REFLECTIONS ON AN INTERNSHIP
Gale Warner
Reproduced with permission, Journal of Experiential Education, Fall 1983.
Jan. 3, 1983
It is enough. Out my door is a clear graceful stream, a squirrel’s raucous face above me in a bay tree, three mountains furred in muted greens and browns, five warm Guernsey cows set against cool green, new green, January green grass. Enough. Within, a writer’s retreat: a table that shudders beneath a typewriter, a dictionary spread open on the headrest, hot water for tea, Degas and Turner prints on the walls—a space small enough to be amply lit by candles, and large enough to think. At night, I hear a coyote caterwaul, and the constant hum of the creek, measured, unhurried, well mannered. The stars are blue-bright, piercing. More than enough.
I may be less sanguine after the first rain, when the bits of sky I see in the hatch above me become spigots, and a trip to the bathroom across the valley becomes a muddy expedition in galoshes and slicker. Or after the mice move in for my peanuts and crackers and begin to, as the kindly gentleman owner of this tiny trailer put it, “rearrange the insulation.” Perhaps. Perhaps I will tire of busloads of city children unfurling cramped legs and voices every morning, or of thoroughbreds galloping in the arena ten steps from my door. But it doesn’t seem likely now. It seems, instead, as though I have landed here propitiously from another planet, and have, by some kind of grace, been allowed to stay awhile.
Hidden Villa. Even its name evokes an air of rural gentility, with a dash of mystery thrown in. It is called a ranch, but that is a concession to its location in California, for there are no crossed spurs above the doors, no thousands of bawling dogies, no dudes. It is a farm. It is hard to imagine it as anything else. Even in its days of wildness, when Ohlone Indians lived by its streams, caught salmon, and feared grizzlies, the small green valley must have seemed a welcome haven, hospitable to human life in a way that the damp bay laurel canyons and steep chaparral slopes surrounding it could not have been. Humans have always lived here—that breathes from the land. Here the struggle has been for cooperation with land rather than conquest of it, and it shows. The land is as open and trusting as a child who has never been beaten, and who never expects to be.
I came to Hidden Villa in late December 1982 for a six-month internship with the Hidden Villa Environmental Project (HVEP) on the strength of fond memories of volunteering with the project a few years before. When I arrived, I had no idea that I would become absorbed, immersed, and converted into an environmental educator. After traveling for some time, I was looking for a place to root, and from 3,000 miles away the serenity at Hidden Villa seemed to call out a welcome. I was a writer, and I knew I could write there; the children, I thought, would be a pleasant diversion. Not long out of college, I was in that exhilarating and perplexing stage when what I wanted to do was clear enough, but how to do it was the problem; when creative fulfillment and practical survival seemed utterly contradictory; when part of me urged “settle down, find a job” while the other urged freedom and exploration. For such a stage in life were internships wrought.
Hidden Villa began as a family affair and owes much of its flavor to the blend of generations and perspectives created by one remarkable family and those they have managed to draw into the ranch’s activities over the years. At age 96, Frank Duveneck is still the benevolent patriarch of Hidden Villa. He and his wife, Josephine, moved to California’s Bay Area during World War I and bought Hidden Villa’s original 1000 acres a few years later. They built a house and moved there with their four children in 1929, but the ranch quickly became more than simply a home for the Duveneck family. As their neighbor, Wallace Stegner, once remarked, “They could not own a home without sharing it.” Hidden Villa became a mecca for those sharing the Duvenecks’ humanitarian, conservation and educational ideals.
The Duvenecks helped found the Peninsula School for Creative Education in Menlo Park, and a variety of programs at the ranch soon followed: the Pacific Coast’s first youth hostel in 1937, a multi-racial summer camp in 1945, farm tours for preschoolers, and the Environmental Project, launched in 1970 with three young teachers and a sense of mission. Since then HVEP has brought about 3,000 elementary school children a year to Hidden Villa to learn ecological concepts, farm facts, and caretakership ethics through creative, experiential strategies, many of which are described in HVEP’s acclaimed curriculum guide, Manure to Meadow to Milkshake. The classroom is the working farm and the 1,800 acres of chaparral slopes, grassy ridges, and forested canyons that the Duvenecks have succeeded in preserving amidst the urban sprawl of the Silicon Valley.
