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08 October ~ 2007

Friday at Barr Lake we had one of our annual Win Win (Wonders in Nature) trips, cosponsored by the Denver Zoo and the Division of Wildlife. These fall walks are among my favorites for the year, because the lake is low, and I can take the kids North and West from the nature center and find tracks of all kinds of critters along the irrigation ditch and the lakeshore. The kids are fascinated by the Fox, Deer, Raccoon, Skunk, Squirrel, Canada Geese and Great Blue Heron tracks in the drying mud and sand. I told them that a couple of years ago a Mountain Lion was spotted on the west shore three days in a row, which excited their imagination even further.

We saw some White Pelicans out on a sandbar and I explained that once my school group witnessed a pelican swallow a foot and a half long live Carp, head first. Afterwards the Pelican swam around wiggling his tail like he had a very full stomach.

I did something this time that really worked. I mentioned that if you pick up dried Cottonwood twigs and break them apart cleanly, you can find five pointed stars in the center. After a few unsuccessful attempts of my own in which I demonstrated how it is done, all of the children were searching for twigs and snapping them to find the hidden stars. When they found one they would come and show it to me with pride and delight. I told them the Native Americans considered Cottonwoods sacred, and there is a legend that the stars in the heavens had their origin in the stars within the Cottonwood twigs.

A boy named Jim found two perfect stars. When we got back to the nature center he offered one to me, as a gift, which I accepted. It seemed like a fine gift.

I only am with these kids for a couple of hours, but in that time walking the trails with them, I feel like I get glimpses of their unique characters, and may have an idea the kind of adults they will grow up to be. Little Emily told me she goes to the mountains all the time with her parents, and is used to being out in places like this. She and her friend Catlin were out in front until I would call them back to listen to something I wanted to teach them. After we went out to the lakeshore and back through the woods, Emily saw something in the Cottonwood Grove that interested her, and asked if she could quickly go down from the path and see it. My impression of her was one of a brave and adventuous spirit, at home in the natural world.

I was always out exploring when I was a child, and it reminded me of how my daughters grew up. Little Alyssa once wandered ahead of us on a trail in Yosemite. Just about the time Janet and I were getting upset, she came around a bend telling us to hurry up, that we need to see what is up here. She had gone all the way up to Vernal falls and had came back to get us.

When Amy was three years old she learned to ride a tiny Schwinn bicycle I got for her. It is absolutely true, she rode without training wheels at three years!. I still have the bike hanging in the garage. When she was in elementary school she would accompany me and my dog Bud down to the Greenbelt after snowfalls. Amy would be out in front, checking out the snow lining the branches of the trees, and the fresh fox tracks in the snow that went everywhere.

At the end of my program Friday the children and I circled back to the dirt road that leads back to the nature center. I let them go ahead and find the best path through the woods, which often lead along deer trails. The final push to the road lead up a steep bank. The children helped each other up, with cries of 'We Made It', and 'Civilization.'

These kids might forget what I told them about how the male Oriole weaves his hanging nest, or what I said about the Lakota considering the rustle of the Cottonwood leaves to be the voice of the Creator, but my bet is they will remember their walk along the lakeshore filled with animal tracks, following Deer trails through the woods, and especially that huge Cottonwood tree with the hollowed out base they all took turns standing in.

(to see a 700 pixel wide image of the above collage, click here; to see a 1400 wide pixel image of the above picture, click here.)