The clacking of freshly adorned snowshoes was all that you could hear above the fluttering of my anxious heart. It was the day of my first Adventure Ecology program led by me and only me, More Bark than Bite: Winter Tree ID. (A title that now seems way too childish.) Annalicea was also there to take pictures and as we soon realized, a dedicated snowshoe tech.
We had just met everyone in the parking lot and now it was up to me to make the next two hours’ worth the two-hour drive some participants did just to get here.
Me, a recently graduated 21-year-old aspiring biologist who has never led a program for anyone other than her parents around her local nature trail. All this to say – I was nervous.
As soon as we started the trail, the first ten minutes of the program I didn't stop talking. I had never hiked the trail so a week before I did recon and noted interesting trees and species shifts. It seemed like as soon as we hit the trail and I had six pairs of eager ears, all of the information I learned in my three years as an Environmental Biology student came flowing out–the notes were abandoned. My nerves changed from fearing I didn’t have enough to say to begging myself to gently ease people into the systematic study of tree buds and bark morphology.
The trail started in a white pine dominant stand with a couple yellow birches, beeches and hemlocks scattered in the understory. I made them smell the birch twigs for wintergreen and showed them the buds. I pointed out the difference between plated vs peeling bark. I differentiated white birch and yellow birch. l showed them what the catkins look like in the overstory. I described the seasonal changes of the trees we saw. I defined “evergreen” and pointed it out in the hemlocks and pines. We identified the differences between alternate and opposite branching. We looked at the underside of hemlock needles for the two white lines and the bark for the violet striping and then I stopped.
This was a 2.0 mile hike.
I could still see the trailhead
We had walked maybe 40 feet
I surveyed the faces of my retired aging participants and saw staggered faces reeling from the inundation of tree knowledge that they had never considered in their lives but– asked for? What was this program about? Yes, I was educating the public on tree morphology in the winter and oh boy I did, but who was my audience? The faces that eagerly looked back at me were once chemists and mothers and accountants who were now being bombarded by information and words they had never heard. I was overcome by the sense that this was more about community than the nitty gritty identification clues. These five participants signed up to go on yes, an educational walk but also a social event. They wanted to share their stories of trees and how they connected with the environment.
When I took a breath and realized that a succinct and casual conversation was better than intense memorization, I learned that Lynn's favorite tree is a white pine, that David used to sell plants for a living and is partial to Japanese maple, and that I had definitely hiked the least amount on this trail, and they were all seasoned pros.
A balance between providing a community event where people of all ages feel comfortable in nature, hiking or trying snowshoeing for the first time, and education is a fulfilling part of my AmeriCorps experience. Not only did everyone have a good time, but everyone also learned something. I can confidently say that upon completion of the program everyone could identify hemlock, beech, birch and pines vs spruces, and I learned how to adapt my teaching to a different demographic.
Emma Murray studied Environmental Biology and Forestry. She adores being in nature and sharing fun facts about trees, you’ve been warned if you ever go on a walk with her! Learn more about Emma here.