“Sasquatch!” The absurd answers continued as we tried to motivate a group of 5th graders into identifying the track they were looking at. Continuing down the trail, they were clearly unenthusiastic about the springtails (small bugs) we could see dancing across the top of the snow. Taking a cue from our charges we decided to venture off the trail, and were quickly rewarded with “Yea! This is what I was hoping we’d do!”

Completely uninterested in learning about tracks or winter survival adaptations, this group of students just wanted to explore. So we let them. Finding what appeared to be coyote tracks, they didn’t care who made them, but looking eagerly into the deep forest someone asked, “Can we follow where it went!?” When told the tracks were actually headed out of the forest the response was, “Can we follow where it came from?!” It wasn’t long before someone had their head under a fallen tree yelling, “There’s tracks down here! Something went this way!” The students guessed for a while what might have gone under the tree. They never did arrive at an answer and we didn’t give them one.

At a Conservancy education program, we don’t assess our success by how many tracks, trees, or other things the students are able to identify at the end of a program; we assess it by how big their smiles are. Comments like, “This is cool!” and “Can we come back here again?” are all the proof we need that these programs are providing exactly what we hoped: enthusiasm and wonder for the natural world around us.

Snowshoeing Moves to New Preserves

Warm weather and a light snowfall created a challenging snowshoe season this past winter. However, the warmer weather brought out many of our wild neighbors and tracking was an exciting activity for nearly 2,000 northern Michigan students and scouts who came snowshoeing with the Conservancy, many for the first time.

Several schools chose new preserves other than the ones they usually visit during school outings. New preserves used for programs included the Ransom Nature Preserve, Rufus Teesdale Nature Preserve and Sleepy Hollow Nature Preserve, all located in Charlevoix County.

Schools involved with our winter programs came from all five counties in our service area, and included students from kindergarten through grade 12. We also had many scout troops join us for some winter tracking and snowshoe fun, as well as several homeschool associations. We’d like to thank all parents, grandparents, and other adults who joined the students and helped make our snowshoe season successful.