The Crux is Open!

This weekend was the grand opening of the Crux: Champlain Valley Climbing Center! We had a great turnout...appoximately 200 people came by to climb or check out the building, including a number of people who came on both Saturday and Sunday!

If you haven't been by to see the new facility, stop in at some point this week for the rest of our opening week celebrations. You can find a full schedule of the events we have planned here.

Below are a few pictures from the opening weekend:

Da CRUX!

The time is creeping closer and closer....
....for the opening of.....
THE CRUX!

The grand opening is scheduled for this Saturday, December 5th from 10am-8pm. There will be food, drinks, music, and most of all CLIMBING!

There is over 1000 sq. feet of climbing, 17 routes, a bouldering cave...we've got it all. We are the Crux, Champlain Valley's climbing center! Come check us out!!!!

Working on the Snow Tubing Hill

We had our first snow fall last week. Although it wasn't much, it has turned our thoughts to winter fun: cross-country skiing, building snow shelters...and snow tubing!

Our snow tubing hill isn't a place that we spend a lot of time in during warmer months, but we've been up there in the last few weeks getting this hill in shape for the winter.

Maintaining and improving the hill is an ongoing, multi-year project. Last year we rebuilt the berm to change the path that the tubes took down the hill, allowing for a longer ride. We also started putting in a new drainage system at the bottom of the hill, which tended to be a little swampy.

This year we've been continuing work on the drainage system. The drainage ditches have been dug, and now we're working to spread a few inches of gravel on the bottom before we cover them with dirt again. This is slow, back-breaking work: we can't get a tractor down there to work (actually, we'd be able to get it down the hill, but it would never get back up again), so we're using person-power instead. We got a load of gravel dropped off at the top of the hill, and have been taking it down to the ditches one wheelbarrow-full at a time.

As you might imagine, this is a big job, and we only have a limited amount of time before the snow flies. We'll get as much done as we can, but I imagine that this will be a job that continues into next year!

Rock Talk and Walk

Despite the chilly temperatures outside, myself, Ed Romanowicz from SUNY Plattsburgh, and three others trekked up Rattlesnake mountain to learn all about the geology of the area. We started with a brief intro here at Pok-O, where we got to look at maps of the area. We talked a lot about how there used to be a sea here in the Champlain Valley, the glaciers that once enveloped the area, and the rifts that are forming the mountains around us.

After that, we bundled up and headed out to the mountain. Along the way, Ed stopped and showed us some interesting features. More commonly, we stopped him, with the phrase "Whoa! What is that rock? Why is it pink/black/green/spotted? What did that to the rock? How did this rock get here?" and more. We reached the summit, and despite what looked like dreary gray skies created a gorgeous winter view. Mt. Mansfield of Vermont was snowy and beautiful, the slides on Giant Mountain were bright and white, and the sunlight streaming through the clouds lit up Lake Champlain.

We stayed on the summit for a little bit, but the wind chased us down. We hiked down the trail (asking just as many--if not more--questions as on the way up) and made it back to the van.

My favorite fact of the day: The Adirondacks are comprised mostly of anorthrosite, a granite composite. This is one of the few places in the world that this rock is found. The only other place that it is found on the crust so predominantly is in Labrador, Canada. But (and here comes the coolest part) anorthrosite is also the material that makes up the rocks on the moon! Out of this world, eh?

All in all...it was a "rock"ing good time! (I couldn't resist!)Here's a picture of Ed and our guests on the top of the mountain.

See you next time!
Liz the Naturalist

First Snow!

Snow has been falling in some of the higher elevations for a few weeks now, but down in the valley where we are...not yet. Until Now!

The Pok-O Staff woke up to snow covering the ground, our cars and all the trees! It was just a dusting, and it melted away by lunch time, but its a sign of fun times to come!

Snowshoes, cross country skis, and snow tubes here we come!

What are YOU excited about for winter?

SEAD

A few times each season, we have a SEAD day here at Pok-O. SEAD stands for "Staff Enrichment and Development." These days are days for us to expand our own knowledge about topics we teach about here at Pok-O, both to provide professional development for staff members and to further improve our program.

On Monday we had a SEAD day in Montreal. Our primary destination was the Biosphere, Montreal's Environment Museum. Most of the current exhibits focus on the St. Laurence River Watershed, which includes Long Pond! Most of what we teach about watersheds in our Pond Ecology class focuses on the water that is going into Long Pond...so it was really interesting to learn more about where our water is going when it leaves Long Pond.

