Second Graders, Human Impacts, and Jack in the Pulpit

Today we had a fantastic group of second graders from Chandler Elementary! It was incredibly exciting to be with some leaders and students that I knew and had previous experience with. We explored, turned over many a log, found many many creatures in the pond (including some things I had not seen yet), and hiked in new places. The students were so knowledgeable, as I had two students in my group whose parents work for Merry Lea, and a couple others who had already been here before. So, we explored uncommon spaces and did some interesting activities that could push beyond the normal boundaries of a second grade class. It was wonderful.

The video that we watched for today made me reflect on our experiences here at Merry Lea so far, as well. This entire semester I have been taking classes that have had the specific focus of human impact on environmental change. There was so much that we could have learned from our Native American predecessors who used the land with little impact. However, we chose to forgo this, and wreck the land in such a way that nature could never be normal again. Nature is out of balance now, which makes things like introducing wolves back to Indiana incredibly difficult. Prairies were recorded to be so tall that they were taller than a horse and its rider. Prairies will most likely never be the same, and it is impossible to return nature to its ultimate balance. I was dumbfounded to learn that Indiana is losing 105,000 acres per year to construction of roads and other such things. HOWEVER, Indiana is doing some incredible things as well. The state has restored an impressive amount of prairie, forests, and other necessary habitats for abundant life to be able to return to this area. I enjoyed the perspectives from the video that we don't even know all of the possibilities that nature can provide us yet, so it is unfair to both nature and to ourselves to destroy it. I really like the quote: "So here we are trying to save the Whooping Cranes, and it might be the Whooping Cranes that save us in the end. You never know."

Lastly, I decided to draw a picture of the Jack in the Pulpit, as this flower reminds me a lot of the orchids that I had talked about in my post the other day. You can make your own comparisons, but the picture that I drew is here:

Something that I really noticed about this flower is the stripes that are all over it. The light green and darker green colors that make up the stripes are very beautiful and intriguing. I also looked it up and found that Native Americans also used this plant for several remedial uses. Some of these include sore eyes, rheumatism, bronchitis, and snakebites.