Glen Helen!

Hey family & friends,

So I decided to keep the blog going in order to share some of my experiences during the next 10 months. As you may know, I recently moved to the small (but hip & progressive) town of Yellow Springs, Ohio  to intern at Glen Helen Outdoor Education Center. I am one of 9 Naturalist interns who will be leading school groups of 3rd-6th graders on educational hikes throughout Glen Helen (or "The Glen" as it is called). The students come for 3 or 4 days and stay overnight, so it's a camp-like atmosphere. We take them on hikes, play games, do crafts, and the naturalists perform an evening program one night comprised of skits, jokes and songs. One of the nights we will take kids on a night hike (with no flashlights!) which should be interesting (i'm hoping i'm not the one scared of the dark). Anyway, after a little over 2 weeks of training I start teaching on tuesday! Yay! I finished my lesson plans and I'm really excited for the upcoming week!

Oh, and I have been learning how to handle a couple screech owls (they are tiny and cute and overall fairly cooperative) which is awesome, although the only downside is that we also have to clean and feed the owls (ew dead rats). I actually live in the house next to the Raptor Center here, so I hear the barred owls hooting during the night. I occasionally wake up startled but then realize it's just the birds making that racket. It's definitely a unique living situation, haha.

The Glen is beautiful and is a lot more hilly/rocky than I expected. There are a few creeks running through the nature preserve and a pine forest (not native to ohio) in the southern area of the Glen. There are some wonderful trees like chinkapin oak, tulip tree, and black cherry, that I haven't seen too much of before. It's been fun learning the names of wildflowers, butterflies, and other living and nonliving parts of this eastern deciduous forest ecosystem. Just like on Cape Cod, I feel very lucky to live in such a beautiful place and be able to walk out my door and go for a hike. It's a little sad to think that most of Ohio used to be forested like this...now it's lots of cornfields.  I'll have updates once this first week of teaching is over.

Take care, everyone!
-Margaret