The day was like a watercolor painting, everything softened and translucent, washed by the silvery light of a distant storm. I walked briskly and purposefully, uphill and down, overriding the ache in my leg, walking for the sake of my mental state, walking to get calm, walking to dissolve the border between myself and the landscape, walking for the balm of it. In time, the present grew plump with the past, but I rode the emotions that my memories carried to me, and eventually I found a state of neutral coexistence with the universe and walked on.
A few days earlier, I had gone into the local mountains with my geologist friend and fellow teacher Donna Frost to visit our former colleague, Marc Kummel, affectionately known as Treebeard. His wife, Julie, led us down a steep gravel road to the canyon where we would find him. A sign said, “SLOW DOWN Photographer at Work” and there he was, taking pictures of insects. It sounds odd, but it’s one of the quiet, loving ways the man is bearing witness, documenting, tending to the planet.
A naturalist, musician, and general Renaissance man, Treebeard led groups at the Outdoor School near Lake Cachuma long before he began teaching at Dunn Middle School in Los Olivos, where his science classes involved fire and philosophy in equal parts. Many former students remember him best for his weekly after-school hike club, during which he led kids out into the wondrous world of nature, where they climbed mountains, splashed in creeks, and were shown the little miracles they might not have noticed on their own. It was pure play, a release from adolescent angst, and a form of learning that offered kids a different way of being, and I am certain it changed a few lives.