Scouter Mountain

Metro has acquired Scouter Mountain in Happy Valley for transformation into a new nature park, and had invited the public to come see it prior to its official opening.  It's been the property of the Boy Scouts for many years, and is an ancient, eroded lava dome.  Metro naturalist Dan Daly was there to help the group to discover this lovely spot.   Mr. Daly is amazing.  (How does Metro find these guys?)  He spends much of his time at Oxbow Regional Park where he leads all sorts of nature walks, field trips, and helps run their annual Salmon Homecoming (coming up in October).  Instead of leading a large group up a trail, stopping here and there to point out things, he did something different.  We divided into pairs, and each pair were given something on the trail to tell the rest about, pair by pair.  It was amazing how well this worked.

Maple seed helicopters.

One of Mr. Daly's ideas that he wanted to share was about our individual circles of awareness and disturbance.  He said that the number of emergency room visits due to people walking out into traffic or breaking their noses walking into utility poles is rising precipitously, because our circle of awareness of the world around us is shrinking.  Often our electronic devices limit our circles of awareness to the inside of our own heads!  He also said that we are mostly unaware, as we head into the woods, of our circles of disturbance.  We fail entirely to notice how much noise we are making and how the birds are giving out warning calls that we are approaching.  We wonder why we go for a walk in nature and fail to see anything that can move faster than a banana slug.  He offers workshops periodically at Oxbow on how to increase our circles of awareness and minimize our circles of disturbance.

Digging up a mole hill.

On this walk, we also were given a chance to see the Christilla Pioneer Cemetery, on private land which adjoins the Scouter Mountain park.  The oldest grave dates back to 1852; almost half of the graves are of infants and children.  Mr. Daly explained that vandalism of pioneer cemeteries is a problem in our area that Metro must do their best to prevent here, even as they will seek to draw visitors to the park when it opens.

Jasper was fascinated with this funny bug.

Wild black raspberries.

It was inspiring to see that Metro is still working hard to bring public access to beautiful green spaces throughout our area.  And meeting Mr. Daly was also very inspiring.  He seems to particularly love botany and ethnobotany (plants and their many uses), as well as birds, and he does an amazing job teaching both kids and adults.