The school where I teach in Norway is part of the United World College movement. There are eighteen UWC schools around the world, united by a common mission, to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. In these last seven years, I’ve been lucky to get to work with the young people and my colleagues here from so many different national, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
A week ago, I took part online in the every-six-years UWC Congress, where staff and student delegates from the eighteen schools, national committee representatives who run organizations in each country to select students and raise scholarship funds, and others involved in the movement gathered to talk about what we’re doing well, what we need to do better, and where we’re going in this difficult time in the world. My husband was at the congress in person, in Phuket, Thailand, and I joined from here. It was inspiring and reaffirming. When we work together, we can do meaningful things.
A couple of days after the Congress ended, our student body held a protest, in which they criticized the school’s response to the terrible and worsening situation in Gaza. Emotions have been running high. Following the protest, there have been lots of meetings and dialogues happening between student organizers and school administration. Although we’re here in this rural area of Norway, where things feel very peaceful, world events feel present here. Most of the time when a crisis happens somewhere in the world, we have a student who is personally affected.
This year, we have one student from Gaza. She is working to raise money to pay for her family to leave. If you feel interested and able to support in this effort, here is her fundraising page:
With my small “Species Identification” student group this last week, we went out into the woods to see what signs of spring are emerging. In this first week of March, a few things are beginning to grow. Mosses and lichens are bright and thriving. Looking closely at the trees, they are beginning to make the new year’s growth, although it likely won’t be until early May when the leaves really emerge. Some years here, it has felt like spring is so slow it will never come. This year, I suppose I’ve been watching for it a bit more closely. It’s nice to already be finding a few signs of spring.
These next three images are three species of moss we found growing all in close proximity to one another. I don’t feel confident enough to try to name the species, but it is amazing to see how different they are to one another.
I suppose the lichens, like the one below, are always present, but when few things are yet growing, they stand out. I love their icy colors and their strange shapes. They remind me of coral.
The first flowers are emerging too. Here are snowdrops from my neighbor’s yard, followed by the catkins of alder trees, which, when you tap them with your finger, emit a cloud of pollen.
We had some quite violent storms in the last two weeks, with strong winds and rain. A few days after these storms, I was walking on a path near to the fjord when I came across this shocking scene. My pictures don’t quite do it justice. It was a massive tree that had been downed by wind. The soil here is so thin, like a skin stretched over the stone. When the tree went down, it peeled up this skin, on such a massive scale I couldn’t believe it. The bare stone was left exposed. The great tree, as well as smaller trees growing on the same flap of earth, lay horizontal, still clinking to the wall of soil, which stood about fifteen feet high. A few days after I took these photographs, workers carefully cut the large tree away, lay back down the earth over the stone. I wonder how long it had been since that stone had seen light.
I’m writing this post on Saturday morning. In an hour, I’m leaving for a day’s skiing trip with students on the Gaularfjell. I hope that will be really good. In two weeks’ time, I expect I’ll post some pictures from today.
Best wishes for the weeks ahead. We’ll all try to keep reading and writing, doing what we can for the world from the position we find ourselves in. Here is Aya’s fundraiser link again if you are able and willing to contribute something. Thanks for reading today,
Jimmy
Words like trees 