October 20, 2009

Tree huggers

All semester, my first year students been joking about how people call them tree huggers and hippies – and how they're claiming those stereotypes in positive way. Little Green is, after all, a college dedicated to environmental science and forestry.

Last week, I brought the newest issue of National Geographic to class because I knew that my students would love to see the amazing fold-out photo in the magazine: it’s a composite photo, made from 84 photos stitched together, that shows an entire redwood tree. The tree is more than 300 feet tall, with a 100-foot wide crown. It’s more than 1500 years old.

Little Green students love stuff like this. During the ten minutes before class began, we passed the magazine around and talked about what the photo said about our relationship to the earth.

Three students were holding the poster up, talking about it, when another walked in the door. “What are you guys looking at?”

“A redwood,” said Outgoing Guy. He flipped the poster around and grinned, “Yeah, here at Little Green, our pin-ups are of trees.”

4 comments:

Doctor Pion said...

Did you see the note at the end of the mag (in the "making of the photo" section) that said you can get a VERY large print of that picture?

Digger said...

That was a FANTASTIC picture; and I love your students' sense of humour!

Jennifer (ponderosa) said...

Ha! That made me laugh. And I saw that picture at my sister's house. (I can't read NatGeo regularly. It's too depressing.) It was AMAZING.

The movie Ascending the Giants played here in town 2 weekends ago but I missed it. Your students might like it. http://ascendingthegiants.com/homepage.html

Danny Bradfield said...

I saw that picture. Today I checked out from the library The Wild Trees, a book about some of the people mentioned in the National Geographic article. Just reading the first few pages makes me want to get in the car and drive up the coast to the redwoods.