We also were fascinated by the structure of the Biosphere. The museum is housed in a giant geodesic sphere. The sphere was originally built as the U.S. Pavillion at the 1967 World's Fair. After the Fair, it remained a popular tourist destination, until a fire destroyed that outer covering in 1976, leaving only the frame of the sphere behind. Eventually a new building was built inside the sphere to house the Environment Museum, though the outer covering was never replaced.

The sphere was designed by R. Buckminster Fuller, a visionary architect, engineer and inventor. Fuller was devoted to sustainable design, and spent his life designing buildings, cars, and other technology that would help reduce the number of resources used by people in their everyday lives. Fuller was well ahead of his time on the issue of environmental sustainability...he was thinking about these issues as early as the 1920s!

After we left the museum, we took some time to walk around the old city in Montreal. Perhaps the highlight of this point in the day was when we passed a restaurant that had decorated for Halloween with gibbets! Brian was very excited to see them. (Read the post about Haunted Homestead to find out why...)

Haunted Homestead

Last weekend was "Haunted Homestead", the Halloween program that the Outdoor Education runs jointly with the 1812 Homestead Farm and Museum. Despite the rainy weather, we had a great turn out, and we hope that all of our visitors had fun!

One of the main components of the program is the hay maze that we set up in the main barn at the Homestead. It's quite an endeavor to build---approximately 400 bales of hay, arranged into a maze that traverses 2 stories of the barn, all structurally reinforced with re-bar and braced with cross beams across the top...and then decorated with scary scenes at every turn! In the end we had a maze that, according to reviews, was pretty terrifying.

We also had a "haunted hayride" through the woods of the homestead. Along the trail riders encountered (or were attacked by) a homicidal clown, and doctor who killed his patients, a chainsaw serial killer, a living scarecrow, Sasquatch, and a few other scary folks as well. We were especially pleased to have the Drama Club from the Willsboro Central School working with us on the hayride this year---they set up a cannibal scene that, based on the screams that always came when the wagon went past their station, was one of the highlights of the hayride.

In addition to the volunteers from the Drama Club, we were also happy to have the freshman class from Willsboro Central School join us to run the concession stand. Proceeds from concession sales went to the class as part of their fundraising efforts for class trips.

All in all, it was a great event. Thanks to everyone who came, and all of our volunteers!

(If you were wondering what that picture at the top of the post was...it was a gibbet that we constructed to hang along the hayride trail. Gibbets were iron cages that were used to display the bodies of executed criminals. The gibbets were commonly hung along highways and waterways as a deterrent to other would-be criminals. Brian had the idea to make a gibbet for Haunted Homestead last year, but we weren't able to pull it together in time, so he had hung onto the idea for this year. He was very proud of the end result.)

Various Programs

There have been a lot of things going on here at Pok-O recently...it's hard to keep up with it all on the blog! Here are photos from two different programs that we had last week...

On Friday, most of the staff traveled down to Corinth, NY to run a team-building program for some of their middle schoolers. It was a beautiful day there--and somewhat warmer than it had been in Willsboro--so the staff certainly enjoyed being out on the football field at the middle school. We took a variety of team-building activities with us, some of which are shown in the next three photos.

Then on Saturday we hosted a Wildlife Tracking Hike for the local community. The hike was led by John Davis and Chris Maron of the Champlain Area Trail Society. We didn't see many animal tracks, but we saw some signs of wildlife, including the woodpecker holes pictured below. We also simply enjoyed the beautiful day and a the view from the top of the mountain.

This week we're setting up for "Haunted Homestead", the Halloween program that the Outdoor Ed Center and 1812 Homestead run jointly. The haymaze is well underway, and plans are in the making for one of our best haunted hayrides ever! We hope we'll see some of you there...

Goodbye Adam!

As Stites mentioned in his post yesterday, today was Adam's last day working at Pok-O this fall.

Here's a classic photo of Adam that Liz took today: Adam just after throwing a frisbee. Among Adam's many contributions to Pok-O, he instituted the tradition of the staff playing frisbee while the kids load onto the buses before leaving.

We will certainly miss him, and hope he'll be back again to visit!