Although a relatively recent addition to HVEP, interns have been described as the “meat” in a sandwich between the four part-time staff members and volunteer guides from the community and local colleges. The deal is symbiotic: Hidden Villa gets inexpensive, enthusiastic help, and we get $10 a week, housing in small cabins or trailers, fresh milk, butter, and vegetables, credit if we need it, and invaluable training and experience. In addition to guiding children with HVEP, interns assist in the hostel, garden, animal care, maintenance, and administration, as well as carrying out individual projects. Interns also are on call to pick up the slack when volunteers contract final exams or when overworked staff members cannot be in three places at once. All this proved plenty to juggle, and weekly scheduling meetings were often hilarious when we booked our lives six weeks in advance. Yet the resultant variety of experience kept us from getting stale: on any given day we might teach children, arrange fundraising picnics, make yogurt, dig garden beds, ride a horse, fix plumbing, prune blackberries, milk cows, pour cement, or perform puppet shows during the half-day classroom visits that staff members used to prepare the children for their Hidden Villa trip.
Sure there were times when I wondered what forking out packed sheep manure three feet deep had to do with environmental education. But all that scrubbing of toilets and digging of postholes, besides being necessary and tangible work, promoted the attitudes of self-reliance and community gumption that somewhere along the line became essential to environmental teachings. We became convinced, rightly or wrongly, that we could do almost anything, that phone calls for outside help were unnecessary when a roof leaked or a downed tree had to be cleared.
We discovered that what holds true for the children holds true for us, the teachers: the experiential educator’s maxim, “Let me do it and I’ll understand.” After getting up at dawn for morning chores, we could begin to teach children about farm life from the point of view of the farmer. The garden became more than a handy educational station to us after hours of turning the compost pile, preparing beds, planting onions, and staking tomatoes. And as hikers on the wilderness trails in our free time, we were able to extol its virtues more lustily because we lived so near it and loved it so well.
Jan. 28, 1983
As each wave on the beach shifts the sands in a new pattern, brings in new kelp, stones, shells, and jellyfish to ogle at, and washes others away, so is each day here in these mountains. The night rolls in and leaves behind a slightly altered land: infinitesimally greener hills, brand-new wildflowers, a newly fallen tree, a new hue and cry of the creek. Each day begins afresh, washed clean, glistening, never to be repeated.
When the staff asked us, at the end of our time, if it would be possible to have as rewarding an internship without living on the ranch, we were emphatic that it was not. Living here allowed us to be part of the ranch’s community. Our work lives and our personal lives were united; our friends—ranch hands, secretaries, volunteers, hostel managers, gardeners—were also our coworkers. The camaraderie engendered by spontaneous get-togethers after a full day of clearing downed trees or shoveling trenches to combat mudslides was an irreplaceable part of the experience. We had the rare opportunity to teach about our home, not someplace segregated from the rest of our lives. By tilling the garden we were putting into practice exactly what we were trying to inspire: taking care of the earth and its creatures. The sweat and muscle required to maintain the farm, animals, and facilities deepened our understanding of the notion of being connected to the land and responsible for its well-being.
March 29, 1983
Home again after a week away. The lambs are bigger, and Lee has had her calf. The miner’s lettuce is huge: the once heart-shaped leaves have grown around the stems, come full circle, and created collars of Elizabethan splendor. The maple near my trailer is putting out clusters of purple-red leaves—surprise! At twilight, as Ross drove the cows home from pasture, his full baritone echoed in the canyon, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” How, indeed.
