Many a day, I was late getting home by a few hours because I had been invited to someone’s campsite to check out mysterious things they had heard in the night. Once, while sitting around a campfire, one mystery was solved when a screech owl swooped low over the fire in quest of hovering insects. Another time, it was a flying squirrel. Most campers loved this stuff, and it was great being a part of it and sharing these experiences with them. These campers I had the pleasure of meeting, and sometimes seeing return year after year, were obviously attuned to nature, seeing it as a contribution to the beauty, peace and tranquillity of the park. I always left their campsites with a distinct feeling that these people would leave the park perhaps a little richer for taking the time to observe and appreciate some of the very attributes that has made the park what it is.

For centuries we have been very much aware of wildlife and have adapted it in many forms as symbols of our cultural and spiritual affinity to the creatures which share this earth. The North American natives, for example, used certain species of wildlife to identify their affiliation to a particular clan. Ancient civilizations adapted totems or gods resembling real or imaginary animals. Look around us. There is the Elks Lodge, and our national emblem, the beaver. Each province is represented by its own wildflower. Our vehicles are often named after animals we know. All of these are symbolic of the aesthetic, spiritual and cultural role of wildlife in shaping this great heritage of ours.

Apart from providing relaxation for those who enjoy watching wildlife, these animals are vital components in a delicate web of life, a web whose natural communities are complex and interdependent. The niches these animals occupy have been firmly fixed down through countless centuries, each species fulfilling its role within a community. But an animal’s niche is more than just simply a physical location - it’s how a particular animal performs within that habitat, seasonally and under varying conditions. Today, we call that natural process of interconnectivity, biodiversity.

But no species of wildlife performs its job in isolation. The key word is interdependency, and that doesn’t necessarily mean being dinner for someone else. It means something so subtle as alarm sounds of one species serving as a warning for another species nearby in that same niche, or squirrels depending on the presence of certain trees, or early flowering plants relying on the tardiness of leaf producing deciduous trees, and conversely other later flowering plants depending on the forest canopy for their survival.

The study of Nature is a fascinating one and it is an exercise where no one really becomes an expert. How boring it would be if we all became experts on nature. The ultimate thrill is seeing and learning new things, even speculating until we know for sure, why things are happening as they are. The interpretive hikes I organize and lead are not just about walking. It is also about communing with Nature. And my job is not so much identifying this, that and the other thing, but telling the whole story of why it is here, and how it all fits in with the natural scheme of things. You need that part for the story to make any sense of what we see, and the identity of the plant or animal in question to be remembered.

Join us if you can on our interpretive events some time. Whether its birds, bees, butterflies, bellworts or bats, we will help you understand your role in this amazing niche. But you must not dawdle as nature is addictive. Registrations for the program of guided hikes for April through October that I launched on January 1st, were completely filled by January 14th.