Are those mountain lion prints?

Pre-dawn, and I’m hiking the Forest Cooke solo. My dog won’t go with me anymore, since her best canine buddy dropped out of the picture last June. Karleanne isn’t here today either; she’s packing for a week-long Development/Alumni trip to the East Coast. So all I’ve got for protection on the trail is my “Get Big” consciousness and my Exerstrider poles, which, held up to make the get-big bigger, might (come to think of it) look sort of like antlers to the cougar, which would make me look a little like a deer. Am I thinking too much or too little like a mountain lion?

I’m definitely in musing mode, and soon enough, slight anxiety about the wildlife gives way to some wondering about my mother’s 86th birthday coming up in October, which leads (inevitably) to some wedding gifts I’ve got to get wrapped and shipped, which brings me to possible workshops for Arts Weekend.

But what keeps inserting itself into my otherwise random thoughts is the conversation I had last night with a new 9th grader in my English 1 course. He’s not been bringing what I think is his best game to class since a slight derailment at the end of Week 1, and I’d gone over to the dorm after formal dinner last night to meet with him about my concerns. At a table out in the courtyard, under the wrap-around porch, we talked. I asked him first about other English classes he’s been in, about his other teachers’ styles and expectations. Turns out he likes reading (we were simpatico on Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now and Hesse’s Siddhartha, two of his six summer books) and isn’t dragging around any apparent baggage about this subject. Good news. So we talked about basic standards and habits of study and deportment and hopes for the immediate future in class. As a last point of conversation, I told him that his comments at the seminar table had already proven him to be an acutely observant reader; I wanted to hear more, and so did his classmates. We shook hands and I wished him a happy study hall.

What persists of that fifteen minutes last evening on my morning walk in the hills is only this: Did I strike the best tone with this particular, possibly/probably tender kid? Did I balance high expectations with sensitivity to the steepness of the learning curve he’s been clawing his way up for the last four weeks? (The sheer newness of everything and everyone, so much to remember, so many demands to meet every hour, every day! Sometimes I think I’d like to trade places with them, just to see if I could actually pull off what these 14-year-olds do here.)

I wonder, did any of it sink in–out of its mattering to him, and not just to me on his behalf?  Or does wanting something for your students, over time and activated repeatedly, become the thing they want for themselves?

Is a mountain lion the exact same animal as a cougar?