by Heidi Blythe (8^th Grade, Class of 2022)

The cold wind of a September evening whipped across the excited faces of a small band of young girls as they made their way toward the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, California. That night, on the 22^nd , that very museum would be hosting a reading of poetries and local authors would be reading their poems coupled with other writings. The Hudson museum was also having an opening exhibit of California’s Wild Edge, where landscape prints made by traditional Japanese woodblock prints were to be displayed.

The band of DVGS schoolers briskly made their way to the entrance and disappeared behind doors to the warmth within. The room they prepared for the reading was constructed with the idea of a theater in mind. A small stand up front signified where the speaker would be standing and small half-moon rings of chairs surrounded the makeshift stage. There were already people milling about the room, exchanging pleasant greetings and hushed whispers discussing and admiring the prints hung on the walls. They were beautiful and carried the rugged scenery of the California coast—no doubt the fruitful rewards of days and hours of hard work and mistakes. After a few minutes of marveling at paintings, the reading began.

“Beautiful, powerful, strong, inspiring, peaceful.” Those were the words from fellow classmates after listening to the poems of girls by Theresa Whitehill. The way she expressed her words made her the focus of my entire concentration. She made it seem like the words were alive, filling my mind with picturesque images of crashing seas, rolling hills and the deep loss buried inside the earth.” All in all, the reading was quite a tranquil experience and it made us wonder as we wonder about the beauty of earth.