From Bob Fleming. Jr '54, Distinguished Alumnus of Woodstock School

On a dark, post-monsoon evening in 1929 my father stood under the Lyre Tree and listened. Besides voices and the usual school voices, he remembers hearing a double noted hoot issuing from the forested hillside below. "What makes that sound," he thought. He didn't have a clue. But he was curious, so asked a knowledgeable sort and was told: "Oh that is a Mussoorie Mud Hen."

During formative years in Michigan dad had little exposure to the outdoors and knew almost nothing about our natural world. He did have a curiosity, though, so took an introductory college course in botany but found it so incredibly boring he vowed to henceforth avoid anything biological.

Then he came Landour where he repeatedly heard that nocturnal call but had no idea what a mud hen might look like. Slowly, however the hillside began to work its magic. Finally, after eight years of teaching at Woodstock, with curiosity constantly nagging, he ventured into the forest one moonlit night to discover a small nocturnal bird with ear tufts hooting those two notes. No mud hen, this. References called it the Spotted Scops Owl. Years later, dad wrote a well-received field guide to the birds of Nepal, producing a book that covered 753 species with not one mud hen listed. What a transformation from those early days; shows where curiosity can lead you.

We often hear that location is everything, and certainly this is the case with much of our early exposure to the natural world. At the time we attended Woodstock we had some idea of how fortunate we were to be in Landour but little of how much nature might affect our lives beyond high school. Just imagine if our school had been located in Roorkee or Saharanpur.

Woodstock helped us develop our skills - music, mathematics, language, typing. But to some degree almost any school can do this. For me, what really made Woodstock special was its location on a forested hillside in the Himalayan foothills with the Tehri hills outside our back door. This location, combined with a staff (including my father) who urged us to explore, to develop our curiosities, and to learn about our surroundings, was the key.

The school continues to encourage outdoor experience; the program now assisted by the Hanfil Outdoor and Environmental Education Center perched just above the Tehri Road next to Jabbarketh and the hills beyond. What a location! This Center will help Woodstock expose generations of students, and others, to the natural world, and to further their understanding and appreciation of how environmental systems are linked around our rather small globe.

The Outdoor Center is now working on building a solid financial footing to provide for current programs as well as an endowment to ensure perpetuity. I do hope that many Woodstock's alumni who had their curiosities aroused here, and who benefited from the Himalayan location, will be able to contribute financially to the success of this Center. May curiosity continue to abound on the hillside and may the Scops Owl continue to serenade those who are fortunate enough to spend time at Woodstock.