Wild, Free, and Intact

by Kristin Luce

This is your school. You can do what you want here.

Last spring, when I arrived with my 8-year-old daughter at Alpine Valley School, one of the staff spoke these words directly to her. Within minutes she was running outside to play on the jungle gym. Moved to tears, I thought, “I am releasing her back into the wild.”

Like Zoe, the leopard-cub stuffed animal she drags behind her each day, A. took to the wild quite readily. She was born knowing this is her world. When she was four she passed a supermarket aisle, then backed up and yelled, “HI, EVERYBODY!” A. thrives on being respected and fully in charge of herself. Finally, she’s found a school that allows her that freedom.

A. complains if we get to school “too late” or leave “too early,” and she expectantly counts the days when it’s not open. Her natural enthusiasm is unleashed here, and the odd, neurotic behaviors that often develop in caged animals do not seem to arise for her or the other students. When you take a grown, indoor cat outside for the first time, it is confused and frightened; but like Zoe, a kitten let loose will instinctively run and play, growing itself up into a formidable and confident cat.

Watching A. on the school’s play structure is like that. She challenges herself naturally, flying through the air again and again, pushing herself to reach further, move faster, leap higher, completely immersed in her own joy. How many adults, or even children, are still connected to their own joy? At AVS, A. is becoming both more mature and more child-like. She knows what she wants, and doesn’t depend on guidance or approval. She is finding the empowerment to be who she is: a little girl who explores and imagines and moves and loves.

Learning is a whole body/mind experience in which success cannot be reduced to predetermined cognitive milestones. At Alpine Valley, A. learns from conversations, as well as setting up a “store” to sell things, asking questions, writing people up for rule-breaking, being read to, making mistakes, feeling remorse after hurting a friend’s feelings, and a thousand other things. Does it matter whether she’s learning in a textbook sense? A. is happy and growing physically, mentally and emotionally, just as she should.

A. jumps into the arms of her teenage friends like she is their mascot. She asks for help from staff and students alike with cooking and finding scissors and understanding the moon and opening things, and she freely passes on her wisdom and experience to younger kids. The natural flow of connection, information, and—dare I say, love—is what heals and grows kids up into brilliant adults. Keeping my wild, beautiful child intact is infinitely more precious than worrying whether she reads at 5 or 15. Having her find her own way to happiness trumps any teacher or school board or timeline, and even my own doubts and fears.

In our current culture we fear that “wild” means out of control, but that is not my experience of AVS, nor of my daughter. The environment at Alpine Valley is easy, respectful, and normal, which is unusual in this over-controlled world of ours. It is wild in the sense that it is natural and spontaneous, uncontrived and non-manipulative. Here my daughter is free and she is wild, like a vine growing on the side of a house, reaching out for the sunshine; like dandelions growing in a field; and like a leopard cub falling asleep in the grass after a full afternoon of chasing grasshoppers, inadvertently growing herself into a very agile, wise, powerful, well-adjusted and happy cat.

Zoe is in very good company.