Sixth Graders Publish Bighorn Field Journal

For three days in early September, Grade 6 students left campus for the alpine meadows above Sibley Lake with Dr. Ross and a naturalist from the Bighorn National Forest. Their charge: to observe, sketch, and identify at least twelve species of late-summer wildflowers, and to compose a short natural-history essay on one species of their choosing.

They came back with more than notes. Between them, the class identified forty-seven species — from familiar lupine and Indian paintbrush to the shy Wyoming shooting star — and each student produced a full-page botanical illustration accompanied by careful field notes on habitat, elevation, and bloom time.

The results are now bound in a single volume, illustrated by cover art from student Nora Whitfield ’28, and shelved in the Ridgemont Reading Room. Families are invited to browse the journal at the Fall Open House on October 24.

“What I love most,” Dr. Ross said, “is that these students didn’t just look at wildflowers. They learned to see the meadow as a whole — how water moves, how the light shifts, how the wind decides which flowers open and when. That kind of seeing is the beginning of science.”