Trailblazing with Dan

Dan Gardoqui gave us a great opportunity today to look at a new section of Barrington Headwaters' forest through yet another lens.  This practice is becoming very freeing as I am beginning to take the lenses we have used (readings from Wessels and Orr, classroom/field discussion) and combine them with my previous schematic to form my own personal perspective.  Dan's enthusiasm was inspiring, and I found myself hoping that someday I could be as engaging with my job as he is.

I also loved how he lacked any inhibition with making animal calls and imitating bird song.  This is something that I think we can all learn from.  In order to get in touch with nature, we must communicate with it.  This does not necessarily mean that Dan is having a conversation with birds, but rather he is connecting with the birds on their level instead of using the single dimension that comes from the human perspective.  I was fascinated to learn that people are naturally drawn to irregular or distressed bird song.  This immediately reminded me of my time living in Australia with my uncle and his family, where there are extremely territorial birds called magpies.  The magpies are found in many parts of Australia (other species of magpie are found elsewhere in the world) and are very heavily populated in the suburbs of the major port city of Brisbane, in southeastern Queensland.  The first day I went to go for a jog with my uncle's dog, I did not realize that it was magpie mating season.  I was alarmed to find them screaming hideously as the docile Bedlington Terrier Lucy and I trotted past the first trees with magpie inhabitants.  I knew right away that something was not right, that these birds were extremely agitated.  It took me a moment to realize that it was me, or more specifically, the dog.  The birds began to dive-bomb the dog and even my head at times!  Luckily I was never hit.  Lucy thought it was a game (as I struggled to keep her from getting pecked), but I know a couple of people who got minor injuries from the birds and I heard accounts of more serious eye and facial injuries.  Some cyclists even wore helmets equipped with giant googly-eyes and pokers sticking out a foot in all directions, just to keep the birds away from their faces.

It's very rewarding to look back on what you thought was a minor or insignificant experience, or a funny story at best, and see it in an entirely new light.  My immediate reaction to the magpie screams, which in retrospect was entirely instinctual, was ingrained deeply into my memory.  Maybe a jolt of adrenaline helped build this "subconscious" memory, who knows.  I do know that I usually only remember distant or relatively insignificant events in detail if I continue to think about them. From Psychology courses I have taken, I learned that over time your memories are usually not direct unless they are of very significant or traumatizing events.  Your distant memories are usually just memories of memories (of memories...).  So, when you remember back to your first day of school or your favorite toy as a small child, it may be that you're just remembering how you last described it and this will evolve over time.  That's not to say you can not picture your memory, but this picture is almost always going to be distorted by time. For this memory of mine, however, I did not think of it as any more than an interesting and funny story until today.  Yet now after learning how instinct can drive human reaction to bird activity, I am remembering the exact feeling of alarm and subsequent focus on my surroundings that I experienced immediately after this phenomenon began.  My description of this event is distorted, but my memory of the feeling I had of being alarmed is likely spot on.  The feeling I had certainly feels much clearer than the act of watching birds dive-bomb sweet little Lucy.  I just wonder why my Uncle John didn't warn me...

As our morning with Dan went on, we did some heavy bushwhacking which is always a little more interesting than sticking right to a trail.  We learned a lot about tracking and identification of animals through scat, and spoke about the role of various invertebrates within the micro-ecosystem of a tree.  Dan had a wealth of knowledge and offered some fascinating insight for each question he was presented with.  He really knew how to spark our interest and excitement.  In fact, I was so focused on this that I all but forgot the question I originally asked him in the morning.  I still wonder about whether the beaver pond at Barrington Headwaters is part of the Great Bay Estuary/Piscataqua Watershed.  Though "headwaters"certainly does seem to suggest just that, I would still like to find out some more specific information about the flow of that small stream draining out of the beaver pond.  But I am glad I forgot my question and came up with new ones based on our interaction with a section of forest that was new to us.  One thing that really stuck with me was Dan's response to a question about staying on the trail with smaller children or not (a perfectly legitimate question), which was a staunch "Oh God no!"  Even though not all of our future careers will allow this "trailblazing," it's great to see how much he values physical immersion in the subject matter for both you and your students.  This is something I really want to make sure I encourage when I have students of my own.

I did some follow-up research and it looks like Department of Environmental Services did a report The Oyster River - A Report to the General Court which states that the headwaters of the Oyster River are "west of Hall Road in Barrington."  I believe this means that the water flowing out of the beaver pond at Barrington Headwaters, though east of Hall Road and with no visible tributary connecting to Oyster River from satellite view, is part of the Oyster River watershed and therefore the Great Bay Estuary.  It may not be the main headwaters for the Oyster River, but I do believe that it is part of the same network.  Satellite View of Area (no visible tributaries flowing out of BHW)

Later on in the classroom, Mary got everybody involved in her facilitation when she brought us outside to observe a small plot of ground on campus.  It was interesting to see how each of us found such different micro-environments, and to start to understand how we can help learners build a relationship and a sense of place with their surroundings.  She did a good job of demonstrating this to us.