MId-Season Report

We have turned the corner on our fall season. During the month of September, we averaged around 80 kids at PMOEC each day, but that number has been cut in half for the months of October and November. This is giving us a little more time to focus on our After-School Programs with different local schools, our curriculum and program development and, of course, our Community Events- Haunted Homestead, Underground Railroad and plenty of others. Also, we are about to say goodbye to our seasonal instructor, Adam Reed, who will be leaving at the end of this week. I had heard wonderful things about Adam from last year's staff and from all of the Pok-O-MacCready Camp employees, but unless I had seen his expertise with our students, I would not have believed it. Adam has the patience of a monk and the energy of a bumblebee. Combine those with his intensely optimistic disposition, and you've still only scratched the surface of one of the more genuine individuals I have had the chance to meet. Adam will be missed as the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, but he will be welcomed back with open arms if he chooses to return in the spring. That's all for now from the Director's desk.

Astronomy and Pizza!

On Saturday night we hosted an "Astronomy and Pizza" event for families in the local community. Despite the rainy weather, we had a great turnout, and the event went really well.

We started the evening by having everyone make their own pizzas. We had lots of toppings to pick from, and I don't think that we had any two pizzas topped the same way!

While the pizzas were cooking, we headed outside to talk about our solar system. We were making a scale model of the solar system, starting with an 8-inch diameter plastic pumpkin as the sun. We talked about how big the planets would be in relation to that size sun (the Earth would be about the size of a peppercorn), then spaced out lanterns to show how far each of the planets would be for the sun. This was quite a hike, since each step represented 3,600,000 miles. (We were really tired by the end of it.) The vast distances in space can be somewhat hard to comprehend, but this activity helps you see it a little bit better. To help give you some perspective: using this scale model, if we were going to place the next closest star to us (Proxima Centauri) in the model, we've have to travel all the way to somewhere south of Philadelphia.

After our trek across the solar system, we headed inside for dinner. The pizza was great! I think that most of the people at the event could get a second job as a pizza chef if they wanted to.

Since it was raining, we weren't able to go outside to look at stars, so we set up our constellation projector on the ceiling of the dining room and did a little indoor star gazing. Liz told the stories that various cultures have made up for the constellations over the ages, helping us understand how people in the past made sense of what they saw in the sky before they had the technology to help them learn about it scientifically.

There are still quite a few community events to go on the schedule this fall, so we hope to see you there. Some of the ones that I, in particular, am looking forward to are the Wildlife Tracking Hike on October 17th and our Underground Railroad simulation on November 6th. And our Haunted Homestead program (October 23 and 24) at the 1812 Homestead is always a lot of fun! You can find more information on these events, plus all the other great ones we have planned, here.

We hope to see you at an event soon!

Dreary Fall

It has seemed like there have been more rainy days than nice ones in the past few weeks, making this a pretty dreary fall. It's hard to truly appreciate the colors in the trees when they're lit by gray light rather than sunshine.

But even in gloomy weather, it's worth the trip out to see what's going on in the woods. If nothing else, the rain has at least resulted in an amazing array of fungus, as seen in the following photos.

(Thanks to my father for letting me use the photos that he took while he and my mom were up visiting me last week!)

NYSOEA Conference Reflections

First off, let me say how wonderful it is to be wanted. I am really excited to be a contributor to the PMOEC Blog and, oh, do I have some things to blog about. But today, I will limit my comments to this past weekend's New York State Outdoor Education Association annual meeting. This year we descended upon the Holiday Inn in Fishkill, New York. I was joined by Brian, our Assistant Director and Julia (aka Thriller), our Marketing Director. We were excited to meet the representative from the Northern region, Gary "Griz" Caudle, who replaced our very own Jack Swan on the board of NYSOEA. We also were pumped to check out the low ropes course at The Sharpe Reservation, borrowing some ideas to create new stations and repair old ones at our own low ropes course. Overall, we all were able to learn some new things at the conference that will help us make our classes better and better classes are always our goal. Next time I feel the need to post on the blog, I promise to include pictures, but for now, you will have to imagine the beauty of conference rooms inside a hotel.

Old Classes Made New Again

Our curriculum is constantly evolving as new people come to work at the Outdoor Education Center and bring new ideas with them. For many classes, this evolution is a gradual process--a new activity might be added one season, then someone thinks up a new way to explain something the next. Everyone once in a while, however, a class might undergo a significant overhaul.

