Virtual Guided Nature Walks

DeeriNatureWe are very pleased to host Marnie and Ken Crowell’s newest natural history guide series, a digital introduction to the plants and animals found here on the island. Thanks to ecologist Ken Crowell and natural history writer Marnie Reed Crowell for creating this suite of PDFs, a local compendium of PDFs based on their years of nature walks. Read them online, download them to your computer, or download to your mobile device to take with you on the trail. We also thank Roger Hooke and Robert Knowlton for contributions in their respective fields: geology and marine biology.

In Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything, she writes about the problem of what our obsession with electronics and ‘screen time’ is doing to disengage us from our natural environment, and how this impacts our reaction to any natural crisis, like climate change. But it is also applicable to the other environmental issues of our time. Of climate change she states; “… this is a crisis that is, by its nature, slow moving an intensely place based. In its early stages, and in between the wrenching disasters, climate is about an early blooming of a particular flower, an unusually thin layer of ice on a lake, the late [or early] arrival of a migratory bird – noticing these small changes requires that kind of communion that comes from knowing a place deeply, not just the scenery but also as sustenance, and when local knowledge is passed on with a sense of sacred trust from one generation the next.” Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything p. 159

We hope the Crowell’s virtual guides will help people in this community commune with and learn about the natural wonders of our special place. Remember, if you don’t know something you can’t love it, and if you don’t love something you won’t take care of it. Please enjoy these guides.

VIRTUAL GUIDED NATURE WALKSVIRTUAL GUIDED NATURE WALKS

SERIES WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY ECOLOGIST DR. KENNETH L. CROWELL AND HIS WIFE MARNIE REED CROWELL, NATURAL HISTORY WRITER.

Have you ever wished you had a naturalist along with you to point out various plants and animals as you walk a trail? Based on our more than fifty years of leading nature walks along these beautiful trails, we have written this suite of  guides to our preserves and other areas of Deer Isle that are open to the public. There is also an Almanac listing plant and animal species you are apt to find at one time of year or another.

Read this suite of PDFs online; download them to your computer or to your mobile phone to take with you on the trail. (Connectivity on Deer Isle is still not all it could be…) Smartphones these days are so good at taking photographs that we urge you to collect your own series of photos. Of course there are apps to also help you identify what you see and hear. A closer look at Nature is an enriching experience.

May you find visiting our preserves enjoyable and refreshing. Your experience can only be enhanced by the knowledge that this land trust is a private organization comprised of folks just like you. We love our landscapes with all their natural wonders, and we love sharing them.

Welcome indeed,
Marnie and Ken

Marnie and Ken Crowell

Marnie and Ken Crowell

VIRTUAL GUIDED NATURE WALKS: