Field Trip: WNC Nature Center

What a gem!

Incredibly beautiful location outside of both Black Mountain and Asheville, North Carolina – you simply couldn’t drop this Nature Center into any prettier spot.

Kevin had a meeting in Black Mountain last week and our local zoo membership offers reciprocal passes at the Nature Center.  It was a Thursday and we already had a field trip planned for Friday but it seemed like an opportunity too rare to pass.

And we were right.

The day’s temperatures couldn’t have been better – a chill in the air just perfect for crunching leaves and walking outside.

Prior to departure all of the kids loaded their backpacks with their nature journals, colored pencils, lunches and a novel to read.

I like to tuck in extra educational opportunities along the way you know so I drove while Kevin read our current chapter in The Horse and His Boy.   (One – because he reads aloud so fabulously.  Two – because I get car sick reading in moving vehicles.)   After the chapter was over we listened to an audio book next – Robin Hood is up right now.  We have listened to literally every audio book of interest to us in our local library.  I need to begin requesting new ones at the library.  Any suggestions for audio books for us?

After we dropped Kevin of at his destination the kids and I jetted back down the road a few miles to the Nature Center – an easy place to find just off the interstate.

We arrived just in time for an otter feeding and brief educational chat.

A group of about twenty-five first graders on a field trip joined us at the otter area.  It was crowded and the school kids had to move quickly up to the window for their five seconds-each viewing time.  Yes, it made me grateful to be home schooling and to have the lovely privilege of a slow education and a leisurely field trip experience.

It’s such a fabulous little arrangement of animals in very natural habitats.  Of course we all loved the fox exhibit – how could we not?

But the wolves gave us a very good show.  The coyotes were dozing but they perked up a bit as we watched.  There were black bears and deer and rather friendly raccoons.

About half way through the zoo we stopped at the arachnid playground and climbed up to the top of the webs and enjoyed our lunch sky high.

The center wraps up with a sweet picturesque barn and a winsome array of farm animals – including my favorite – goats!

At several exhibits the kids got out their journals and their colored pencils and drew the animals before them.  It was a real pleasure to have living animals to inspire our drawings and fact gathering.

At the birds of prey exhibit we all sat together on some steps and I read our history book to the kids while they drew the red-tailed hawk.

Truly – it was a day when homeschool looks perfect.

The weather.  The animals.  The good attitudes of my five students.

It was a day when the Instagram picture actually shows the whole truth.

There are days when it is a miracle to teach this way.

And I think these golden days are gifts – I sometimes like to think of them as storing sunshine for the long cold winter months in our future.

For the days when kids are crabby and I’m more crabby then they are.  For days when homeschool feels explosive and scary and not worth the work at all.

I pull these shining days out of my pocket and remember that it’s all a part of a giant puzzle.  The grey skies and the blue ones too.

But on those sunshine-laden days – I just lean my head back and drink it all in.

Like the spring flowers and like the autumn leaves – the beauty is all so much more the poignant because it isn’t mine to keep.