Ankle deep in a stream, turning over rocks
- John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
- June 19, 2025
- 127
Fresh off another wonderful adventure in the woods with a few dozen curious kids, I’ve now punched the ticket on my favorite work days of the year. Teaching children about nature’s wonders is always a gratifying experience, but to do so while wandering a wooded trail or turning over rocks in the shallows of a forest stream is simply the best.
Each summer when my colleagues and I welcome to the woods a whole mess of little ones — many of them with their parents in tow — to our Wild Things Workshop at Wooster Memorial Park, the questions fly and the answers come in a way that sticks like glue to curious minds young and old alike.
Nothing can tell a kid more about the value of spending time outdoors than watching a white-tailed doe lead her fawn across a meadow or watching a seemingly gigantic pileated woodpecker make the chips fly while jack-hammering a tree for his meal. Similarly, the easiest way to bring home the importance of clean, unpolluted waters to a kid is to turn over a rock to find a salamander living happily beneath.
Many of our students (age 7-11) are lucky enough to have an outdoor influence in their lives already, and it’s not much of an exaggeration to say each year we have one or two kids who could probably teach some of the lessons we offer.
Others, though, come to us as “reluctant outdoorspersons.” They don’t particularly like wandering the woods or poking around in the rocks where creepy things might be hiding. Those are the kids I love to reach. Nearly all of their reluctance typically stems simply from a lack of having actually done such things. Enthusiasm is contagious, and once they get their feet wet with the right bunch of people, they become quick converts.
Oftentimes we’ll encounter barriers of one sort or another even among the experienced. A deep-seated fear of snakes or spiders or insects of any sort is typically tied to a misconception planted either by an overly cautious adult or a fearful peer who has been influenced by one.
Being able to hold a spider in a jar to examine it closely with a magnifying glass or feel the smooth, dry skin of a snake and then watch it glide effortlessly across the pebbles into the underbrush — those are lessons that dissolve irrational fear and ignite curiosity. It’s always a great moment for us on the teaching side to witness those transformations take place in children and sometimes even in the adults that have come along for the ride.
Those of us who work in natural resources conservation are keenly aware of the future our planet faces if folks aren’t conscious of the intricate web of life that makes our very existence possible, but our own numbers are few — and in some places we are endangered species in our own right. The opportunity to spread the word that nature matters is all most of us ask. Once people, kids and adults alike experience the outdoors firsthand, they often become advocates in their own right.
Get yourself outdoors and take someone with you. There’s plenty to learn, and the future depends on us knowing — and caring!
If you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com. You also can follow along on Instagram @railtrailnaturalist.