This week we visited the Veridian site (south of County Farm Park on Platt Road) to survey the current landscape. Again, we worked with Shawn Severance, a naturalist from County Farm Park, to create a natural features inventory of the land. As with our other hikes, the theme of this walk was to read how the landscape tells a story.
Before we began, we read the poem Hamatreya by Ralph Waldo Emerson. We paused at the line: “Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys, Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs.” Students shared their thinking on what they thought this meant--that the earth is shared by all living things, that humans think they own nature but do not, and that the earth has a language of its own; we just have to listen. What are the ways the land is speaking to us today, and how does the land show us (or tell us) what it wants? We looked at aerial images of the site from the 1940s, when it was rows of corn, the 1960s when the first building and driveway were built on the property, the 1970s, when parking lots were expanded and a juvenile detention center moved in, and currently, after the building was demolished. We walked the property in search of remnants from these periods and before. Students found tile pieces and bricks, fossils of coral, and leaves from 60 year old oak trees. We collected thorns from the honeysuckle (which used to protect against wooly mammoths!) , learned how to read winter twigs, and found blue/green algae (Gnostok) growing where the buildings once stood, healing the land. Students returned to school inspired by this walk and excited to look at and label all of our new artifacts. We spent time drawing detailed sketches of these items as well. As we reflected on the natural features of the landscape, we reflected on the question: how can we build our homes while allowing all of the life on this site to keep theirs?
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This week we continued our work with Shawn Severance, a naturalist from County Farm Park. One thing the students love about working with Shawn is her use of concrete artifacts and models she brings with her. We met Shawn at the perennial gardens of CFP, recapping the two time periods of her last visit (the Devonian and Glacial periods) while looking at wooly mammoth molars (in comparison to a deer’s jaw), actual pieces of wooly mammoth tusk, sabertooth tiger models, and more.
We then shifted to thinking about the next two major shifts in the history of this land: pre- and post-European settlement. The students viewed survey maps documenting the vegetation of the area in 1800. At this point, the area was dense with Oak-Hickory and Beech-Maple Forests. Though indigenous people were on the land, it remained vibrant with life. As Europeans began to dominate the land, much of these original forests were cut down for industry (such as logging) and agriculture. The farmer who once possessed the land that we now know as County Farm Park left only a small chunk of the original Oak forest (https://aadl.org/node/266573). Shawn laid the current trail map of CFP onto aerial photos of the property from 1949 and we hiked the trails, stopping to find memories/clues of what the land once was in the current landscape. As we made our way through County Farm Park, we took note of the different feelings and sights of the recovering farmland, now dense with invasive species like Buckthorn and Honeysuckle, and the ancient forest. We paused on various trails as Shawn spotted out huge tree stumps from the ancient forest, cut in half and dead. Shawn drew the students’ attention to the paradox of dying trees; they are the fertile ground for new life to grow. Students loved looking for signs of new life in the dead trees we found along the way. We also watched a documentary titled Intelligent Trees. This documentary focuses on the science behind the “language of trees”. More specifically, it looks at how trees use an underground network of mycelium to communicate with other trees. We went on another hike around County Farm looking for signs of this. Students loved thinking about how the trees were talking to each other just below our feet. |
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