FARMINGTON – Tapping into your inner wizard is just one skill that Second Sunday Nature Walks will teach you.
“It’s a lot like learning the magic words in Harry Potter. You’ll pass a fern, let’s say a Christmas Fern, that you’ve seen your entire life, but once you learn how to say Polystichum acrostichoides, you can go and research it and learn so much more about it,” Anthony Underwood said.
Underwood is one of the founders, along with naturalist Lynda Fournier, and lead guide of Second Sunday Nature Walks. With a background in Biology, Underwood decided to take his education a step further by becoming a Maine Master Naturalist. The certification required him to volunteer within the community educating others in his expertise, bringing the free nature walks into existence.
“I want to take people out and try to end some of the plant blindness so they don’t just see a wall of green,” he said.
Nature walks have been ongoing this summer, and Underwood said he plans to continue them into the fall. The response has been decent, with the groups growing each time. Most people join the walks with the goal of doing exactly what Underwood had hoped- learn some of the magical names of the plants, animals and bugs filling local ecosystems. Underwood specifically chose a variety of environments for the walks, such as fields, deep forests and marsh areas, with the purpose of covering as much knowledge as possible.
“I like to tell people these are their non-human neighbors. They are there because they live there, they aren’t there to be dug up and used by humans,” he said. “It’s a lot more than just taking people out on walks and pointing things out. I want to teach people how to make observations so they can become naturalists…so that we are all students of nature.”
The next walk will be held Sunday, Aug. 11 at the North Jay White Granite. For more information about Second Sunday Nature Walks click here.
Thanks for the link. What a great thing to do!