Longhouse School

This post is written by Heidi (AKA Kitten).

We never have to worry about an unexciting dinner when Lori is with us! She’s the type of child who believes what she thinks and says is important and she needs to be heard out. Hallelujah to that spirit! I learn from her! 

“Did you know that silence is beautiful? Did you know that silence is loud?” No, explain to us, Lori. “We went to Letchworth Park and ‘Ranger Rick’ took us through the trail and woods. He told us we would play ‘The Silence Game.’ He told us to sit on our cushions, he set his alarm for 5 minutes, and we had to be silent. Charlie and Mikey started giggling but we stared them into silence. But there was so much to listen to!!! We heard birds, the wind on the leaves, and so many other nature sounds. The timer went off and we shared all the noise in the silence that we had heard. He then told us we would walk to another clearing in the woods and then have a ten-minute silence break!”

Lolita was beaming. I knew that a Sukhomlynsky reading would soon take place with staff members, but let’s get into it.

Lori continued to share. “We sometimes hear but don’t really listen! And during the 10-minutes of silence, I saw what I was seeing. The green of the leaves was so green as the sun lit them. We shared again. Ranger Rick next told us that Indigenous people used to—and some still do—go on vision quests. They would go into some lonely part of the woods where there were no other people. They would sit and sit until a vision came to them. Very often it would be an animal and they would adopt the animal into their name.”

“Rick told us we would be going to a new clearing but this time we would have a 20-minute period of silence! We would each have our own rock, separated from others. Not to worry, though, he and our teachers would be watching all of us to make sure we were safe.”

Lori is quite the storyteller! Even Benjamin Kdaké seemed to be listening. She waited for someone to ask what happened next. June Rus’ was the one.

Lori: “Twenty minutes is a LONG time! At first I was distracted and looked for my classmates. But that faded away when I felt wind kissing my face. There was a drop or two that fell down from the trees from the rain in the morning. I heard my own breathing. When I concentrated I felt a single breath coming into the top of my lungs, then into the bottom of them, and then into my belly! The forest was alive and everything in it was talking to each other. I felt like they were hugging and talking to me. It felt like hours had passed, maybe even days. Our teachers came to get us but no one, this time, wanted to share. We were inside of our own thoughts.”

Did you find your vision, Lori?

“I’ve never had a vision before so I don’t know but I think so! When I was little, I remember my mom taking out a library book named “Puffin Peter.” And then I saw a puffin in a tree. He spoke to me. ‘I’m supposed to be migrating across the ocean now but I made a wrong turn and got lost. It’s my first migration because I was hatched this summer! Where am I? Am I in Maine? Where is East? Where is the ocean?’ Somehow, I now knew the North, East, South, and West directions like on a compass. I pointed East to the puffin and off he flew after thanking me. The Puffin is my vision animal!”

Absolute silence from all of us. But I saw tearing in Guy’s eyes!!!