Sitting together in the Outdoor Classroom on a warm, spring day, we began with the poem The Ovenbird by Robert Frost. I was joining a poetry class with VINS Director Alden Smith, a long-time student of Frost’s poetry and an even longer-time student of nature.
As Alden recited the poem aloud, an Ovenbird began to sing in the woods nearby! We were struck by the magic and immersed more deeply into Frost’s words. Slowly, we walked the VINS trails, stopping by the stone wall and considering Mending Wall with all its enigmatic meaning. Alden prompted us with several intriguing questions – How is it that good fences make good neighbors? – and the wall, silent, witnessed our conversation.
Curving up the trail toward the campus, we paused at the vernal pool. Frost’s Spring Pools spilled out over the landscape, asking us to pause and contemplate the fragile inevitability of change.
JUDITH RANDALL | Visitor Services
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
— The Ovenbird by Robert Frost
