October 18, 2018 – by Sarah Black and Meagan Montpetit
On this clear, crisp fall day in the Woodland Cemetery the children explore the fallen leaves, bright colors, and cool air. While most of the children have gravitated to a large pile of crunchy leaves at one end of the green space, L pulls my hand toward a familiar stump closer to the road. In the summer, this stump used to be a tall tree, too wide to wrap your arms around, it is now a flat stump the children continue to return to; climbing, jumping, sliding, exploring the bugs under the bark.
This morning the stump offers L and I a new provocation; there are cracked shells of nuts and acorns left in a small pile.

L sees these shells and begins asking questions as he climbs on top of the stump, sitting beside them.
“How did these get here? Did they fall from that tree and break open?”
I answer him saying, “It looks like a squirrel might have sat here and ate a snack”.
“A squirrel did? Where did he get them? Is he coming back?”
L’s mittened hand gently prods the nuts, moving them around, and looking up into the tree beside us. Perhaps looking for the satiated squirrel that ate the nuts and left the shells.
L’s mittened hand gently prods the nuts, moving them around, and looking up into the tree beside us. Perhaps looking for the satiated squirrel that ate the nuts and left the shells.

“There are squirrels at my grandma’s house” he tells me.
“Maybe your grandma is actually at the squirrel’s house” This thought makes L laugh and simply reply “no, its my grandma’s house”.
L’s laugh implies to me what a ridiculous thought it is, that us humans are the ones out of place and are invading the living spaces of the local animals and plants. His confident reply that it is his grandma’s space and not the squirrel’s space makes me wonder about whose space it really is.
How can L and I think about the cemetery space that we are currently in? Are we visitors to this green expanse, pests and annoyances to the resident plants and animals? Or are we the
We wonder about our relationship to this place that we have been visiting for so long. We think about ways that we can shift from notions of ours versus theirs. What does it mean to be in relation to the cemetery and its more-than-human