Earlier this Spring we joined a special Joshua’s Trust hike at Windham’s Allanach-Wolf Woodlands. This expansive 120-acre JT property hosts a rich ecosystem of forest, swamps, and waterways. A paved drive allows easier access to nature, but there are also walking trails winding through the woods and around stream-fed Lake Marie, where geese and ducks call, even the occasional swan. Here is also where amphibians like pickerel and wood frogs mate and breed.
The two-part hike – the first in the evening, then the second the next morning, was led by Susan Herrick, Professor in Residence at UConn’s Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, as part of the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History’s Reptile and Amphibian Diversity Study. For this project, scientists put coverboards in wooded areas near water and monitor them, observing and identifying the different creatures sheltering under the boards. This teaches them about which species and how many (such as frogs, salamanders, and other herpetofauna) live in their forest home. Researchers also record air, soil, and water temperatures to learn more about the local environment. The coverboards’ numbered labels have QR codes, revealing to visitors the website documenting recorded data points of that board.
As we walk at night, then wade through the wetlands, the forest comes alive: raccoon eyes glint at us in the darkness; splash of a fierce-looking beetle spotted by flashlights and captured for a moment in the researchers’ white basin.
… a chorus in the swamp; rustle of wind in the trees, the rich scent of humus and wet leaves…
No matter my mood – whether sad or lonely, frustrated or anxious – getting outside helps heal. This cure-all engages the senses – from hearing to sight to tactile – as I’m taken out of my head and immersed in the landscape, the weather.
We feel the connection to nature, that sense of belonging, because we are part of it. Separation from it feels off to us. Chaos in the world, personal troubles, all these matters affecting us…it’s comforting that nature’s cycle still begins anew.