Some of the children who come to Hidden Villa grew up in the inner city and have never before seen a live cow or taken a walk in the woods. A few are as petrified of walking down a sunny trail in the hills as I would be walking around their neighborhoods at night, and for similar reasons—unknown dangers lurking behind the bushes. They tend to associate wildness with hardship, hidden precipices, and lions and tigers and bears (oh my!). Other children sport Sierra Club badges on their backpacks and can relate tales of their most recent expedition to the mountains with aplomb. For some of these children, however, exposure to nature has been so frequent that they almost take it for granted, and often they are more difficult to keep alert than the uninitiated underprivileged children, who view their day at Hidden Villa as an enormous once-in-a-lifetime adventure. (“So there’s moss on the tree, so what?”)
They come from grades one through six, public and private schools, a rainbow of ethnic backgrounds, and a medley of socioeconomic situations. Their parents include Vietnamese and Cambodians fresh off a boat, millionaire Silicon Valley executives, Hispanic residents of barrios, Stanford University professors, and a large measure of middle-class suburbanites. Whatever their previous experience, all the children come with something to learn. The affluent and middle-class children may be veterans of junior nature expeditions, but they have little awareness that anything they do in their lives could have any effect on the environment around them. They tend to be prissy about sitting on the ground, intolerant of animal odors in pens, afraid of getting dirty, and, in general, more interested in competition than in cooperation with their peers. Those from less advantaged backgrounds tend to have lesser reading and writing skills and to be more fearful of the large animals and long hikes, but they are also more curious, more cooperative, and more eager to learn. Of course, such generalizations are inherently problematic and exceptions common; a great deal depends on the individual classroom teacher and parental environment. But one of the most valuable aspects of my internship was being able to work with such a diversity of cultural attitudes toward nature, forcing me to re-examine some assumptions about human relationships to the natural world that I had cherished for a long time.
April 12, 1983—Josephine Duveneck’s birthday
“Becoming aware of the relationships of all living things to other living things is the key to knowing ourselves. It is the basis for understanding the intricate web of life. By what means can such experience be brought about? The challenge for the teacher is to set the stage so that this kind of learning can take place.” –Josephine Whitney Duvenek (1891-1978)
I have a lot of reasons to feel as happy as I do now. I have been acutely aware, all day, of other people around me and my relationship to them—in that order. Often, the relationship of the moment, with a ponderous “me” on one end, tends to overwhelm my awareness of the other person, but today I moved freely amid dozens of persons, able to see each clearly and to do something to amuse, comfort, or gladden them in some tiny way. I can do this, I realize, because this is home—because I am so firmly rooted to this place, so planted and secure, though my season here is short—and thus able to view the kaleidoscope of people around me calmly and with the affection for them that I feel within.
Today I created a string of grand adventures and memories for four children with learning disabilities—bright, personable children, wonderful to be with. I was “on” today, really teaching, and balancing it with plain friendship and fun. I can feel the growth in them after just this one day—what a precious treat for a teacher! My self-confidence and ability with children are steadily growing. I have armfuls of tricks up my sleeves now. Enthusiasm, good spirits, and a hells-bells attitude smooth over just about anything. I’m discovering, though, that a hefty repertoire of techniques, and sufficient composure to be able to make them up on the spot sure help.
I have discovered so much about myself here. When I’m rich and famous, will I sleep as well as I do on these old cotton covers, in this endearingly tacky trailer? I fold the same clothes over and over again after laundry with genuine affection, not boredom. How many skins do I need? My shoes have more holes in them than the intact surface; it matters little when they finally rip. I have bought almost no material goods except staple foods for months. I eat simply and healthily, and I like to cook for myself. I love the morning air on my face, the wake-up tapping of a woodpecker in my tree, the chill dew igniting the grasses in the early sun, the sheep and cows bellowing, the creek’s song. These are constant, dependable, cherished things—things that are now irrevocably part of how I choose to live. I know now a little more clearly how I do and do not want to live. And this – is close. Very close.
