The Web of Life, Home-Schooling at The Beaty Biodiversity Museum, UBC Part One

Today I was struck by one of those impressions that crystallize and magnify all that is important to me in life.

I stood silently, outside The Beaty Biodiversity Museum at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, with my new camera in hand, awestruck by the beauty of the 26 metre Blue Whale Skeleton suspended between two vast lengths of glass, the layer of bare autumn branches reflected in the window in front, the white sky a background behind, all creating a graphic image of inter-connecting branches and bones stretching in all directions.

I bore witness to the astounding beauty of layers of life inter-twined in an intricate web, the simple framing of the stark, minimalist concrete, glass and steal structure, the court-yard behind with its wild meadow bordered on one side with young trees, and Salal, on the other by low shrubs and picnic tables, and on yet a third by a border of tall, fluffy white grasses and a long wooden bench stretching back to infinity.   My two smallest children were asleep in the stroller beside me and my two older ones had headed with two other families into the building beside to check out more skeletons.  Along with four or five other home schooling families, we’d spent a couple of hours exploring the museum and eaten outside, then the children had romped in the meadow’s long wet grasses, ran, climbed and played to their heart’s content, made new bonds and collaborations in fantasy play and science experiments alike.  I was feeling overjoyed by the community-web of home schoolers that I am finally understanding are indispensable to my joy and ease, and there I was in this moment of peace after the whirlwind of activity, camera in hand,

. with a story welling up inside me: I knew without a doubt that I want to be with the children, I want to be supported and support my community of friends in offering our children what we feel is the best, I want our children to be free to learn and socialize in the world at large, indoors and outdoors and come to their knowledge and growth through passion, free association with children of all ages and caring, enthusiastic adults of all personalities, skills and temperaments, and as much self direction and independence and loving, nurturing dependence that they need at any given moment from their community of support.  Last of all, I want to take pictures and I want to write about and promote what I love and believe in.

Today was a success because it revealed so profoundly what the first image above portrays to me:  this intricate web of life, made up of home schooling families and others who want to be a huge part in the growing, learning and happiness of their own and others' children, who offer endless support, resources, guidance and companionship, is akin, in many ways to the inter-connectedness of nature.  How can we as humans isolate ourselves, me as a single mum, children in school, separated into same age groups, away from their families, diverse communities, connection with nature and a wealth of experience for so much of the day, when confronted with the reality of the natural world’s inter-dependence including our own fragile relationship within it ?  Are we not all connected and reliant on each other?  What better place than the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, and the meadowed court-yard behind, for this epiphany to happen?

Tune in soon for more, including a summary of the field trip and a review of the museum...

Thank you all for your support!  It was a great day.