Turning the Calendar Page

The beautiful weather we've had for the past week or so belies the fact that September is over. The warm temperatures and brilliant blue skies beckon through the classroom window, and today, we allowed ourselves to be enticed.

I took my writing class for a walk in the Community Forest. The students were instructed to collect something from the forest, at the very least some impressions, if not some realia. I collected a few specimens--moss, a few leaves, a pinecone--that can be used as the basis for a descriptive paragraph.

The smells and sights and sounds were all very fallish. Although it's not a very pleasant thought, the smell of death was all around us. Leaves and plants and grasses and weeds and flowers, all in some state of decay. Wild cranberries that smell like dirty socks and dying leaves that smell like bananas. Yu's shirt was the same yellow colour as the aspen leaves on the ground. The light played in and around the cottonwoods and the spruces, while birds and squirrels chirped and chattered away.

Ostensibly, the walk was to collect impressions to use as the basis for writing. Really, we were there for the sheer enjoyment of the experience.