On Jane Goodall Day, I Stopped Leading and Watched What Happened

What Changes in the Days Around the Pink Moon If You Keep Going Back

We hike the same patch of woods over and over, day after day, year after year. It is never the same hike, because the forest is constantly changing. Even when a season feels fully settled, the weather alone can shift the entire landscape and experience overnight.

This is the second year in a row I have gone out every day around the Pink Moon to this same little patch of forest, watching spring come to life in real time. Both years, I have been completely surprised by it. Not because I didn’t know it was coming, but because of how quickly it happens once it begins. This year, I was able to share that experience with my niece and nephew, all three of us pointing out new grass and flowers that quite literally were not there the day before.

A few days before the full moon, the forest is still quiet. It still looks like winter. The ground is mostly brown, the trees are bare, and the air holds that stillness where everything feels like it is waiting. If you stop and listen, you can hear a few things. A woodpecker. A squirrel moving through the leaves. Small signs that something is there, but nothing that feels fully awake. It is easy to walk through and miss it. It is easy to think nothing is happening.

Then the full moon comes, and you return the next day, and the ground is different. The air is different. The sound is different. Tiny flowers start pushing up through soil that looked completely still just days before. Grass begins to appear where there was none. The birds are no longer scattered sounds but layers, overlapping, filling the air in a way you can feel in your body. The creek runs higher from the rain, moving faster, carrying debris with it, making room for what comes next.

It is the same place, and it is not the same place at all.

By the following day, ducks are everywhere. The birds are in full chorus. There are new sounds we cannot even identify yet. The forest is no longer waiting. It is fully in motion.

When You Stop Leading

This week, the kids were on spring break, so our Seedlings group through Roots & Shoots was able to have four explorations. By the last day, something had shifted, not just in the woods, but in them.

They were not waiting for direction anymore. They were leading.

My niece ran ahead and called back that she was going to explore the other side of the bank. A little while later, she came back carrying a piece of bark she had found on the forest floor, showing her brother the lines the worms had made, like she had discovered something important. And to her, she had. He followed her in a way that felt different. A little braver than he usually is. A little more willing to step into things without being pulled there.

They were not asking what the plan was. They were becoming the plan.

They sturdied up the walls of their fort. They reminded each other where to step because plants were growing. To celebrate Jane Goodall Day, my niece decided  to clean up by the creek. They had already filled two garbage bags with debris. She always wants to clean up when she is there and we always bring trash bags. It bothers her that litter blows in from the dumpsters around the preserve and ends up in the water the animals use.

Dr. Jane would be proud of her. This is what Seedlings is built on. Small acts, rooted in noticing, that grow into something bigger.

They followed a small turtle as the current carried it downstream, completely absorbed in where it would go next. When it got stuck between two logs, my niece stepped in and helped it free itself without hesitation. Three ducks flew in low over the water, the males chasing, fighting for position, and suddenly we were talking about mating season in the middle of everything else.

There was no structure. No script. Just attention.

Laying in the Moss

I spent most of that time laying in a patch of moss.

My body made the decision for me. I was exhausted, but I did not want to miss their joy. My knee was swollen enough that I could feel it with every shift, every step, every attempt to move the way I normally would. It is part of the story I carry in my body. A couple days of tending to it and it will be fine. This was worth it.

So I stopped.

I lowered myself into the moss, feet pressed into the ground, and for the first time all day, I was not trying to keep up with anything. Not the kids. Not a plan. Not even my own expectations of what I thought the day should look like.

The birds got louder. The sun felt warmer. The ground felt cool and soft beneath me. My body, which had been loud in its discomfort, got quieter. Every once in a while, a plane passed overhead, cutting through the sound just long enough to remind me that there is a whole world beyond this, and somehow that made this moment feel even more real.

I just laid there, grounding, watching the kids, watching their imagination take over.

My nephew found a piece of string and tied it to a stick, pretending to fish my niece out of the creek. She jumped and splashed like he had caught something huge, laughing the kind of laugh that does not need anything else to exist. My niece was collecting pieces for her terrarium, her second one of the week. She had made one before the forest came alive two days earlier and wanted to see the difference. I listened to her explain to her brother that you only take a little and leave a lot because the forest needs it.

She was not repeating me.

She understood it.

This Is What It Is

The kids did not need direction. They were already in it. They moved through the space with curiosity, with care, with a kind of attention that you cannot force. They noticed what mattered. They followed what pulled them. They helped without being asked.

They did not need me to lead.

They needed me to not interrupt it.

This is what Thoughtful Explorers is.

It is not something you plan. It is not something you deliver. It is something you allow.

It is going outside exactly as you are, without waiting for the perfect moment, without needing everyone to feel good or calm or ready, because that moment does not exist.

Someone is always carrying something. My husband was home with a broken foot, missing out. The dog was too much for my knee today, and I broke his heart leaving him behind. I was laying in the moss, fully aware of my own body, figuring out how I was going to get my achy self home… along with two very proud kids and their bags of trash.

None of it was ideal, but that is the point. Nothing about it needed to be because the moment did not ask for ideal. It asked for us to be there, exactly as we were, and somehow that was enough, and when you give it that, something shifts.

The kids start noticing. They start caring. They start leading. And if you let yourself, you stop managing everything for a minute and become part of it too.

By the end of the day, they were barefoot, walking through grass that had not been there two days earlier. They were the first feet on it.

And that matters because most of us arrive after everything has already happened. After the bloom. After the noise. After the shift has already taken hold. But if you come back, day after day, and you stay long enough to notice, you catch it.

The moment it turns, so quietly you would miss it if you weren’t paying attention.

It Was Never About the Sky

The Pink Moon does not turn pink. It never did. It is named for what happens here, on the ground, in this exact window of time.

And maybe that is the point.

On Jane Goodall Day, I stopped leading and watched what happened. I watched kids notice, care, and take action without being told. I watched a forest wake up in a way you would miss if you only showed up once.

That is what Thoughtful Explorers is.

Not something you teach. Something you step into.

And after watching it unfold, slowly, over days, two years in a row, I understand.

It was never about the sky.

It was always about what is waking up beneath our feet.