Looking Back Together: Phenomenology and Nurturing the Reflective Lens in Student Writing

This past summer my family and I set out on a challenging trek in Gros Morne National Park. We would hike the park’s namesake, a foreboding 800-meter dome of ancient seabed, the highest point in the Long Range Mountains of western Newfoundland. We walked an hour through gnarled tuckamore – centuries old white spruce tortured and twisted to form an impenetrable canopy just a few feet over our heads. The thin peat at our feet was veined with a network of hardened roots. Shards of white granite scree pushed through the black loam like skeletal remains – a charnel house to commemorate the millennia of unimaginable geological forces. The shadows were deep and silent; the wind swept over us, but was unable to find a way in. It was a series of these elvin gullies interspersed with spongy open bogs that brought us to the base of Gros Morne Mountain. We began our ascent through a chute on the western face. Car-sized angular boulders of pink granite emblazoned with rosettes of rusty lichen made the going tough. At first the children, aged 9 and 11, were excited and chattered incessantly. In short time, however, they fell silent. Each of us peered up – concentrating on choosing the best path – the one of least resistance. The tight single file into which we had naturally fallen on the trail to the base was now diffused by the challenge of a rocky chute. We were four, united in goal, determined to move forward, yet each individual forging his own way. Then an interesting pattern emerged. The climb was frequently interrupted when one of us would turn an