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Timberdoodle Thoughts...

BRMC and Environmental Studies on the Piedmont enjoyed a wonderful Woodcock Walk or should I say watch. We saw American woodcocks, a.k.a. timberdoodles, and reveled at the display.

However, something was missing, Bill Sladen. Bill, who founded Environmental Studies, invited me out in 2001 to bring a group from BRMC to enjoy the woodcock flight display. Bill had never seen the event, but he soon became a big fan of the display. For years after, Bill and his wife Jocelyn would open up their house to countless programs including the yearly performance of these diminutive upland shore birds.

In years past, after the excitement of viewing a wonderful natural wonder was over the real portion of the program began. We would go back into Bill and Jocelyn’s home and sit by the fireside and compare notes. Bill, in his way, would pit the leaders of the walks against each other and each participant’s experiences. At first this felt sort of uncomfortable, but soon everyone involved learned a lot more about the birds and nature, which is what the program is all about.

What Bill was doing so well is challenging young and old to rethink what this event meant. More, he was rooting this natural experience deeper in all of our brains.

BRMC has thought often of our educational programs and what they mean. We feel we do a good job to teach our youth and expose them to the possibilities of their futures. We always try to provide a variety of programs to what I have termed “birth to death”. Meaning, we try to provide opportunities for all ages. Now with everything we are facing as a global community, that approach to natural history is even more important.

Over the past few years, we, like many other groups have used the phrase “no child left inside” or like we like to say “all children outdoors”. This has been the route of all of our camps and nature programs. Forget the indoor sidetracks, stick to what the mountains have to offer— trails, streams, and life.

One thing I have never emphasized though in this forum of our newsletter is the importance that BRMC feels of engaging adults. BRMC can work with children again and again and hope to make a difference in creating a more appreciative and connective future in their lives to nature. However, we realize that if our nature campers, and youth program participants go home and these lessons are not reinforced, we have not succeeded.

With this in mind, we are focused on creating a more adult interactive program. This program does not require you to have children, grandchildren, or nieces and nephews. It simply focuses on providing opportunities for all adults to work with and enhance first their own understanding of the natural world and secondly, assists them to help pass their passion for the outside onto the youth of tomorrow. Our new motto is “adults lead by example, nature has never been more important”.

I thank Bill Sladen for everything he has meant to the community and for assisting BMRC in ways he could not imagine. I want to share a quote from Aldo Leopold about Woodcocks. “The drama of the sky dance is enacted nightly on hundreds of farms, the owners of which sigh for entertainment, but harbor the illusion that it is to be sought in theaters. They live on the land, but not by the land”. How can we expect our children to be more responsible if we as adults do not emulate the behavior of respect and awe of the natural world?