Last winter we began the process of revising our curriculum. For most of our classes, this meant rewriting the existing description to match the way that we've been teaching the class recently. There were a few classes, though, that we don't teach very often here (since the classes that we teach depends on what classes our clients request), and many of these rarely-taught classes seemed like they needed some serious work.

One of the classes that got serious attention was our Revolutionary War simulation, formerly known as "Time Quest." (These days we're calling it "Rev War Sim," though the name is still under debate.) This class asks students to think about how the war might have affected some of the people involved, and for the students to come to their own conclusions about which side they might support in the war.

To begin the class, the students review what they already know about the Revolution. They then are asked what they would like to know. These questions are then recorded for the groups to take with them to the main portion of the activity: meeting and talking with various people involved in the war. These people represent a range of view points of view. In the photo below you can see some of the people that they meet. From left to right: A British soldier, a patriot woman, a Loyalist woman who is a camp follower for the British army, another British soldier (who has suffered an eye injury), and a revolutionary soldier. (During the activity, we don't all sit together...we were just enjoying the campfire while we waited for the students to arrive.) The students also have a chance to meet a member of the Mohawk tribe.

These characters all have diverse back-stories and beliefs about the revolution. One of our goals is to show the students the full range of experiences that people in the colonies had during the war.

We hope that seeing this range of perspectives will help the kids to make their own decisions about the war. At the end of the evening, we ask the kids to stand on a "value line," from die-hard patriots to completely loyal subjects of the king, with every shade of grey in between. The kids then get the chance to explain to their classmates why they chose to stand where they did. We have taught the "new" Time Quest a few times since it was unveiled last spring, and every time we have been very impressed with the careful thought the kids have given to forming their opinions.

Time Quest is not the only class that has been rejuvenated; Orienteering was also completely reworked last spring. Climate Change and Nature Crafts are on the docket to be worked on this fall...stay tuned for further updates on those two!

Are You Allergic to Goldenrod? (This is a Trick Question)

Fall may bring crisp, cool weather and beautiful colors in the trees, but it also brings fall allergies! Many of us (me included) suffer from runny noses, sneezing, and watery eyes as the seasons change, and we look around for something to blame. For many people, their eyes are drawn to goldenrod.

When I was growing up, one of the cardinal rules in my house was that we shouldn't pick goldenrod and bring it inside, because it would set off my father's allergies. As I grew up and started developing seasonal allergies, I also assumed that goldenrod was to blame...imagine my surprise when I learned that this beautiful flower is falsely accused!

It's easy to understand why so many people blame goldenrod for their suffering. Whenever they sneeze, they can look around and, most likely, see the showy golden flowers somewhere nearby. But in actuality, the very showiness of the goldenrod's flowers should be our clue that it is not to blame for our allergies.

In general, plants with showy flowers are showy for a reason: to attract their insect pollinators. Since these plants rely on insects to carry their pollen from plant to plant, the pollen is generally too heavy to be carried by the wind. Therefore, the pollen from these flowering plants is rarely to blame for your sneezing!

The true culprit is generally growing somewhere close to the goldenrod, but is much less likely to be noticed: ragweed. As you can see from the photo below, ragweed is a fairly nondescript plant. Unless you know what you're looking for, it's easy to miss.

This year seems to be a particularly good year for ragweed--it's growing in every corner, and I've seen some truly mammoth plants. So if you are a fellow allergy sufferer, get ready for an intense allergy season!

First Aid Training

Yesterday the Pok-O Staff finished up our first aid certifications. We all are certified by the American Red Cross in "Responding to Emergencies" and "CPR/AED for the Professional Rescuer." It's good to have this training, but spending hours on end in the class tends to make us all a little loopy. Luckily, we were able to direct this loopiness to good use in our practical exam, when we bandaged Adam up for almost anything we could. In the photo below, he is treated for: A possible skull fracture, a neck injury (kind of...this isn't actually how we would treat a neck injury), a broken forearm, and a cut on his other arm. Only the fact that it was time for dinner prevented us from splinting a leg or putting him on the backboard!

First Aid Training was the last part of our staff training. Today the kids arrive! Two hours and counting left!

We're Back!

Pok-O-MacCready Outdoor Education Center is back from our summer break!

