Bird Droppings May 1, 2025

Can we find learning on the banks of the Chattahoochee River?

About ten years ago, I was apprehensive as I got up on that morning, taking much longer than normal to get my day started. A good friend had called me and said that he would be in Phoenix City, Alabama, for an Indian Arts program. I had not seen my friend in over twenty years. We shared many memories from the 1970s in Macon, Georgia, working in the same places along the way and sharing an old house for a time in Macon. However, the stories told to me by my friend about his grandfather, who was a medicine man to the Creek nation, and listening to his mother when she visited from Oklahoma are my deepest memories.  

Macon invited the Creek back in 1973 or so to help at the Indian Mounds and even offered scholarships to Mercer University. I met Bill and his brother Gerald, who, by chance, were both artists working in different mediums. Gerald was a sculptor and painter, while Bill worked in more traditional arts, focusing on feather and beadwork.

After I got motivated for the two-and-a-half-hour drive, I headed out to see my friend. I had forgotten to take my medicine and returned to the house. As I drove back, a red-tailed hawk swooped alongside me for a hundred feet or so. I write often about synchronicity; had I been a few minutes sooner or later, there would have been no hawk. I did not follow my GPS and headed in a slightly different direction, which ultimately got me to the right place. However, I missed my exit and went down an extra exit, and being on Eastern Time with half an hour till opening, I grabbed some lunch. The young lady who waited on me had some stars and a moon tattooed beside her eye. A 1970s Cat Stevens song started running through my head, and I paid for my tab and got back a nickel. Granted, it was a strange morning, but I was handed a buffalo nickel for my change. I finally found the program along the river just below the falls. My friend and his friends from Oklahoma were set up at the spot just beside the falls. It was a quiet spot with plenty of shade. I noticed a sign, one of those historical markers, and read about the sacred spot here at the falls and the Tie snake, a creature who would pull unwary people to their deaths in the river rapids.

Bill was making a necklace for a customer, and I sat watching and taking a few pictures. As he worked, we both asked questions back and forth. Eventually, we discussed his grandfather and medicine. We talked about feathers and plants. Time was at a standstill as we caught up in minutes, which had been years. I said my goodbyes and headed towards my car, only to stop and talk again with some new friends from Florida who do demonstrations and educate groups on early native life. It was a good day and an integral part of my own journey.

This morning, I was walking about the yard and along the side of our nearby dirt road, taking pictures of wildflowers and grasshoppers, among other things that I found as I pondered. I spent several minutes trying to photograph a seed from a broom sage plant floating along in the early breeze. A bit of down, just going where the breeze would take it. It is very hard to focus on a moving piece of wood, and as I pondered, it is much like walking into a classroom and trying to teach kids who really do not want to be there. Sadly, their thoughts and ideas are floating about, wandering wherever the breeze of the day is blowing. I was listening as I drew near the back field, and the sound of crickets and frogs was nearly deafening. An author I found in my later years, Laurens Von der Post, came to mind as I imagined the sounds and images before me. Most of Von der Post’s early learning years were spent on the edge of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, being raised by a Bushmen nanny.

“Not only the present, but the future depends on a constant reinterpretation of history and a re-examination of the state and nature of human consciousness. Both these processes are profoundly and mysteriously interdependent and doomed to failure without a continuous search after self-knowledge, since we and our awareness are inevitably the main instruments of the interpretation.” Laurens Van der Post,

It was in the remembering of a very poignant childhood event that Laurens Von der Post was witness to, as he recalls the last days of man, at least the Bushmen or San. It has been several months, maybe even a year, since I last picked up a Von der Post book. Somehow, in an email last evening, I went looking for this author, and a prolific writer he was. As I researched last night and went to Amazon.com, 61 pages of his books, variations, edited versions, and translations are available. He died in 1996 at the age of 90, and he had been everywhere and done everything. He was Prince William of Great Britain’s godfather, the only non-royal ever to be so honored. He had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth many years ago. His writings, while covering his adventures and travels worldwide, are best known for his stories of the African bush. A Far Away Place was made into a family movie about children and their trek in the African wilds. But as I read, permeating all his writing is a fascination and deep understanding of a nearly lost people, the African Bushmen, or San as they call themselves.  

“The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.” Laurens Von der Post

“Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us–and those around us — more effectively. Look for the learning.” Eric Allemburgh

Yesterday I was thinking in several directions, on one hand I was discussing education in the US with several friends, and the pros and cons of public education somehow came into that discussion. I interjected a comment about indigenous peoples of South America and how Amazonian Native peoples will often want to experience civilization. I mentioned a unique program in Brazil as well, of protecting indigenous peoples from civilization, where land is kept intact and the rain forest left alone when a new tribe is found, literally keeping civilization out. Often, armed guards patrol to prevent missionaries and civilizers from encountering these primitive peoples. I started thinking in terms of learning environment, and for the indigenous peoples of the jungle, it is the jungle where the optimal learning environment is for them to survive. Far too often, we interject our modern societal values and say they should learn this or that. This led me to a statement by John Holt from the other day, and one that has been in my pondering for several days.

