vigilance. And because Great Stick went everywhere with us,
it became a constant reminder, and constant training for the kids. Everyone was
allowed the honour of carrying or incorporating Great Stick into play, but
everyone also knew Great Stick was important (if only because I seem
inexplicably attached to it), and certainly not to be used as a weapon.
At one point
in that first program, a pair of devious twins made a point of challenging my
attachment to a stick. All this Greatness was fine, but didn’t make enough
sense.
“Why do you bring it every time??” they demanded to know.
They couldn’t
understand it. Together, they conspired to take Great Stick to the murkiest
section of the creek and bury it in the mud. They decided that would dissuade
me from retrieving it, forever. It was just a stick, after all.
After the
children had left with their parents, I returned to the creek and rescued Great
Stick, washing away layers of mud. I still didn’t understand the psychology of
Great Stick, and indeed was beginning to feel like some equivalent to a Crazy
Cat Lady. The Crazy Stick Lady. All I knew was there was something important
about Great Stick.
The next
meeting, the children were amazed at the miraculous return. Something shifted. Great Stick was not that easily dispatched. It was a survivor, and
from then on, if it was (accidently) misplaced, it became a group mission to
recover it. While other sticks may come and go, our own Great Stick became a
constant companion.
As time went
by, Great Stick became many things. During our opening song, in which a
jingle-bell is passed around a circle to each child, Great Stick would be the
last to get a turn, as the welcoming finale. If someone got ‘stuck’ in the mud
or at the bottom of a bank, Great Stick would come to the rescue, starting a
tradition of children rescuing other children. If the tarp we used as a rain
shelter sagged too much in the middle, Great Stick came in handy to prop it up.
If a certain amount of magic was required, to turn dragons back into kids for example,
Great Stick had acquired enough mystique to get the job done.
Over time
and as the children became more immersed in forest play, their first
associations with sticks-as-weapons dissipate. Sticks become so much more than
weapons—they are for building shelters, for making fishing poles, for reaching
and rescuing, for magic wands and dragging along the forest floor to leave a
trail. They are for making bridges and forest couches and nests, for
stick-people and puppets and leaf-popsicles and paintbrushes and peeling. In
short, sticks are useful, and open to limitless interpretations. They are,
truly, Great.
Our first
program ran from January to June. The last week of the program, I took Great
Stick home and, using a wood burner, replicated a pattern of sun and trees and
water down its length. On the last day, we made a ceremony of sawing Great
Stick into tiny decorated pieces for each child to take home. I am told that
the children and their little pieces of Great Stick were inseparable for weeks.