Every summer, things here at Pok-O change considerably as the Outdoor Ed Center takes a step back and the Pok-O-MacCready Camps take over active use of the site. Instead of school groups coming here on field trips, several hundred summer campers arrive to enjoy a few weeks of hiking, swimming, boating, games, and all the other activities that come with going to camp.

As the end of August rolls around, however, the campers head home, and the staff of the Outdoor Ed Center gear up for another year of visits from schools, scout troops, after-school programs, and all the others who visit between September and June.

Our season has been off to a busy start, with a full schedule of staff training! We have a mix of returning and new staff members, so we take the first week and a half to review all the classes we teach here and get ready for the arrival of clients. So far we have completed all of our team building courses, gone over our ecology classes, gone mountain biking, canoeing, and have hiked two of the four Pok-O-Patch mountains. (And that was just in the first four days!)

There are a number of familiar faces on our staff this fall: Stites McDaniel, our director, never actually left over the summer. (He just spent a lot of time in the office.) Brian DeGroat, who was an instructor last year, is stepping into the role of Assistant Director, and is doing a great job. I (Molly Smyrl) am back again as Program Coordinator, while Liz Pierson is taking over as Naturalist. Adam Reed, who was an instructor last fall, is back for another go as well. Mike Gast, our chef, rounds out the list of returning staff.

We also have four new faces as well--three on our teaching staff, and one in the office. (The photo is the new instructors goofing around on top of Rattlesnake Mountain.)

Mark Scott (on the right) is our Climbing Director. He worked at summer camp last summer, and now is here for the fall. He grew up about ten minutes from Pok-O, and has a long family history here---we have reason to believe that he's the first person to be a second-generation Outdoor Ed instructor; his parents worked here in the '70s.

Julie Warren (on the left) is a new instructor this fall. She's one of two Julia's on staff this summer (we have a new marketing director who is named Julia), so Julie is desperately hoping that she'll get a nickname (she's never had one before.) If you have any suggestions, let us know.

Madison Andrus (in the center) is our fall-season intern. This internship will give her the last credits that she needs to graduate from Missouri State University. She's a life-long girl scout, and since arriving at Poko has acquired the nickname "Mad-dog." (Julie is upset that Madi got a nickname before her.)

As mentioned before, Julia Backus is on board as our new Marketing Director. Julia has worked at summer camp for 4 summers, but now gets to experience the thrill of a full winter at Pok-O. In keeping with our pattern of nicknaming everyone except Julie Warren, Julia has recently been nicknamed "Thriller." She's also fond of card games.

All in all, it looks like we have a great staff, and we're looking forward to the season ahead. Eight days until the first students arrive!

Where have we all gone?

Well, as Molly said, the Pok-O outdoor ed staff have all disappeared it seems. But nevertheless, camp will not be quiet! Starting on Monday, all the campers will arrive and camp will be bustling again for the next 7 weeks.

Most of the outdoor ed staff you know and love through the blog will not be there however. With one exception!

Brian DeGroat has decided to extend his stay yet again by becoming a summer camp counselor. Brian will be living in the intermediate section, which houses boys ages 10-12 (or thereabouts, I can't remember the exact ages). He will be teaching drama, frisbee, and drama set construction. He is then returning to Pok-O in the fall as Assistant Director. Hooray!

Molly Smyrl has returned to the City of Brotherly Love to continue her work at the Crow's Nest Nature Preserve. She will be helping run the summer day camp there. I'm not sure exactly what she does, but I know she gets really dirty and has lots of fun doing it! Molly will also be returning in the fall as the Community Programs Manager. That means lots of cool things will be happening at Pok-O that everyone should come out and participate in! Hooray!

Liz Pierson has decided to travel the world this summer. She will be traveling to Sint-Truiden, Belgium for 5 weeks to work on an organic farm. This is all happening thanks to the WWOOF Program. That stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Check them out, it's a really cool organization. Liz will also be returning in the fall as naturalist. Hooray!

Viv.Poit, after spending 10 years in the US has decided to move back to her home country of Brazil. We are all totally jealous and planning trips to go visit her. She leaves July 15, leaving our summer to go back to wintertime! We'll miss you Viv! But have fun! Hooray!

Ginny Tice has gone back to school to finish up her triple major. We had a lot of fun working with Ginny and hope she had a great time as well. I've heard rumors that either Hawaii or the moon (okay, maybe just Hawaii) is next on her agenda. Good luck! Hooray!

