There is little I enjoy more these days than the opportunity to learn alongside my teenagers. As I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite days is library day, when our family gets in the car and enjoys a bit of a drive along the local back roads to the bigger of the local library branches. Once inside, we all wander off in our own directions in search of a story or a quiet spot to draw or, in my case, books for our summer unschooling days. One of the joys of those library trips is when I stumble across a book that sparks sheer wonder from me. That’s what happened when I came upon a book, The Wisdom of Trees: How Trees Work Together to Form a Natural Kingdom.
While they say you can’t judge a book by its cover, some book covers are simply magical and invite you to pause, to ponder, to pick up the book and consider it more deeply. So it was with The Wisdom of Trees. The cover art was beautiful and the title immediately whispered something wonderful to me. Maybe because I love trees and consider them as wise guardians—I mean, they look wise, don’t they. As I leafed through its pages, I was drawn even more deeply into the book because it combined scientific facts about trees with poetry. What could possibly be better?
I was not disappointed. This morning it was one of the nonfiction picture books I decided to read with my teenagers and each two-page spread included a poem, intricate artwork, and things I had never heard before about trees and the way they communicate with and protect one another. But more than the book was the experience I shared with my girls—the wonder and the marveling we each brought to each page we read and each new fact we discovered.
For me, shared explorations are magical. I enjoy being on the same journey in those moments with these two remarkable young women. I love to bask in their delight and their wonder. It fuels my own fascination. But even more, it feeds my mind, both the creative side, the imagination, as well as my curiosity. In other words, it revs up, revives even, my writer’s mind in new and different ways that reading or taking a walk (two things I do to jumpstart my words sometimes) doesn’t. In fact, in these kinds of shared learning, I can almost hear it ticking away, storing thoughts and ideas and even images away for me to draw from at some later time.
These are things I count as gifts. Especially right now when I sometimes sense the struggle to uncover my words and ideas. Often, I find inspiration and encouragement in watching the ways my girls work on their creative projects. But this experience is different because it invites all three of us into the moment together. There is artwork and captivating information and we all muse over it together. It’s like a dinner party for the mind and it delights me because it isn’t something one can plan. Instead it’s an organic and spontaneous joy. Those are moments I hold dear and whose whispers return to me again and again—the whispers of wisdom.