A Nature Walk, October 6

Our fourth seminar of “Walking Paths to Discovery” began a little differently than usual. We met as a class to catch a bus which was organized to take us to Cambridge for a hike.  On the bus, Dr. Sharpe provided us with maps of the area we would be hiking through, and a poem entitled Nutting by William Wordsworth. We were asked to read the poem to ourselves on the bus, and to keep in mind the ideas and meaning of the poem throughout our hike.

After about half an hour we arrived in Cambridge at the rare property, where Dr. Sharpe gave us a brief history of the area. We then began our hike. Not far along the trail, we observed an archway made entirely of natural resources designed by local artists. This was a very interesting way to begin our journey through nature.

Along our hike, we also learned of the bird monitoring activities on the rare property, which involves bird banding in order to keep track of bird populations. One of the most interesting things that we learned about on our hike was geocaching. We learned that geocaching is a treasure hunting game where you use a GPS to hide and seek containers with other participants in the activity. We were lucky enough to find a container filled with notes and random items from different people at different times. As a group, we decided to add the poem Nutting to the container to leave our mark.

This seminar was one of the most informative and relaxing thus far. We are looking forward to our next walking experience.

By: Shannon Reeves, Janneke Van Den Nieuwelaar, and Anique de Bruyn Kops