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!

Theater in Willsboro!

On Sunday a number of Poko staff members went to see the Willsboro Drama Club's performance of MAME. Many of the performers were students at the Willsboro Central School. Two of the students, Max and Mat, are students who have been to Poko with the Willsboro Afterschool Program and for Spring Break Camp. We loved seeing the boys (and their parents!) in the musical...They did a fantastic job, and we had a lot of fun seeing them in a new light. 

It was also fun to run into a few other the other local kids that we know from Afterschool, who were in the audience. 

We're looking forward to the autumn WDC production, "Damn Yankees!" We hope that there will be some more actors that we know!

We Learn Something New Every Day

Spring flowers have been popping out left and right. Many of the flowers are familiar to us, but every day we find a few flowers that we don't know. Liz and I have been pouring over our field guides lately, trying to figure out what we've been seeing. Below is a picture of a flower that I found in the woods near the teams course over the weekend. 

I wasn't sure what the flower was, and I couldn't find it in my field guides. So I called in a expert--Dan Barringer, the preserve manager at Crow's Nest Nature Preserve. Crow's Nest is located just outside Philadelphia, and I have worked there off and on for years. Dan has an amazing memory for plants, so I knew I could count on him. Sure enough, he was able to tell me that it was called bellwort (Uvularia perfoliata). In fact, Dan was able to send me a link to where he had written about bellwort on his blog. You can check it out at:  http://natlands.typepad.com/nlt_preserve_blog/2007/05/crows_nest_flow.html 

Spring Unfurling

Signs of spring have been showing up all over the place recently. All through the woods, the fiddleheads of ferns have been unfurling. 

The new leaves that are opening give the forest a reddish tint. Interestingly, the pigments that make new leaves look red are the same that make them beautiful in the fall. The red pigment is in the leaf all through the summer--the color is just overwhelmed by the green pigment that develops later. In the fall, as the tree prepares to drop its leaves before winter, the green pigment breaks down first, allowing the red to show again. 

In the woods, purple trillium (Trillium erectum) has been blooming. Trillium is one of the early spring wildflowers that bloom before the trees fully leaf out. By blooming early, the plants can get the sunlight that they need before the forest canopy leaves them in the deep shade. 

"Spring Outside"

On Saturday, Poko had the opportunity to participate in the "Spring Outside" event at the Wild Center in Tupper Lake. The event was organized by the Children and Nature Network, a network of organizations dedicated to reconnecting children (and adults!) to the natural world. The keynote speaker at the event was Richard Louv, the author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder. More than 25 organizations were represented at the event. We were honored to be among those organizations, and we got the chance to talk to a lot of wonderful people. 

The staff who went to the event also enjoyed doing some of the activities that were part of the event. In this photo, Liz is using a bow drill to start a fire at "101 Uses for Plants." We also loved seeing the otters get fed, playing field games, and meeting a porcupine.