Tim Oprazdek (I probably spelled that wrong, I apologize) is back being the director of the Pioneer section of Island Lake Camp in PA. He is in charge of camp craft things as well as the high and low ropes courses, and team building areas. We aren't sure where Tim's next adventures will take him, but we hope if that path leads to the North Country he'll come back and visit! Hooray!

Mike Gast has resumed his position as chef of Pok-O Summer camps. Cooking up some good food, and announcing the rule of the day, hooray!

And then there is Stites...Stites will be working in the office everyday, booking groups and making sure we all have jobs in the fall. Lots of computer work, and lots of phone calls. At least he gets to go outside and mow the lawn for Shai once a week. Good luck Stites! Hooray!

So that's it for us! Leave a comment and tell us what YOU are doing for the summer. Maybe we can share stories when we all reconvene again!

Liz

Scenes from Our Final Weeks

We had a busy final two weeks here at Pok-O. We've had a packed schedule of school groups, as well as all the tasks that come with shutting down the Outdoor Education Center for the summer and getting the summer camp up and running. Most of the Outdoor Ed staff is scattering for the summer, so we won't be posting on this blog much, if at all, until we're back in August. We hope that you'll be back to read it then!

Before we go, however, we wanted to share a few pictures from the last two weeks...

These kids are at the top of Rattlesnake Mountain, one of 4 mountains that they hiked in 3 days to earn their Pok-O Patch. 

These girls are showing off the edible plants that they learned about in an early-morning nature walk. 

A campfire at Intermediate Point...

Snapping Turtles have been coming out of the pond to lay their eggs. This one came all the way up the hill to outside Robinson Dining Hall!

This one is of the staff at our end-of-the-season dinner. We're all wearing the t-shirts that Viv made for us as a final gift. We had a blast this spring, and we hope that everyone else who came to Pok-O did as well. 

See you in the Fall!

Bouquet River Canoe Trip

On Saturday, June 6th, we had another successful community event! People came from Plattsburgh and Jay, both in New York, to canoe on the Bouquet River.

The weather cooperated by providing lots of sunshine. There was also a little wind, which managed to make the trip downstream more difficult than the trip upstream…just enough wind to keep things interesting, though, nothing dangerous.

After canoeing down to Lake Champlain, we beached our canoes and ate our lunches. The children, and adults, played in the sand and took closer looks at the birds nearby.

As we headed back up the river to Willsboro, we couldn’t help but notice the active wildlife. There was a turtle taking its offspring for a swim and also a duck followed by 9 ducklings! It was an exciting experience!

I am moving away from the Adirondacks in a few weeks, but days like that will keep my mind here for a long time.

1812 Homestead Open House

This past weekend we opened up the 1812 Homestead for a community Open House. We had about 40 people stop by to make shingles and candles, tour the Inn, taste hearth-baked cornbread, play old-fashioned games, and attend a lesson in the one-roomed schoolhouse. We had a great time, and hope that everyone else did as well! Here's a photo of Master Carpenter Brian showing a visitor how to split a shingle out of a log:

We still have a few events left in our spring season, most notably our Summer Picnic on Sunday, June 14th! We'll have swimming, boating, hiking, games, dinner, and a campfire...if you're interested in attending, e-mail me at programs@pmoec, or just show up that day!

Hands on Nature

This weekend we had a "Hands on Nature" event for local kids. We had a great turnout---14 kids plus a few parents! We all had a lot of fun learning more about Long Pond, and all managed to get a little wet! Here are some photos:

In this photo, Liz is showing the kids a 3-D map of Long Pond and the surrounding mountains. This helped the kids visualize where Long Pond's watershed (the area of land that drains into the pond) is. 

We spent a lot of time hunting for macroinvertebrates (backbone-less critters that are big enough to see with the bare eye.) In this photo, the kids are using nets to scoop mud and dead leaves up from the bottom of the pond in search of the critters.

Once you have the mud up from the bottom, you have to search through it to find the animals. 

Despite our intentions to only catch invertebrates, the kids did manage to catch a few frogs as well! (Evidently the frogs jumped right into their nets.) In this photo, Liz is holding one of the frogs that the kids caught.

And if you can't find the animals from the docks, clearly you need to go into the pond to find them! By the end of the activity, most of the kids were completely soaked--which is how you know they had a good time!

