We can enrich the habitat right beyond our kitchen windows. Bet you do, too.Īha! Now here’s something you and I can do something about! And we can do it without leaving home, or participating in protests or influencing recalcitrant politicians. Here in Oakland Township, the residents have made a commitment to support that call to stewardship – and even in the midst of a tough 2020, I think that’s something to celebrate. And it’s our responsibility as stewards of this glory to keep working hard to make that possible. Life in all its multifaceted glory keeps struggling to persist. Butterflies, turtles, even fungi recycle death back into life. Wildflowers fight their way up out of hard soil to bud, bloom and send their seeds forth into the world. Bird parents exhaust themselves caring for their young. If we get out in the natural world with our curiosity and eyes wide open, we can’t help being surprised and delighted by it all – even two small insects determined to fight the other off to pass on their DNA to a new generation. What’s so great is that Henry’s experience is accessible to all of us, no matter our age. Henry reminded me of the third Bluebird fledgling that I described earlier – happy to be off on his own, exploring the big beautiful world that he’s just beginning to understand. He looked content to just keep moving up the trail, seeing what he could see. Reg and I met twenty-month-old Henry trotting along the path west of the Center Pond as his parents took a rest on a nearby bench. Little Henry explores Bear Creek Nature Park Amid all the comforts of the turning seasons with their eternal cycles of emerging, blossoming and subsiding, we can still be amazed by the persistence of life. It’s a fresh experience to watch a trio of Eastern Bluebird fledglings sorting out their relationships in the Eastern Meadow. My husband has an eagle eye for the slowly moving hulk of snapping turtles gliding across the surface of the marsh and we both listen each summer for the banjo-like strum of the Green Frog’s song at the Center Pond.īut after all these years, we can still be fascinated by something we’ve never seen before, as you’ll see in the life-or-death drama of two determined foes fighting for life on the western slope last week. Each May, we check out a huge hole in a particular oak, hoping for a glimpse of this year’s raccoon kits scrambling up and down within in the trunk. As the winter ebbs each year, we watch for the appearance of the first narrow leaves of Spring Beauty or Blood Root under certain trees. I’ve walked there with my husband Reg for almost thirty years and brought some sort of camera with me for the last thirteen of them.
View through the woods to a wetland at Bear Creekīear Creek Nature Park is the Oakland Township Park I know best.
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