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Families walk trails to find signs of spring
YOUNGSTOWN
It was supposed to be a slow walk on the Ford Nature Center’s trails in Mill Creek Park.
“We waited so long for spring to come, and it’s going by so fast,” Marilyn Williams, a naturalist with the center, told the group that had gathered behind the building Saturday to participate in the Spring Scavenger Hunt.
“We should all slow down,” she continued. “Enjoy the day. Feel the sun and wind on your faces.”
There would be no collecting, she said of 20 items on a list they were all handed – people were to take pictures of the items with their camera phones instead.
Some of the items would be easy to find – such as No. 12, three different tree leaves; and some harder, such as No. 2, a dandelion (as it happens, the nature center’s lawn was freshly mowed.)
After learning the rules, the group, mostly families with children, were sent off to the trails for up to two hours to scour for their 20 items and to have that nice, slow, encounter with nature.
The wind they felt on their faces, however, might have been from 5-year-old Devin Stetson running by.
A 5-year-old has no problem enjoying nature, but he does not do it slowly.
Devin and his mom, Kelly Byrne of Liberty, set out from the center on a path beside the lawn, stopping to take pictures of some easy marks along the way.
At the edge of the lawn just into the woods were white wildflowers, purple wildflowers, and oh yeah, yellow wildflowers. Check those off the list.
Several butterflies fluttered around and “butterfly” was on the list, but capturing one on a camera phone was a bit of a challenge. So onward. Devin, of course, led the way.
Down a set of railroad-tie steps and to a bridge over a dry streambed. Could there be spiders hanging out under that bridge?
“Spider” was on the list. As Devin was checking the underside of the bridge, a ground spider ran across the stream bed toward some dead leaves. It was fast, but Devin was, yes, faster.
That spider was successfully captured on Kelly’s camera phone, but Devin already had lost interest in it. Turns out he has another skill besides moving very fast – he is really good at finding things.
“Ew, what’s this?” he asked his mom.
Kelly went to examine the bright-green object on the end of his finger.
“It’s a worm!” she said. Check that off the list.
Then, it was up the other side of the hill.
Devin stopped to examine some fallen trees, finding at the base of one, a fast moving – worm? No, it had legs.
It was a salamander. Cross that off the list, and from then on, no salamander was safely hidden.
He pried rocks from the dirt to find the life underneath. A beetle tried to play dead. Uh uh. Devin poked it till it gave up and ran for it. “Beetle” was crossed off the list.
In the hollowed-out bottom of a tall tree, he found a letterbox. Letterboxers hide small boxes in public places and leave clues in print and on the Internet as to where they are. The boxes contain paper and a custom-made rubber stamp. Other hobbyists who find a letterbox make an imprint of its stamp in their notebooks and leave an impression of their stamps in the letterbox.
Devin didn’t even need a clue. He looked at all the stamps on notecards in the box, then Kelly made him pack it up and put it back. He continued on his way, turning over rocks, pulling out the stubborn ones from the ground and trying to lift a fallen tree 12 times the length of his body.
“Ooo,” he said. “My back.”
He briefly clutched the small of his back with both hands, then Kelly announced they had gone far enough and it was time to turn back toward the center.
They still hadn’t found a furry animal, a bumblebee or a butterfly. “And my phone is going to die,” she said.
Devin ran back down the path toward the center.
But there was that one more rock to turn over. There, he found a colony of ants with fat white eggs.
Back on the center’s lawn, Devin rounded out his list by finding some new pine needles and the three kinds of tree leaves.
He didn’t get to see a bird’s nest in the woods, but Marilyn knew of one close to the building.
No, Devin wasn’t nearly as slow as he was supposed to be on his scavenger hunt. Still, he didn’t miss much.