“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” John Holt

In that course of thought, I went in the direction of the Bushmen and Von der Post.  Last night, I stood in the dark a bit longer than I usually do. The sky was streaked with clouds, and a smiling moon was trying to peek through. I was standing on the porch listening to the night, almost silent. I went back out another time, a bit later in the morning, and by now, all the clouds were nearly gone, and stars were permeating the entire sky. My shoulder has been bothering me, and I lay back down, putting my writing off till a bit later in the day.  So often in my days, a student who has an issue or a friend or teacher will find a Bird Dropping, and then a series of events, I often use the term coincidence, and it will have been just what they needed that day.  For whatever reason, I am compelled to build on a thought passing by as I am thinking, but I am never quite sure why.

“When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.” Mary Kay Ash

“It’s easier to go down a hill than up it, but the view is much better at the top.” Arnold   Bennet

Several days ago, I received an email from a person to be added to my morning meanderings. I added this person to my list, and yesterday, I received another email here in my rush to get a Bird Droppings out. I had written exactly what this person needed. When talking with my son yesterday, he mentioned his former boss admitted she never read my meanderings, and one day she had been searching and by chance opened my daily thought, and again it was what she needed. I am wandering a bit about my learning idea, but it is the contextual framework that we seem to build that provides us with those learning activities and experiences.

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” Taylor Benson

“Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life’s relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the windowpanes, which vanish with the warmth.” Soren Kierkegaard

As I sit thinking about the drawing together of thoughts the past few days and ideas I come back to my involvement in Foxfire teaching techniques which is the basis for my one day to be finished dissertation. As I thought while reading several passages this morning, in Von der Post’s book, The Lost World of the Kalahari.  There is a comment about witnessing the last of the Bushmen painters. It seems there was a point in time when the Bushmen stopped their primitive art, which was painted on the rocks in caves of the Kalahari. The last painter had been killed in an attack of genocide, and no one knew how to take over the art. Laurens Von der Post writes about how he heard those gunshots as a child.

As I looked at students walking through the halls at my school and the discussions we have had over the past months on the internet, it really dawned on me I was where I was to be, and doing what I was to do, offering at least a little piece of more than what is normally available. That could be hope, or it could be wisdom. It could be that talking about a bushmen ostrich egg with red neck kids in Georgia, and preserving pieces of old Georgia in essays, photos, and PowerPoint projects as we go. Von der Post, in his book, went in search of the last of the Bushmen and found himself.   

“Coincidences have never been idle for me, instinctively, but as meaningful as I was to find they were to Jung. I have always had a hunch that they are a manifestation of a law of life of which we are inadequately aware and which in terms of our short life are unfortunately incapable of total definition, and yet however partial the meaning we can extract from them, we ignore it, I believe, at our peril. For as well as promoting some cosmic law, coincidences, I suspect, are some indications of the extent to which the evolution of our lives is obedient or not obedient to the symmetry of the universe.”  Laurens van der Post reflecting on Carl Jung’s work

For many years now, I have read and pondered Jung’s words and ideas. Back fourteen or so years ago, an author, James Redfield, wrote about coincidence in a fictional story of a lost manuscript, The Celestine Prophecy. Redfield was trying to explain what he saw happening in his own life. Carl Jung, in the early 1900s, coined the word synchronicity. I simplify and say I am at the right place at the right moment. What is amazing is when you look at life that way and you begin to see events unfold before you, rather than just seeing through hindsight. I was reading a friend’s note earlier about how everything happens for a reason. I responded jokingly that it only gains reason if we learn from it. As I sit here pondering this morning, it is in looking at what we truly see and in listening that we truly hear.

“A continuous search after self-knowledge, since we and our awareness are inevitably   the main instruments of the interpretation,” Laurens Von der Post

I went on the internet to borrow from the Foxfire website the following:

“In the Foxfire Approach, learning environments are characterized by student   involvement and action, by thoughtful reflection and rigorous assessment, by imagination and problem solving, by applications beyond the classroom for what is learned, and by meaningful connections to the community. In these classrooms, students build the ability to work collaboratively and assume responsibility for their own learning processes.” Foxfire Fund

Where and how do the Kalahari Desert, the Bushmen, and a river relate to learning and coincidence? They all tie in. An easy explanation can be found by borrowing from a core practice in the Foxfire teaching process.

“Reflection is an essential activity that takes place at key points throughout the work. Teachers and learners engage in conscious and thoughtful consideration of the work and the process. It is this reflective activity that evokes insight and gives rise to revisions and refinements.” Foxfire

We build through reflection, and we grow through reflection.

“Not only the present but the future depends on a constant reinterpretation of history   and a re-examination of the state and nature of human consciousness.” Laurens Von        der Post

I think reflection could be inserted just as easily into Von der Post’s quote; we all need to take time to see where we are and then participate actively as we go in life. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your heart, and always give thanks. Namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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