LIFE IS TOO MUCH LIKE A PATHLESS WOOD FREE

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.Īnd climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebsįrom a twig’s having lashed across it open.Īnd half grant what I wish and snatch me away So was I once myself a swinger of birches.Īnd life is too much like a pathless wood Another take on this is Robert Bateman’s Get to Know program. An example is the No Child Left Inside program. Now there is a growing movement to reintroduce children to the natural world.

In his book Last Child in the Woods, author Richard Louv coined a term for this disengagement with the outdoors: Nature-deficit Disorder. When they are outdoors, it is often to participate in an adult-organized sport such as soccer. While even a generation ago children were sent outdoors by their frazzled mothers (“What are you doing inside on such a nice day? Get outside and play!”), todays children spend much of their time watching TV, playing video games, working on computers, text-messaging. Where would such a boy be found there days? A swinger of birches. Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, With the same pains you use to fill a cup

To learn about not launching out too soonĬlear to the ground. Whose only play was what he found himself,Īnd not one but hung limp, not one was leftįor him to conquer. Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, I should prefer to have some boy bend them Ontario Nature has a great introduction to fragmentation in our forests available here. I think in the case of the birches pictured, however, another possible culprit is edge effect, the susceptibility that comes with fragmenting a larger forest with roads, utility corridors, or other development. It’s true that ice storms can be hard on trees, especially birches. With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hairīefore them over their heads to dry in the sun.īut I was going to say when Truth broke in Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

You may see their trunks arching in the woods So low for long, they never right themselves: They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,Īnd they seem not to break though once they are bowed You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust– Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells Often you must have seen themĪs the breeze rises, and turn many-coloredĪs the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. In the latter category, I was drawn to an essay that states “When we first read the poem, all I could think of was how the poem just wasted 10 minutes of my life.” Well, maybe you get what you pay for! The poem continues:īut swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.

LIFE IS TOO MUCH LIKE A PATHLESS WOOD FREE

You can readily find copies of the poem, comments on the poem, free essays on the poem.

When I googled birches and Frost, I got a long list of results. I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.Īlong with The Road Not Taken and Stopping by the Woods on a Snowing Evening and a few others, Birches is one of Frost’s most beloved poems. When I see birches bend to left and rightĪcross the lines of straighter darker trees, The birches above reminded me of Robert Frost’s poem, Birches. I was recently driving down a road that bisects the Larose Forest.

Life is too much like a pathless wood