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Sunday, May 25, 2003
Lessons from an outdoor classroom
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||
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It's not difficult to imagine what the Maine Audubon Nature Center at Scarborough Marsh would become if its current owners moved out. Driving past it on Pine Point Road, just off Route 1, the seasonal shed looks like it could easily return to its humble beginnings. Thirty years ago, before the state bought the land around the center and Maine Audubon started running education programs there, the delicate structure was a simple clam shack. Today, until you get a close look at the paintings, pamphlets and marsh plants that color and surround the center, it looks like nothing more than a fragile fruit stand. This is an unfortunate mistake many visitors to the marsh could make: underestimating the value of this benevolent blue shed. As Linda Woodard, Maine Audubon's environmental educator, demonstrated to a group of third-graders from Scarborough on Tuesday, when class is in session at the Nature Center, life in the marsh pitches in and helps in the teaching. Woodard's muddy walk along a portion of the 3,100-acre marsh near the Dunstan River started with an explanation of the tree swallow boxes that another Scarborough school class made for the center - which is run largely on the generosity of donations and volunteer work. As she did, a swallow flitted in and around the children's heads, demonstrating with dives and swoops toward the river what Woodard was talking about when she said the swallows are our friends. "They eat bugs," she explained. Along the nearby nature trail, Woodard offered an impromptu lesson in the ways of the red-winged blackbird with two males sitting about five feet from her back. Woodard explained their competitive ways, and, as she did so, the two birds hopped away from one another. The turf battle set up Woodard's presentation later on at the cattail patch, or what serves as "Station 7" in the center's self-guided walking tour that is complete with markers and brochures. As Woodard explained, the cattails serve many - from Native Americans who use the fluffy seedheads to line their boots to the red-winged blackbirds who use the downy-soft tails for nests. The third-graders headed to each of the 13 stations on the marsh walk - a weekly program called "Mummichogs and Marsh Muck." They walked in silence, until Woodard started one of her quiz-show exchanges. "How many of you like ice cream?" she asked to an immediate show of hands after filling a cup with marsh water. "What's in ice cream?" she asked - with a look toward the algae that filled the cup. "Uhhh. I'm never eating ice cream again," a boy replied. Woodard taught the children about the traditional uses of the salt marsh and early American life around the marsh, but also facts related to botany, wildlife and ornithology. Taking dried leaves from a bayberry bush, Woodard had the children crush the leaves and smell the same scent that used to fill Colonial homes. She gently captured the shrimp and mummichogs in the salt marsh to show the food eaten by the marsh residents, birds the children saw - like cormorants and great egrets - and migratory birds that stop there to rest and refuel on their journey. "How many of you have been to a motel, or hotel or inn?" Woodard asked. "Well, this is like Motel 6 here," she said. Woodard crafts the weekly summer walk to the age group she's leading, but the importance of relating it back to Maine history and culture is implicit in most lessons, she said. The purpose of the man-made canal leading to the old Dunstan boat yard 200 years ago was to provide passage to the Dunstan River. Woodard said the canal was built when Portland Harbor was blocked to keep the British out during the Revolutionary War. "See, you live in a very important place," she said to the young Scarborough residents. The tour the children attended Tuesday was a preview to the center's usual summer offerings that begin this weekend for the general public. The Nature Center will offer programs such as canoe tours, morning bird walks and seminars on medicinal plants and constellations. A two-person full-time staff and the center's cadre of volunteers - as many as 20 to 30 botanists, birders and tolerators of black flies - will canoe, hike and muck around with willing wanderers all summer. So next time you're heading to Pine Point Beach, slow down when you pass the lonely looking shack beside the road. And don't underestimate what lies hidden in and around the humble dwelling. Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming can be contacted at 791-6452 or at:
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