A beautiful poem i found about a river

River Runs Free

By

David Windle

River runs free river runs free 
along the rocky ridge and down
 towards the sea
river runs free river runs free 
like the wind and birds
and you and me.

As the slow sky turns
 and the deep sun burns
 and the dark earth
 rests beneath
river runs free river runs free
 like a glittering seam of stars.

As the leaves draw light
from the woven air
 and the grass drinks hard
 from the frozen soil
 river runs free towards the sea
 like a rope of silver silk.

As the quiet fish dive
 and the birds alight
 and the jungle
 sings with life
 river runs free with you and me
and the horizon calling endlessly.

The Aberfan Tip Disaster

The Aberfan Tip disaster happened in the small town of Merthyr Tydfil, in Southern Wales. Merthyr Tydfil was a small coal-mining town and the coal mining company, the Merthyr Vale Colliery, had built up several coal tips on a large, steep hillside.

            On October twenty first, nineteen sixty six, at nine fifteen a.m. coal tip number seven came rushing down the Aberfan hillside and took out the Pantglas Elementary School along with twenty nearby houses. The landslide killed 144 people that day, 116 of which were school children; half of all of the children at Pantglas Elementary and five of their teachers were buried under huge amounts of black mud. Police received an emergency call at nine twenty five a.m.: “I have been asked to inform that there has been a landslide at Pantglas. The tip has come down on the school.”

           

      The remains of the school and houses covered with mud

The tip was placed on top of an underground spring, which made the ground unstable; that along with two days of non-stop rainfall caused the coal tip to slide down the slope of the hillside.

This was a terrible thing that happened but it could have been prevented. I feel that not placing so much coal on top of the hill or monitoring the tips, as slower landslides had happened before on different tips, could have prevented this.

Sources that I used

First one I looked at

http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/aberfandisaster.htm

Final one I used

http://www.southwalespolicemuseum.org.uk/en/content/cms/history_of_the_force/the_aberfan_disaster/the_aberfan_disaster.aspx

Listen

Stop!
 Just stop and listen to the world around you
so full of beauty,
the way the wind blows in the trees

hear the rushing water of the falls above
the harmony that the birds sing,
it reminds me of a dove floating on air

The beauty of nature is all around you
just stop and listen to it.
How many sounds can fly right through
our lives in the bustling city.

The sound of leaves,
the sound of silence.
But it's not so silent is it?

To some the natural world is strange.
To some it feels like home.
for me?
That is an easy thing to tell,
for me, nature is hope.

So stop and think while you're in your car
of the sounds that you heard in the forest's wing
the wonderful melody that the ancient ones sing.

Mr. Thielmann posing for photos :p

By the waterfall :)

Flex block! Gettin work done

Topophilia

            I don’t really have a place that I connect or have any real important history with. It’s more like… people and wherever they are is where I have memories of things we did or said. I am a very awkward person so anywhere I go I sort of feel awkward. I guess, if I were to choose a place, it would have to be Quinson Elementary School. Quinson was the fourth elementary school I ever attended and a huge part of why I am who I am today. The only reason I love music as much as I do is because of my music teacher and choir conductor, Mrs. Duerkson. She was such an inspiration to me.. I was in her choir and loved singing with all of my choir mates. I still sing everyday even though choir is not something that I do anymore. Quinson has a lot of memories for me and I guess that it is the place that has the most topophilia for me

What is my first memory of nature?

1.                           My earliest experience with nature. I don’t remember my earliest experience with nature. I think the earliest I remember is going camping with my mom and dad and my cousins, aunties and uncles. We camped at Babine Lake that year and it was my cousins’ and my first time there. We climbed on rocks and trees the first day, trying to explore as much of this exciting  “new world” as possible. I remember the one tree, right beside the water; just one of its thick branches was hanging sideways about five feet over the rocky beach. My cousins and I, as little kids do, just HAD to explore it. We climbed the tree and shimmied our way down the branch until we were all sitting on its end. The branch was bouncy and we giggled as we sat there making it move up and down. We got bored of that quickly and left the branch for another day. Getting back to camp we found that our fathers had made a “toilet” out of a bucket shoved into a hole in the ground surrounded by tarps held up by tall branches that they had also stuck in the ground. On the third day I remember my uncle Kyle saying “we are going on an adventure today.” What he meant by that was that we were going to the small rocky island a little ways off shore from our camp. The whole family piled into a little car topper and we headed to the island. On the island was an abandoned mine. My cousins and I were ecstatic and practically flew into the cave, leaving our parents and the outside world behind. Once we were through the wooden barriers, we saw spiders, beetles and other creepy crawlies scuttling about. That’s when my uncle Kyle, the toughest man I know, came in and saw the spiders… he screeched like a banshee and, with a horrified look on is face, sprinted out of the cave faster than I ever thought a man that size could run.  That night, when we got back to camp, we played with glow sticks and had a fire and did all that “happy family camping” stuff. I haven’t been to Babine Lake ever since, but I still remember that trip that was so much fun as a small child with a huge imagination.