Field Trip
Nov 26 2013


We couldn't get enough
of the mummies, and dinosaurs.
Kids at the museum,
terrified
at the world that existed before us.
Back when dinosaurs were only bone,
before we knew
they were feathered, colourful, warm;
more like us, only bigger.
And mesmerized
by this dusty desert after-life;
not heaven, which we knew existed,
but those simple Egyptians
convinced they had cheated death.

But even more,
it was through the steamy windows
of that rowdy yellow bus
we were opened up,
a world we had never imagined
going on,

outside the walls
of our classroom home.

Looking out, nose-to-glass
at storefronts, grown-ups, traffic,
an alien earth
all hustle and bustle,
utterly oblivious to us.

We wished to reach through, and touch
the giant lizards, petrified mummies,
as if handling would make it real.
Not understanding
how soon we would stand
on the other side of the glass.

Find ourselves
watching a school bus pass
some dull Wednesday morning,
trailing diesel
the chatter of kids.
Already nostalgic
for innocence
and field trips.

Who would learn, that day
how small they were,
how little they knew of the world.


This poem uses the solipsism of childhood as a metaphor for the solipsism of narrow world-views.

Here is what I mean by solipsistic world-views. We used to see dinosaurs as lumbering clumsy creatures who were out-competed by our nimble mammalian ancestors. Actually, they were incredibly successful, diverse, and resilient; and their demise was purely the result of a cosmic collision (which, by the way, almost did in our diminutive ancestors as well). So our triumphalism and "speciesism" has been disabused by science ("more like us, only bigger"). We are condescendingly amused at the ancient Egyptians' bizarre belief in the preservation of dead bodies, to be resurrected in some imagined after-life. But these same condescending moderns privilege as certainties ("not heaven, which we knew existed") their own superstitions about heaven and afterlives and divinity. (The snarky atheist in me once again getting the last word!)

It's also a commentary on formal education: because we don't retain much of the information we're crammed with (the view of education as a process of filling an empty vessel with knowledge); and we aren't transformed simply by exposure to high culture. Rather, our education comes in unexpected places, and from the cultivation of receptivity and curiosity. And it's as much about process as content; as much about socialization and self-regulation and habit of mind as it is about formal instruction. I always bristle when I hear the expression "go to university and get an education." This is the perfect model of the "empty vessel" I so dislike. If you're fortunate, you may get a diploma, a credential; but the whole point of the exercise is to become educated. In the poem, it's not the institution of high culture that stays with this child; it's the incidental bus trip that gets him out of the comfort and self-absorption of the classroom's 4 walls, where he is humbled by his new perspective on a grander world.

Kids continue to be unaccountably fascinated by dinosaurs. I think the Egyptian artifacts and giant lizards are still the highlight of any trip to the museum. (Suits of armour, too!) We grow up quickly ...more quickly, these days. How nice it would be to recapture the excitement of those childhood field trips, when we found ourselves out in the world, liberated from the deadly routine of the school day and those stuffy over-heated rooms.