There are some pitfalls to live-in internships as well. At times the mixture of work and home grew too intense and I needed to get away; also, after a while, it was tempting to believe that the world revolved around Hidden Villa. It is easy to overextend just because one is physically there all the time. But the staff was always sensitive to this, quick to work out any difficulties, and supportive of the need to take time off. When the chips were down and phone calls had to be made, a mailing had to go out, or extra guides were needed, the interns were expected to come through. Yet the care and interest the staff showed for us prevented us from feeling used. Our crew of five was rewarded with frequent kudos from the staff and enrichment sessions with visiting speakers on jobs, resumes, grants, and setting up nonprofit corporations. We were told directly and indirectly that we were being trained to be leaders in the field, capable of setting up our own programs in the future.
One of the keys to Hidden Villa’s success is the staff’s credo that the guides and interns must be treated with the same care and solicitude as the children. An hour before the classes arrive, guides share “values” in a circle to prepare themselves mentally for the day. After the children go home, a “debriefing” session, with edible treats, gives each guide a chance to share the day’s ups and downs with a sympathetic audience, and tips for next time are passed around. Potlucks, folk dances, and other social gatherings impress on the volunteers that the staff takes a personal interest in their growth and learning as well as that of the children.
May 26, 1983
Because of a teacher’s mix-up yesterday, some children from Palo Alto missed their three-mile hike across Rhus Ridge and had an hour to get fidgeting and bored before we discovered where they were. Their energy level was so high that all of Mike’s magic couldn’t transform the experience from an exuberant outdoor slumber party, soon forgotten, into a memorable, illuminating night under a full moon. Since the children were so intelligent and potentially so receptive, it was frustrating that they were so rowdy and uncooperative. But we did what we could. I played some penny-whistle tunes for them after they were all in their sleeping bags, as the fog rolled in over the hills.
The next morning I woke in a field of flowers and hiked off the ridge to meet the next day’s children. They could not have been a greater contrast: black, Hispanic, and Asian sixth-graders from San Jose, enthused, curious, sensitive, bright—a joy to be with in every way. My five children were active and willing for any adventure, yet also capable of being quiet and mature. But I ached inside when I read their heartfelt, grammatically disastrous writing about their feeling for Hidden Villa. No one can tell me that these kids are not as intelligent, if not more so than the super-privileged Palo Alto fourth-graders. They couldn’t spell or construct correct sentences, or divide one-fourth in half to get an eighth, but their creativity and sensitivity for each other and for the wild things we encountered have me inspired as an educator. They have never been prodded to read, to write, to stretch themselves to learn, to listen and think, to consider exploring all their potentialities away from San Jose’s east side. I had to hold back the tears when they told me they didn’t want to go to junior high school “because you get beat up all the time.” Gifted and sweet Jesse? Adorable Isabel? We are sending lambs to the altar. Dear children, there must be something we can do.
June 3, 1983
Partings. The taste, full and pungent, slides down the throat to the chest: a tightening. Familiar enough, though always before felt for a person, a loved one. Not this generalized ache for a place, something that I cannot embrace—not all of it at once, firm and warm within my arms. It is elusive. A group of people, some low brush mountains, a dwindling clear creek still singing through my door, so hushed, so gentle. How can I describe my feelings when the folks tonight after dinner spoke of this summer, next year… it will all go on without me. This morning I lingered in the parking lot, hoping I would be needed to guide. I wanted kids—more and more kids. I wanted it to go on. So those huggable first-graders yesterday were the last? No more new games, decomposer dance, calves, rangers, planets, riddles, rump-bump, stories, writings, alone walks, tree hugs, lambs? No more feeding the chickens, holding the snake, hunting for bones in dry coyote scat, playing in the creek? No more music?
June 16, 1983
Wherever I go, whatever I do, I will have Hidden Villa with me. Within me. I am leaving temporarily and bodily, so that others may take my place, may alight, root, grow, and seed here as I have. Dana, today, was already touched by the glow. Another counselor lay quietly by the creek and did not hear me as I returned from a last hike. The camp children arrive Saturday. Matilda is about to have her piglets. It is all as it should be. I have had my time here.