Leadership Hike with Keene Central School

Today Tim and I headed into the high peaks region to hike up Rooster Comb Mountain with the 4th and 5th graders from Keene Central School. Rooster Comb is a local mountain for these kids--the trailhead can be reached on foot from the school, and you can see the school from the top of the mountain. This meant that many of the kids had climbed the mountain before, but that didn't matter...one of the goals of the hike was to talk about leadership, and what better way was there to demonstrate leadership than to show the group a trail that was already familiar to you!

Before we began the hike, we played a game called "Jiggy-jiggy Joy", which involves a series of actions being passed through the group, with each person doing the action that the person before them did the round before. It's a fast-paced game, in which the players need to be thinking about themselves, the person in front of them, and the person behind them. The kids were quick to notice that not only was the game fun, but it was also a good symbol for the kind of leadership that we were looking for on the hike---taking care of yourself, while also following the lead of the person in front of you and helping the person behind you. 

Then we were off for our hike. Each of the kids took a turn leading the group. Before we began the hike, we talked about what sorts of things we wanted the leader to be doing. The students said that the person in front had to set a good pace, and should stop to wait anything people in the back fell behind. As each kid took their turn in the front of the group, they all displayed this behavior beautifully! 

The leader was also responsible for making sure that we stayed on the trail. This was somewhat more of an issue, as seen from the kids' response in the photo below when I asked, "Which way does the trail go next?"

Just kidding! (That photo was completely staged.) Actually, the kids were really good at both following the trail through the forest and at keeping track of where we were on the map. This second part was yet another way that some of the kids showed leadership, because knowing where we were in relation to where we were going helped keep up the spirits on group members who got a little tired. 

We ate our lunches at the top of the mountain while enjoying the view. Every single kid made it all the way to the top, despite blisters, tired feet, and the fact that this meant that they got lunch almost half an hour later than usual! Here's the group at the top of the mountain, with some of the high peaks in the background:

Finally it was time to head down the mountain again, which presents different leadership challenges than going up---while going up, the leader must make sure that everyone is going slowly enough that everyone can keep up; while going down, they must make sure that everyone is going slowly enough that no one gets hurt from running down the mountain! Here's a photo from during our descent:

When we got back to the school, we talked about what we had learned about leadership during the day. The students were able to give a lot of great examples of times when their classmates had exhibited good leadership skills ("When someone fell down and cut their knee, he pulled out a first aid kit and gave her a bandaid.") We also asked the kids how they would describe a good leader. Some of their responses included:

• "Someone who takes care of the group"
• "Someone who makes sure the group is all together"
• "Someone who listens"

What I found most interesting was that nowhere in their description of a good leader did the kids mention anything like "someone who is in charge" or "someone who tells other people what to do." While they recognized that sometimes a group does need someone to step forward to help organize things and help the group make decisions, they were very aware of the responsibilities of the leader to the group. With kids like these making up the next generation of leaders, I think the world will be in good hands!

Thanks, KCS 4th and 5th Graders, for being so amazing on the hike today! Tim and I had a great time!

The Wild Center

Today the Poko staff got to go the Wild Center in Tupper Lake. The museum was closed to the public today, but they let is in for a behind the scenes tour! We got to see the animals in their "backstage" holding areas, which let us get a much-closer look than ususal. Here is a Saw Whet Owl. It's hard to tell from this photo, but this bird (a full-grown adult) is only about the size of a human hand!

The next photo is of one of the three river otters that live at the Wild Center. The otters split their time between their water tank, which is open to public display, and their behind-the-scenes play area. It's nearly impossible to get a good picture of them in the water because they move so fast, and it's not much easier when they're in their play area! One of them did pause just long enough for me to snap this picture, though. 

My favorite animal-encounter of the day was Stickly the Porcupine. The curator let her out of her cage to climb around a bit (porcupines are excellent climbers), so we got to see her up close. At one point, my face was probably only 6 inches from hers! It's an urban myth that porcupines can throw their quills, so we were safe as long as we stayed a few inches away. Given how cute porcupines are, however, we had to keep reminding ourselves that we couldn't pet her. 

Finally, here's a photo that shows you exactly how "behind-the-scenes" our tour was---the refrigerator where they store the food for the animals...which was mostly dead rats and mice!